Bio Design: Nature + Science + Creativity

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William Myers

Foreword by Paola Antonelli

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012, English

Nonfiction, Architecture; Nonfiction, Landscape Design; Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design

8.25 x 10 inches, hardcover, 250 pages, 400 color illustrations

ISBN: 9780870708442

Suggested Retail Price: $50.00

From the Publisher. For centuries, artists and designers have looked to nature for inspiration and for materials, but only recently have they become able to incorporate living organisms or tissues into their work. Bio Design surveys recent design and art projects that harness living materials and processes, presenting bio-integrated approaches to sustainability, new innovations enabled by biotechnology, and provocative experiments that deliberately illustrate the dangers and opportunities in manipulating life for human ends. The first publication to focus on this new phenomenon and closely examine how it fits into the history of architecture, art, and industrial design, this volume contextualizes the shift toward bio design through comparisons to previous transitions in art and design practice, clarifying its implications for the future.

On 3 book lists

Aric Chen

On Aric Chen’s Notable Books of 2012 list

陈伯康－ 2012年值得关注的书

生化设计：自然＋科学＋创造力

前言

威廉·迈耶斯；前言：保拉·安特那利

Jens Holm

On Jens Holm’s Notable Books of 2012 list

Phil Patton

On Phil Patton’s Notable Books of 2012 list

Bees are chic right now: they design and build their own homes and make their food artisanally and naturally. Urban beekeeping is a way of enlisting nature that couldn’t be more in tune with the ideals of many designers today. We want our buildings and cities to be as natural as the honeycomb.

For centuries, architects and designers have aspired to echo nature’s forms. Today, increasingly, their ambitions go further: to incorporate nature’s methods and materials into the work. This is the terrain surveyed in Bio Design: Nature + Science + Creativity, coming from The Museum of Modern Art in December. The book provides a thorough survey of natural design efforts from the visionary to the do it yourself.

Most of the design projects surveyed offer environmental or social lessons; some of them border on artwork. A “blood lamp” devised by Mike Thompson of the Design Academy Eindhoven forces the user of the lamp to confront pain as a prelude to consuming energy. Its switch is based on luminol, the crime-scene chemical familiar from CSI-style television shows, and triggered by blood.

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