Learn from Nature, Learn from Men. —Biomimicry
For this terminal project, I am not only interested in development of the architecture itself, but also the development of the community in the greater urban planning. I started to approach the design from studying biomimicry in the nature or plantation realm. However, during the study, I can’t help but to start wondering how does the formation of human body looks like when we talk about biomimicry, we often look at fishes, flora, and other species, but we never look at ourselves as human. Therefore, I go ahead and did some search on line on how human body was formed from sperm to fetus, which leads me to this awesome video showing the very detail form the beginning of the journey to the end of the beginning.
From this video, I interpreted the process with the intention of designing a city, and how we can develop a city with the development of human body. After all, we are developing for the human, not fish or flowers right?
Here’s the process I learn from the video.
First, the sperms run all the way to the egg and start the process, the egg roll into the womb and ready to be developed. In this process, I see it as the premature development of the site, which like most cities, it was developed before a greater plan is in place. This process is where the early development starts to build the foundation for the city.
Second, the heart and the blood vessel start to shape, with the heart pumping, the nutrition is able to deliver to the very end of the body parts, even years after we step on the earth, the heart is still doing the very same thing as the beginning of our time. I read the development of heart as a central focal point of a city. Every city is different, some start with industry, some start with technology, some start with business. All of these give the city purpose which attracts people and traffic. Again, people go to where the job opportunity is, and we can’t forget how important are those opportunities creates the great cities.
Third, the development of the body, arms, legs, head, and all starts with the spine, where I see the hands, feet, and head as the necessity to allow the body to be functional. As great city, comes great traffic. Therefore, highway and roads are created to maintain the connection with the heart. Hands, feet, and head are like the life around work, where people rest, play, and enjoy life. And all these are connected with the arms and legs as the road connecting to where the work is.
Fourth, the development of the toes, where I see as the life style that one could think of, parks, bars, stores, all these are necessary to keep hand and feet functional, and every single one of them are important.
Fifth is the development of the face, which we can see it as the culture of a city. When we see a person’s face, we have first impression, like we see and experience each city. Until we finally live in it that we experience the above four points. However, everybody judges people by their looks. We also judge a city by its culture, Portland, Seattle, LA, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Beijing, Taipei, all these names we somehow connecting them with what we heard and what we seen, and all these, are the culture or the first impression we have long before we physically visited it.
Last but not the least, is the trigger of brain and nerve system. And that is the people. Every individual of them are playing a rule to form the culture and the function of the city, each of them are important, and with them as a whole, are a city we live in today.
This is what I learn from studying how human is formed. While most often we starts the architecture design from the fifth point—the face—I think it is more important to have the ability to start from one thru four. If human body is formed in such ways to provide a functional body, shouldn’t we look into the development of the human body and mimic it to create a great city? By working in the site of OMSI, I am not only looking into the development of my Builder’s space, but also how it fit in with a bigger structure as part of a greater Portland area. More importantly, how the site can develop its own heart to support hands and feet will be the focus of my terminal project.