Bio Design: Nature + Science + Creativity - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870709526 ISBN 13: 9780870709524

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014

Synopsis

First published in 2012 to wide acclaim for its timely focus on the nascent movement of designing with living organisms, Bio Design is now available in paperback as an inspiring resource for designers, architects, engineers and students. Featuring 73 projects at the intersection of biology and design, it surveys artworks, prototypes and architectural concepts that harness living materials and processes, presenting bio-integrated approaches to achieving sustainability, new innovations enabled by biotechnology, and provocative experiments that deliberately illustrate the dangers and opportunities of manipulating life for human ends. Ranging from fabrics and “concrete” made from bacteria to arbor-architecture, these projects are now more pertinent than ever. By examining how this new phenomenon fits into the history of architecture, art, and industrial design, William Myers contextualizes the shift toward bio design through comparisons to previous historic transitions in art and design practices, clarifying its implications for the future.

About this title

From the Author

Biodesign is the next step beyond biology-inspired approaches to design and fabrication. Unlike biomimicry, Cradle to Cradle or the popular but frustratingly vague "green design," biodesign refers specifically to the incorporation of living organisms as essential components in design, enhancing the function of the finished work. Biodesign leaps ahead of imitation and mimicry to integration and use, dissolving boundaries and synthesizing new hybrid living objects. The book also highlights experiments replacing industrial or mechanical systems with a biological process, an approach becoming more important under the pressure of the climate crisis. The final section of the book ventures beyond functional or speculative design into the realm of fine art, presenting a range of works that incorporate living matter and foretell changes in how we might define life, identity and nature in the near future.

From the Inside Flap

"William Myers has collected an impressive variety and number of case studies that involve organisms at all scales, from plants and animals to bacteria and cells, to be used as architectural, graphic, or interior elements...If our relationship with nature is broken, this book makes us hope that perhaps we will be able to fix it from within." -Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA

Edition details

• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0870709526
• ISBN 13: 9780870709524
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Myers William