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The Systems View and your Bio Toolbox

Curt McNamara (MA in SD faculty) published a detailed article with captivating visuals, The Systems View and your Bio Toolbox in an issue of Zygote Quarterly (Issue 9, Spring 14), featured on page 94. MCAD student Nadine Kuemmel (Germany) and MA alum Stefanie Koehler (MA ’13; Oregon) were quoted in the piece where they shared their

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Faculty Focus: Exploring Upwards, Downwards and Sideways

Exploring Upwards, Downwards and Sideways: Using a systems lens in design The seed landed on my table. It was a complete system that contained DNA to start a new tree, a transport mechanism that made use of existing forces, and clear evidence of how it grew. This system had multiple parts or sub-systems, and each

Online Biomimicry Course

Last week (!!!) to register for our 10-week, fully online summer course, Introduction to Biomimicry. It will be taught by new MASD faculty, Tim McGee, co-founder of LikoLab. Course description In this course students learn how to abstract functional strategies from nature to apply to the process of innovative design. This project-oriented studio course covers

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Introduction to Biomimicry

There is still time to register for our 10-week, fully online summer course, Introduction to Biomimicry. It will be taught by new MASD faculty, Tim McGee, co-founder of LikoLab. Course description In this course students learn how to abstract functional strategies from nature to apply to the process of innovative design. This project-oriented studio course

Visit Us at LivingFuture 2015

How would nature design adaptive human communities? Lessons from the super organism. Denise DeLuca (MCAD SD faculty),  Ilaria Mazzoleni and Tamsin Woolley-Barker will share an aspirational session that explores how human communities can find inspiring new models of social planning and architectural organization from ultra-social creatures like ants, honeybees, and mycelial fungi, and the ecosystems

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FREE Online Biomimicry Course!

We are proud to announce that MCAD is partnering with Canvas.net to offer a FREE, open online course for the first time entitled, Biomimicry: A Sustainable Design Methodology. This course will be a fun introduction to biomimicry, a sustainability framework where we learn from nature’s best design ideas to help us solve human design challenges.

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Biomimicry for the Built Environment

I’m pleased to announce that MASD instructor, Denise DeLuca, and myself, director of MCAD’s MA in Sustainable Design program have developed a 2-hour, on-demand, fully online course on the topic of biomimicry for architecture and the built environment entitled, EcoBalance and Biomimicry: Inspired by Nature  for the Green Building Research Institute. This course provides Continuing

Alumni Update: Learning From Nature

During the 2012–13 Biomimicry Student Design Challenge (BSDC) competition, I discovered that solving humanity’s biggest design challenges requires new skills applied within a comprehensive framework that integrates sustainability. I gained a deeper understanding of the Buckminster Fuller Institute‘s tenet of what Fuller described as “comprehensive anticipatory design scientists.” (Fuller, 1999) Learning from nature Biomimicry, the

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Design Rules for Sustainability

Curt McNamara is an experienced engineer, biomimicry educator and Buckminster Fuller scholar. We recently caught up with him to discuss his career as well as his fully online course devoted to the subject of nature-inspired design and Bucky Fuller’s work called, Nature’s Design Rules for Sustainability. This is a 10-week course that is a core

Student Spotlight: SolDrop – A Social Sustainability Project

With an idea that began in a Bucky Fuller course about systems thinking, taught by Curt McNamara as part of MCAD’s Sustainable Design program, it sparked into what became the focus of my Master’s thesis project – the SolDrop solar still concept. SolDrop is an affordable, sustainable, adaptable, and scalable water purification solution designed for

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