Pitcher This Design!

Welcome to my first action project for Biomimicry. Biomimicry is an elective course which focuses on STEAM. There are 3 units in this class: Plants, Animals, and Fungi. We just wrapped up Plants which was our first unit. In this unit, we went on a field experience to Interface, which is a company that makes sustainable rugs and carpets. At Interface, we talked to a man named Mikhail Davis who talked about biomimicry and how Interface's designs are inspired by nature. We also went to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, where we looked at different plants and tried to see if we could find the Fibonacci Series. On the first day our class, we were asked, "What is biomimicry?". No one had an accurate definition until further on into the unit. How I would define biomimicry is, "Biomimicry is when human-made designs are influenced or inspired by something in nature." We talked about different terms such as heterotrophs, autotrophs, parts of a tree, Fibonacci Series, Gaia Hypothesis, evolution, and more. We watched a video on Aidan Dwyer who made a solar panel design that mimicked tree branches. The purpose of us watching that video was so that we could get inspired to make designs that help the earth. For this action project, we were asked to either mimic something in nature to create a sustainable design or to find an issue that humans have and then find something in nature to make a sustainable design. Below is my design and my inspiration.   Overall, I would say that this was an enjoyable action project. I liked how we got to incorporate the art part of STEAM. The most difficult part of this action project was coming up with a cool design and trying to make it realistic. My product was definitely not as realistic as I would like it to be. I thought that it was a great idea, but if I had more time I could have researched my plants more. It was hard to find where to put my design underwater so I kind of just put it wherever. If I were to do this again I would try to make my product more realistic.