As recently as 2020, Earth’s anthropomass, the human-made non-bio mass (metals, concrete, bricks, glass, plastics) exceeded its living biomass (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, viruses, humans).
This rapid growth of anthropomass speaks for how disconnected the world of design and architecture is from the one of nature. And, even though the function of non-biological materials is undeniably essential to our safety and comfort, it is often overlooked that much of this human-created mass is interchangeable with the Earth-made such.
As awareness around the health of our planet spreads, concerns for its life forms grow exponentially. This causes the realization to sink in that designers are no longer able to put just anything out into the world with a clear conscience. Therefore, the essential question should be asked: are we equipped to design for our ecosystem and what do we do to get there?
Ecosystem Design
A key design philosophy tool is the motivation to move our design efforts beyond the realm of human-centricity and expand our actions to the entire biosphere. This type of design is known as life-centered and often equates, ethically and biologically, humans to other life forms: plants, animals, rivers, mountains, oceans, and the entire Earth.
- Biophilic Design
To start off scratching the surface of ecosystem design, there is the approach of biophilic design. The reason why biophilic design is important is that it creates this initial connection between humans and nature. It caters for our time indoors, bringing nature to our workplaces, homes, schools, and stores. As human life is predominantly bound to the inside, we spend an estimated 93 percent of our time disconnected from nature. Biophilic design engages the indoors with the outdoors in a unique way, supporting our ecosystem and our mental health. Nature can be experienced through natural sources of light, air, as well as vegetation. Water is also a crucial component, aiding the ecosystem of a living estate, while creating inhabitable areas and relieving stress.
An important aspect of this philosophy is the environmental impact it has on the creation and revival of natural habitats, initially destroyed by industrialization.
Architecture has been the design realm, most proactive with ecosystem design, integrating renewable energy, and maximizing vegetation, including rooftops with native, low-maintenance plantings that absorb stormwater and create a biophilic experience for occupants. Architectural elements in the direction of biophilic design also aim to reduce light pollution, recycle solar and wind power, use natural materials (like wood and stone), and create external structures to aid plants and animals’ cohabitation with humans.
For apparel, biophilic design has been more challenging, as it doesn’t possess the physical bound of real estate. As a concept, fashion is less tangible and less contained. It is, in theory, possible to create an ecosystem garment, however, unlike ecosystem homes, it is not readily adaptable on a grand scale. Apparel doesn’t yet have its own ecosystem and its creators find it difficult to channel and execute biophilic concepts.
Therefore, fashion’s biosphere is thought of as the whole Planet: plants, animals, and, recently, mushrooms. Designers take cues from living organisms’ biodiversity in attempts to mend the decades-old practice of using plastics and synthetics in fashion. These days, sustainability in fashion is often talked about in the domain of reinventing a certain wheel. What design for ecosystems actually consist of is just taking a step back to a place before the synthetic revolution and thinking from the perspective of a person whose life was never based upon plastic. This view might be difficult to adopt now that it’s not uncommon to find bits of plastic in one’s fish dish, however, it is essential in designing for our ecosystem.
- Biomimicry
Despite difficulties, ecosystem design seeps into the fields of apparel and product, as well as architecture, allowing for nature-adopted features to appear on garments and buildings. In design, this is often referred to as biomimicry: mimicking other species from our ecological system. This could be integrating a hydrophobic texture, rather than using membranes, for instance, or taking the natural pigment of living creatures and bacteria, and then fermenting it to achieve quantity.
Janine Benyus, a biologist, innovation consultant, author, and the scientist who introduced the word ‘biomimicry’ to our dictionaries, says the smartest design comes directly from nature. This allows ecosystem-inspired products to be more efficient, and smaller, adopting nature’s most effective patterns.
