10
NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION,
1994
| Editorial
NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATIONOn very few occasions
has a publication taken on the themes that this monographic number discusses:
nature, design, and innovation, it is equally unusual to gather authors
influential in their respective fields to reflect on the proposed title. But
perhaps the greatest specialty and richness of this number will be found in the
vision of design from scientific fields so diverse but coinciding in the
parting point —the nature common to all— towards innovation —also necessary to
all.
Moments of crisis, such
as the one we are in now, have historically been moments of change which
require an abandonment of referents and a search for new parameters of
behaviour.
In any case, a global
vision from a new viewpoint is needed. If we can speak of a crisis in design,
it is due to the exhaustion of the industrial, social, consumption, creative
and, therefore, cultural models themselves.
Renovation, or simply a
new viewpoint, can come from the complexity itself that design has created, as
it is more and more often interrelated with diverse sciences and which, in its
short but constant evolution, has generated a whole network of knowledge
between the technological and company, sociological, communication, science,
and material, etc. worlds.
Strangely, design, which emerged as an interdisciplinary discipline with horizontal characteristics, has grown vertically with the development of each of the areas on which it has leaned, or which it has influenced. It is from the flows of knowledge of this network that we can reread design itself as a way of understanding and proposing the artificial environment of the human being. If the function of the designer is that of shattering frontiers and limits, his/her ambit of knowledge and culture must also widen, For this reason we open opinion about design to people from different scientific fields, from the common denominator of nature: physicists speak about innovation, biologists speak about design, theoreticians of design speak about nature, engineers and designers rely on nature to search for new solutions. In this way, we begin this monographic number by revising the process from nature to innovation, through technique and therefore design. For this reason, the first block, which we will call historical approximations, includes, on the one hand, the background gathered by professors Yves Coineau and Biruta Kresling, who give an enumeration of highlights in the history of science and technique where previous observation in different systems of nature are known. On the other hand, investigator Silvia Pizzocaro takes up the evolution of thought that has related biology to technology and its implications on artificial objects, from Darwin to Basalla, through Moles or Steadman themselves. The next block will represent the philosophic and cultural approximations on design and nature. On the one hand Gillo Dorfles postulates design as the interface between natural and artificial, while Ezio Manzini makes an exhaustive run-through of interactions between nature and culture, especially those that affect artificial environments and create a new ecology. The area of approximations to the physical and philosophical foundations will he begun by Werner Nachtigall with reflections on biological design, systems of functional analogies, energy problems and constructive solutions. In another area, facing the structuralism of Alexander in Form Synthesis and Stevens in Models and Rules in Nature, Hermann Haken postulates the phenomenology of synergy not only for the understanding of self-organizing systems, but also for the analysis of chaos, giving a new vision of the interrelated complexity of nature. From this point of view, we can obtain a deeper knowledge not only of the theory of decisions (and let us not forget that any process of design is a chain of decision-taking), but also of artificial intelligence in its functions of recognition, to the presentation of a new-concept of innovation from the field of physical synergy. The fourth block is made up of the approximations which we have called methodological and projectual, in which we are presented with different achievements with their corresponding investigation procedures and application. The principle of light construction, widely used in architecture, is shown to us by Jurgen Henntckc, who suggests observations, classifications and methodologies that can be extrapolated to the field of industrial design, where the concept of lightness is yet to be developed. Carmelo Di Bartolo takes bionic methodology to an interest for the interaction between the environment and the materials of which objects are made. He uses, to illustrate the conceptual richness and innovative charge of this methodology, the projection of protection in its most varied definition; protection from atmospheric agents, of parts of the human body, from acoustic pollution, etc. The cycles of natural life are used by Eduardo Sesti to project or manage the phenomenologic complexity of birth, growth and death of a product, establishing a value system with ecological and economic criteria. To conclude, the editor of this number goes over some elementary concepts to propose a methodological scheme, attempting to postulate a possible work tools, making the theory itself operative with no more objective than that of suggesting the experimentation of the process itself, introducing and evidencing investigation factors in projectual activities. In this way, we see how some of the fundamentals proposed in the blocks are put into practice, or on the contrary, some actions arc denounced from the most critical postures. In any case, we try to provoke reflection or internal debate in the reader, whether he/she be just curious, professional, teacher or critic, which will make him/her revise or repostulate his/her way of doing and seeing, suggesting an activation of the relationship between design and nature as a wellspring of innovation. Finally, this monographic number is a homage to Miguel Duran-Loriga, who introduced an early knowledge of these approaches to design in his magazine La Arquitectura de la Naturaleza in the mid-seventies. Gabriel Songel |
Contents
10
NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION,
1994
SILVIA PIZZOCARO A darwinian metaphor. Objects, artificial systems and technological mutations in an evolutionary perspective 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 ENZIO MANZINI Physis and Design. Interaction between nature and culture 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 YVES COINEAU, BIRUTA KRESLING Bionics and design: witnesses to the evolution of this approach 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 EDUARDO SESTI DE AZEVEDO Design and environment, strategy and projection 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 CARMELO DI BARTOLO A dialogue between materials and environment. Designing protection: observation, models, solutions, in the task of the Centre for Research of the European Institute of Design 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 GABRIEL SONGEL Nature, design and innovation: a methodological proposal 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 HERMANN HAKEN Synergetics or: what are the basic principles of self-organization in nature? 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 W. HENNICKE JÜRGEN Light and spacious. Aspects of the design and construction of spacious light structures 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 WERNER NACHTIGALL Form creation and bionics: biologic design 10 NATURE, DESIGN AND INNOVATION, 1994 GILLO DORFLES Design: between the natural and the artificial object |