Bio mimicry makes one able to solve essential problems by taking cues from nature and it’s various processes, systems and such. This week we will be looking at the world of insects, how they function as individual entities, within a group and also, how they build their nests. The bees aren’t the only ones whirling around their hives to build long-lasting reinforced structures with a juxtaposition of the six-sided cells. The hexagonal form is a source of inspiration for a lot of architectural developments, recently the social-housing marvel that is the Honeycomb Apartments designed by the Slovenian firm Ofis Architects, the London-based ACME firms’ idea for the United Nations Memorial Space in South Korea (though only coming into 3rd place), a cube conceived of cells, a direct visual analogy to the variety of countries represented, each different parts of a bigger whole and the Beehive Tower for Heron Quay in London, a haven for cultivating plants. Moshe Safdie, who is an omnipresent figure in my hometown of Montreal, having built Habitat 67 for the World fair (in 1967). He has been looking to the outside shell of Caterpillars to build the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. The result being a ringed longitudinal structure, with natural light seeping from one side and the curved dome offering ideal acoustics.
Switching gears to bring you news in art, Vadim Zaritsky a Russian entomologist, former police officer and artist, has been collecting wings from butterflies since he was a kid. Recuperating the “trash” pieces from collectors, these broken wings found light again, being used in his almost impressionistic scenes form portraits to landscapes. Reverting back aesthetically to a long-forgotten masters technique, being influenced by African art, he used these to make Mosaics, and reinterpreting a ubiquitous support for them as a medium and image-makers. Our favorite sensational showoff Damien Hirst in his always contemporary discourse about the Arts (and it’s Market) has also displayed interest for these creepy crawlers, making big psychedelic canvases filled with colorful butterflies. More cruelly, some say, as part of a solo show at the Tate Modern, letting them roam free in the windowless space feeding off fruits displayed in the space, letting them eventually to die.
All in all, the examples stated both in design and art show once again that though we have tried to control and redirect our efforts to construct devices and buildings that stray away from nature as a whole, when things go wrong, one needs to redirect their attention and look to it’s natural processes to fortify our concepts and of course our planet.
