Free Biomimicry Course Starts TODAY!

Biomimicry

honeycomb

Starts March 7…Not too late to sign up. Sign up today!

We are proud to announce that MCAD is partnering with Canvas.net to offer a FREE, open online course entitled, Biomimicry: A Sustainable Design Methodology.

Prepare for upcoming competitions

This course will prep you and your team for the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge ($100,000 grand prize) and the Living Product Challenge ($10,000 prize).

About the course

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. You can expect to spend about 4-6 hours per week on the course to earn the completion badge. Or feel free to join just to see what’s happening. SIGN UP FOR FREE!

Course dates

The course will run for 4 weeks from March 7-April 1, 2016.

Course description

Nature offers boundless inspiration for sustainable design, but how do we access the wealth of biological information available and apply it effectively to design? This course provides an introduction to the tools and principles of biomimicry, a new discipline that emulates nature’s best ideas and blueprints in order to solve human design challenges. Each week you’ll get outside to explore nature and learn a key biomimicry design concept that you’ll then apply to develop a novel biomimetic design.

At the completion of the course, students will have:

  • Defined and applied biomimicry concepts, tools, and principles by creating novel biomimetic designs.
  • Differentiated between nature’s design principles, strategies, functions, and patterns to apply them to human-made designs.
  • Observed nature and conducted research to learn from nature through real-world, outdoor observations.
  • Employed the biological solutions database AskNature.org to serve as a research tool for design challenges.

Course instructor

The course will be led by the director of MCAD’s Sustainable Design Program, Cindy Gilbert. Learn more about Cindy’s biomimicry background.

Register

Course registration is open. Sign up for FREE today.

Questions?

If you have questions about this course or MCAD’s Sustainable Design Program, please contact us, we’d love to hear from you!

Image courtesy of Flickr CC Prilfish