Denis Feigler (denisfeigler)

I was always fascinated by nature and the way living organisms are able to coexist, sustaining each other. Even before I became an industrial designer I was drawn to the shapes of nature. At the beginning the proportion and topology of the form interested me later, but later I learned to connect forms of living organisms with their intended function. Nature's way of visual communication is also stared to interest me as means of sustain itself and assure reproduction.
Design can strive on many of natures inventions and I make it my point that my students are aware of this resource to explore. Projects are focusing on environmental consciousness and responsible design practices.

Designers want to create perfect solutions, that fulfills a multitude of issues and requirements. Nature's issue is sustainment and efficiency. No sales profit, no politics, no price-point. Designers call the type of design nature creates, honest design. If we want to achieve Janine Benyus' idea: "The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone." We, at some point in the future, have to look into the real problem. Alfred Einstein said: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." So we have to change fundamentally and the question is if we as specie are capable of doing it. Einstein also said that "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

Well I am getting far from the topic of biomimicry, but not far from the problem that we have in hand. Nature is a sustainable system that we must take seriously, even if we humans somehow don't fit in the picture with our artificial existence. We advanced and reproduced faster than we should have, and refused to accept the natural course and way of life and we are still too ignorant to admit our stupidity.

There are good ideas that we don't have to invent or spend money on researching just simply adopting it from elsewhere. One of these ideas, that would even educate people, is to print or stamp the recyclable logo on every product and packaging sold.

You see I am not a businessman. I am a professor and the program director of an industrial design program. My responsibility is to educate designers for the future. In a sense I design the future and I take it seriously. I believe biomimicry has to be part of it, along with a healthy design moral and professional ethics.

Dr. Denis Feigler