When it comes to product design, there are a few biological segments, which are highly inspirational. Form is the most obvious one. It observes life structures and translates them into homes, vehicles, and industrial spaces. Japan’s Shinkansen trains, for instance, were modelled after the shape of an owl’s wings for the pantograph to increase energy efficiency, and the front, after the Kingfisher’s beak to make the trains faster and quieter. The way shark skin is structured has also influenced the creation of antibacterial surfaces, similarly to how leaves’ water-repellent coating has done so with everyday objects’ rain-water-cleanable surfaces. Biomimicry’s prevalent focus, however, is nature’s processes, which are often expressed via the way our ecosystem communicates. Great examples of this are whales’ echolocation, which ships now use to navigate ocean bottom surfaces, and the way fungal network operates underground and connects plants, distributing resources, which has inspired our modern communication systems.
- Circularity
An incredibly important aspect of biomimicry, and one with increasing urgency, is circular manufacturing. As smart as we’d like to think we are, humans have copied this process from nature too. In a well-functioning ecosystem, there is no byproduct, no natural landfill. Everything is used up for a purpose, serving as food for something else. The food chain is an example of a process, where everything, not consumed within the higher ranks of the food chain, goes back to earth to nurture the soil and serve as the source of a new life.
Circularity is a highly aspirational element of today’s design and the backbone of an ecosystem. It is efficient and implies nothing incoming and nothing outgoing. Why this philosophy is so difficult to implement is because humans have already excluded nature from the product manufacturing process, leaving the ecosystem as a source of raw material, of giving, but excluding it as a place of receiving. Like this, we have centered design around ourselves and made our species a disruptor of the natural circularity of our ecosystem. Therefore, circularity is not about inventing a method to include our environment in what we do but rather one to exclude our harmful actions from the space of the ecosystem, it is a process of restoring the balance, rather than re-inventing it.
- Digital + Biological
The current generation of designers and architects is equipped with an increasing number of digital tools, with which to unravel the history of design and creation, and bring new ecosystem design solutions to a large scale. The space a contemporary creator occupies is, therefore, ideally, the one of reigning in the power of digital revolution, while working with the material of the biological.
Neri Oxman, former Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT Media Laboratory, points out that the use of natural and growing materials in all areas of product design and architecture would close the gap between the human-engineered world and our natural ecosystem.
Because nature’s resources are finite, today’s creators should work together with the biosphere to balance resources and design: take away where needed, like for instance, the algae in the oceans, which prevent the Earth from cooling down, but also put down where scarce or problematic, like virgin non-organic cotton.
Another way of integrating nature into our products and architecture is to build with biopolymers and living cells, where inanimate objects become living and breathing organisms. This is still an idea in the realm of utopia, however, the first prototypes of such large-scale structures (like the Silk Pavilion and Aguahoja formations, for instance) have been crafted by Oxman and her students, allowing for life to happen at the core of a product.
Re-designing our ecosystem requires the right raw materials, as well as the right intentions. And while we have biopolymers, spider silk, algae- and kelp-based yarn, cellulose coatings, mycelium-grown fabrics, bacteria-generated colours, and many more natural substances to play with, industries’ go-to approach remains to craft greenwashing campaigns about recycled polyester products.
To answer the initial question of whether we’re ready to design with and for our ecosystem, the answer seems to be inconclusive. In practice, we’ve got an infinite library of materials and colours to choose from, however, the creators of today’s products, homes, and landscapes, more often than not, choose to opt for synthetics. There are two reasons behind it: a financial and a structural one.
In order to engineer objects in a way, suited to our environment, we need to completely rethink the profitability of selling a product and the price of this product, until biologically made produce seamlessly enters our markets and homes.
And, as alluded to earlier, our organizational structures must change. The way we educate ourselves as creators should not be separated from natural sciences but rather merged into one study and one craft. New types of positions should be reflected on the job market and research should be encouraged and financed. Timelines need to shift, and creativity needs to be forged. Furthermore, legislation needs to support this by banning toxic and non-biological materials, the media needs to educate the consumer and society needs a peer pressure detox to neutralize consumerism.
While solutions are at hand, priorities and mindsets need to shift. In order to design for it, we first need to understand our role and impact within the ecosystem.
Research Sources:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCPrKqp4UI
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/ecological-product-design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4oW8OtaPY
https://www.dezeen.com/2022/05/13/sfmoma-exhibition-architectural-provocations-neri-oxman/
https://simpledwelling.net/episodes/design-principles/biophilic-design