Design inspired by nature, and applied to The Fringe

What inspires a number of design students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology? Quite simply: nature’s genius.

What could we possibly mean? Imagine the building you’re in right now functioned like a tree. This tree would harvest the energy of the people living, breathing and moving in it to run the air-conditioning and lights. It would compost the waste you produce to help grow the food you’ll eat for lunch.

Now imagine Cape Town filled with living, breathing buildings forming a forest at the foot of the mountain. And this forest is alive, and not just with people, but with plants, animals and insects. In 2011, Cape Town, South Africa, this kind of imagining isn’t just a flight of fantasy; it’s the work of leading scientists, chemical engineers, architects, urban planners, biologists and industrial designers. And the Cape Peninsula University of Technology – which sits adjacent to the design and innovation district known as The Fringe – is leading the way.

CPUT’s faculty of informatics and design – the largest design faculty in the country with fourteen departments – is the first in South Africa to formally integrate biomimicry into its curriculum. Biomimicry – taken from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate – can be defined as innovation inspired by nature, the conscious emulation of nature’s genius.

Creating sustainability through design

“Essentially what we are doing in integrating biomimicry into our curriculum is inspiring our design students to understand and emulate more than 3.8-billion years of research and development done by nature,” says Bruce Snaddon, one of four lecturers who piloted a biomimicry module at the university. “In so doing we aim to not only promote innovative thinking and solutions, but to create conditions conducive to all life wherever design is done.”

“Design is a fundamentally human activity, something we all do. Whether we know it or not, we are constantly designing our world. But through the lens of biomimicry we can design a far smarter world that ensures the longevity, the livelihood of all organisms – including us – on this planet,” says Andrea Grant-Broom, another of the four design lecturers involved.

Drawing on a cross-section of graphic, industrial and surface design students, the five-week module saw 72 students apply their minds – and nature’s R&D legacy – to key challenges in their immediate urban environment: the removal of waste, the provision of shelter, the need for better navigation systems and the supply of clean drinking water. Design solutions had to take into account finite resources and the long-term sustainability of the project.

Students’ design solutions

The design solutions generated by students were both surprising and inspiring – a bicycle-based refuse removal system and community garden modelled on dung beetles; a hub for creativity in Buitenkant Street which uses clean graffiti, achieved by removing dirt from walls; a way-finding system inspired by plasmodial slime mould.

Says Yehuda Raff, coordinator of The Fringe, “CPUT not only embraced biomimicry and its design potential but applied it to The Fringe; they set their students a series of briefs responding directly to the real-life challenges we face in the district. Not all of the student projects were feasible, but all of them had a little spark of genius of how something could change in The Fringe or in the urban environment in general.”

Integrating biomimicry into the curriculum has meant not only innovation in design outputs, but also in education: “Universities have been operating in very much the same way for the last 800 years, and have a bad reputation for being ivory towers, removed from the communities in which they sit, and knowledge transfer was strictly one way – lecturer to student. We’re trying to change that, allow for a more porous system that takes into account our context in time and in this urban environment. Lectures are now workshopped and facilitated, not taught, and the subject matter evolved with the students’ own thinking and experience,” says Andrea.

“Redefining the way we teach through the biomimicry module means that our students are now creating their own future, not just recycling what we’ve taught them. They are creating their own knowledge within the knowledge economy.”

Cape Town at the cutting edge

Claire Janisch, South Africa’s foremost biomimicry authority, explains why and how Cape Town is playing such a key part in a growing global movement.

“Cape Town is the leading hub of biomimicry in South Africa – and of all the regional biomimicry hubs outside of the US, biomimicry South Africa has progressed the furthest so far. So I guess you could say that Cape Town is a leading hub of biomimicry globally.

“Why Cape Town? Because there’s a very, very active community of people trained and interested in biomimicry here who meet at least once a month. It’s also a function of the type of creative design thinking that happens here – Capetonians are more inclined to seek out more sustainable solutions, are more interested in going green, and many of South Africa’s top tech incubators and design firms are here. As for learning environments, there’s no doubt that CPUT is the leading university in South Africa when it comes to biomimicry, being the first to formally integrate it into their curriculum. And finally, CPUT has an urban laboratory on its doorstep, The Fringe, a district that can become the physical example of all biomimicry has to offer. It’s exciting!” 

If you’d like to know more about biomimicry in South Africa, watch Claire’s TEDxCapeTown presentation on the genius of water, then visit www.biomimicrysa.co.za. To find out more about studying biomimicry at CPUT and getting involved with the faculty’s work in The Fringe, mail snaddonb@cput.co.za.

Main photo by Sydelle Willow Smith, second image supplied by CPUT

This article originally appeared in the November 2011 edition of City Views, focused on Cape Town as an innovative design city.

• Tags: Biomimicry, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, cape town, design, informatics, nature, the fringe