MASD @ Design Portland Festival!

Alumni in Action

Jul 28, 2020

Alumni in Action

Jul 28, 2020

Biomimicry:
A Framework for Sustainable Design

Design Week Portland, originally scheduled for April 18-25, has been renamed Design Portland Festival, rescheduled to August 3-7, and moved to a virtual format. MASD will be there!

Disrupt your thinking.
Flex your creativity.
Get a jolt of inspiration.

Envision your role in creating a sustainable world.

We are all feeling an urgency to take action on climate change and sustainability. Designers have a unique ability to make change, but they need new sources of inspiration as well as a new problem-solving tool.

During this hands-on experience, we’ll cover basics of Sustainable Design and Biomimicry and share tools of Bio-Inspired Design. While playing with nature, you’ll sharpen your skills of observation and learn new tools for ideation.

You’ll leave with a worksheet you can use to practice bringing nature to your design table to create more innovative and sustainable solutions.

Brought to you by MASD Director Denise DeLuca and MASD alumni Stef Koehler — experts in the emerging fields of Biomimicry and Sustainable Design. We take you beyond recycling and composting and dig into design’s role in crafting a sustainable future.

We’re offering this workshop online:
TUESDAY August 4 from 6:00 to 7:30pm

Looking forward to meeting you!
~ Stef + Denise

[email protected] + [email protected]

Denise DeLuca / Former Director

Denise DeLuca is the Director of MCAD’s Sustainable Design program. She was co-founder of BCI: Biomimicry Creative for Innovation, a network of creative professional change agents driving ecological thinking for radical transformation. Denise is author of the book Re-Aligning with Nature: Ecological Thinking for Radical Transformation, which was illustrated by MASD alum Stephanie Koehler. She also teaches with the Amani Institute.

Denise’s previous roles include Education Director for the International Living Future Institute, Project Manager for Swedish Biomimetics 3000, and Outreach Director for The Biomimicry Institute. Denise is a licensed civil engineer (PE) and holds a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering with a focus on modeling landscape-scale surface and groundwater interactions.  In addition, Denise is a Biomimicry Fellow and a member of the Advisory Council of The Biomimicry Institute,  Board Member of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP), on the editorial board of the Journal of Bionic Engineering, and an Expert with Katerva. Denise is based in Oregon.

contact:  [email protected]

 

Stefanie Koehler

Stefanie Koehler

Stefanie Koehler is a designer of things and non-things. As a sustainability-focused human, she aims to create solutions that work to regenerate our environmental, cultural, and creative global and local economies. Trained as a product designer, she also likes to play with the art of not making things, or rather doing smart (not clever) design. Stefanie practices designing with extreme user empathy and leveraging whole systems and service design to realign innovation, business, and natural cycles. Stefanie has a traditional industrial design background (BS in Industrial Design; Western Michigan University (2009)) but has an inherent desire ‘do more good’ rather than just ‘doing less bad’. Struck by how little she knew about materials and product life cycles, she pursued a degree focused on sustainability; she graduated from MCAD with a MA in Sustainable Design in 2013. Stefanie is based in Oregon.