Industrial design + biomimetics

Product design Inspired by biological forms, processes or systems.

FORM

FlexibleLove, made from easily accessed recycled materials, is furniture directly inspired by accordion and honeycomb structures.

 

PROCESS

Stephanie Nieuwenhuyse is a fashion designer who designed a line of clothing inspired from natural patterns made by tiling in nature.  The garments are made up of hundreds of individual scales or tiles, mimicking reptilian skin patterns and form.  The fabric is created from tiles laser-cut from discarded plywood.

SYSTEMS

As part of a project called Nobel Textiles,  designers from the Central St. Martins College of Art and Design collaborated with Nobel prize winning scientists to create diverse projects inspired by the scientific research.  Shown here is  some of the work done by Rachel Wingfield, inspired by the work of John E. Walker who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1997) for his work oulining the ways in which enzymes make ATP.  Wingfield’s project, Metabolic Media, uses textiles to create new forms for energy harvesting. Her projects specifically look at urban food production, using technologies like dye-senistised (printable) solar cells and compotable ‘seed’ cutlery.

Other projects include Rachel Kelly’s transparent wallpaper inspired by the appearance and disappearance of cyclin in cells, as discovered by Tim Hunt‘s research with sea urchin eggs and disappearing proteins. In various shades of light, hidden patterns in the wallpaper will be revealed.