This free online course at Minneapolis College of Art and Design promises a useful introduction to biomimicry. It’s taught by Cindy Gilbert, director of the online Master of Arts in Sustainable Design program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).
Nature offers boundless inspiration for sustainable design, but how do we access the wealth of biological information available and apply it effectively to design? This course provides an introduction to the tools and principles of biomimicry, a new discipline that emulates nature’s best ideas and blueprints in order to solve human design challenges. Each week you’ll get outside to explore nature and learn a key biomimicry design concept that you’ll then apply to develop a novel biomimetic design.
At the completion of the course, students will have:
- Defined and applied biomimicry concepts, tools, and principles by creating novel biomimetic designs.
- Differentiated between nature’s design principles, strategies, functions, and patterns to apply them to human-made designs.
- Observed nature and conducted research to learn from nature through real-world, outdoor observations.
- Employed the biological solutions database AskNature.org to serve as a research tool for design challenges.
To read more on this topic, see Biomimicry by Janine Benyus.