The Influence of Bionic Creatures and Natural Condition on Design Inspirtation

An American major, Jack E Steele, coined this term "bionic" in 1958, and defined it as the "cross-disciplinary that can solve technical problems by life science and mathematics". Today, application fields of bionic are found on all scales, including design. Some scholars define "bionic architecture" in a broader meaning as: all living creatures own the ability of design. In architecture, in order to safeguard their own survival, they apply the ability of architecture to their designs from their living experience and knowledge, and then pass on those experience and knowledge to their future generations. The application of bionic concept can prove that each living creature possess the ability and idea of architecture design. Similarly, design is not owned by a small number of professionals, it is an instinct generated by awareness for survival. In this research, the author applies bionic as an interdisciplinary knowledge to design, and understand it through the interaction between biology and architecture, and the design creativity that generated from creatures. The experiment is conducted as following: the researcher provides three videos of crabs to twenty sophomores of the department of design, and they have to do architecture design after watching those films. Those subjects should watch the films separately and they can replay the videos. Subjects can pause and screenshot screens that inspire them or have special meanings to them, and then record their ideas in written form. After finishing their records, subjects should draw sketches and design architecture. Their creation should be completed within two days, Saturday and Sunday. In the final part of experiment, subjects should explain their bionic architecture sketch idea that is the combination of the screenshots, texts and design sketch. The sketch design process and result will be assessed with biological characteristics, relationship between knowledge, aesthetics and spatial concepts, etc. By professional competence. It shows that the hypothetical questions: "correspondence between the knowledge of biology and architecture" and "knowledge and creativity that is generated as producing design product" are positively related. In the 20 design work, 6 works are affected not only by the crabs in the films, but also by the environment. Their design works combine four constructions with the environment, including two moats, two marine constructions, an underwater park and one sky-park pond. This experiment shows that from observation to design, nearly 30% of designers focus on the interaction between creatures and environment, and are affected by the environment. As they design human spaces, they also put the environment characteristics into consideration. Thus, it shows that in the idea of bionic architecture, biological materials not only enhance designing creativity but also affected by environmental characteristics, and put nature which living creatures live in the ideas of creative design.