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Mother Nature, Design Guru What do sunflowers, lotus leaves, owls and sea urchins have in common?
Designers are imitating both the way they look and the way they work to create better-functioning products for the home -- a process known as biomimicry. Companies are coming out with bathroom fixtures, draperies, paint -- even swizzle sticks -- inspired by designs from nature.
The Moen showerhead promises three times the spray power of regular ones. It`s based on the whirled pattern of seeds found in sunflowers. This light fixture from Design Within Reach is inspired by coral reefs. The serrated wings of owls (bottom) were mimicked in this air-conditioner fan blade by Ziehl-Abegg. It`s said to be much quieter than standard blades.
Studying the natural world is nothing new for designers, of course. Both Leonardo da Vinci and the Wright brothers looked to bat and bird wings when they dreamed up their "flying machines," while inventor George de Mestral got his idea for Velcro more than a half-century ago when the tiny hooks on burrs stuck to his socks during a hike.
In home products, however, the practice has only recently caught on, an offshoot of the fashionable green movement. Biomimicry as an industry and scientific discipline is so new that analysts don`t cover it and universities are just beginning to teach it. "It`s still gestating," says Chris Meyer, chief executive of Monitor Networks, a Cambridge, Mass., business-consulting firm, and author of "It`s Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology and Business."
Plumbing giant Moen has introduced a showerhead whose spray holes are inspired by a Fibonacci spiral, the branching or spiral shapes often found in natural objects like the whorls of seeds in a sunflower. Moen`s ads promise the showerhead has fuller coverage and three times the spray power of regular showerheads. Chien Cheng, an Irving, Texas, medical research scientist, bought the $35 showerhead when he remodeled his bath six months ago, and says it somehow creates an effect that`s more powerful yet less pounding than the showerhead he replaced. "It feels like rain," he says.
Although biomimicry can incorporate elements of both form and function, the attraction of some products is primarily aesthetic. In July, Design Within Reach, a San Francisco-based catalog and chain of furniture stores, released a collection of $500 to $7,500 pendant light fixtures by New Zealand designer David Trubridge. The three minimalist white fixtures have crisscrossed "skeletons" modeled on coral, sea-urchin shells and crayfish, respectively. Mark Sullivan, director of a federal government loan program, bought the $500 coral pendant in October to go with the midcentury modern décor in his Washington, D.C., condo. To him, the appeal of the fixture, which throws off a pattern of shadows that gives an otherworldly, underwater feeling, is that it suggests a coral reef without copying it. "Anything literal I would get tired of fast," says Mr. Sullivan, who likes nonrepresentational furnishings.
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© The Wall Street Journal
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