{"id":108,"date":"2011-05-26T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T13:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/104.196.21.78\/?p=108"},"modified":"2022-08-24T22:11:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T02:11:48","slug":"crafted-by-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lakatosdavid.hu\/?p=108","title":{"rendered":"Crafted by Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Crafted by Nature<\/a> is a new class, at the Media Lab, taught by our new prof. Neri Oxman<\/a>. The mission of the class is no less than “We will invent novel fabrication methods inspired by nature and reconsider the way things are designed and made in the 21st century.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After explaining how the class will move through the semester, Neri asked us to find and pick a specimen (a system that you can find in nature) that we find enchanting and observe its behavior to external stimuli. One of her examples was a pine cone \u2013 the helical geometry of the cone allows the pine cone to withstand compression, by shifting its seeds (the cone uses this process to distribute the seeds in spring). This seems easier than you would think. Beauty often roots itself in simplicity, but in nature, nothing is simple if you look closely enough. I think everyone tried to find a beautiful, yet functionally interesting specimen (it\u2019s interesting that in the human psyche functionality and beauty are not independent of each other. In fact, the function relating these two is one of the most sought-after relationships there is).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My specimen was a sponge. 4 months later, looking back, I have to say it\u2019s way more complicated than I have thought. I teamed up with Marshall Prado and Cara Liberatore, two awesome students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design to base a project that learns something from sea sponges. To get a deeper understanding of internal structure of sponges and since we are at the very center of the the dorkosphere, we CT scanned a sea sponge (Thanks Kenny!):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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