While being in this class I have started to notice sustainable and non-sustainable practices that occur in my everyday life. I thought it was really cool to learn about what the university does to be more sustainable as well as visiting the campus recycling center. This week I was talking with a friend of mine and she was telling me that she doesn’t think that OSU really recycles anything that they just do it for show, so I got to tell her about our recycling center and how much our campus really recycles so that was pretty cool. OSU does many different thing to be more sustainable like recycling of course but also, we have wind energy from windmills about 70 miles away, and give some of our food scraps to local farmers to put into their composts, which I thought was pretty cool. I also enjoyed hearing about the group of students that wanted to install the water bottle fillers on campus for people to bring reusable water bottles. I personally refill my water bottle using one at least once a day if I am on campus all day. Another interesting thing was the visit to the recycling center. It was really cool to see how they bail the cardboard and the shredded paper for it to be sent off. I did get the feeling however from the guy that he really wished they had a better facility and a larger crew so that they could be more productive. Hopefully OSU will provide them with better things soon!
Designs inspired from nature using biomimicry and biophillia are well thought out and useful designs. I really enjoyed the TED talk about the homes and buildings made almost entirely of bamboo. Bamboo is rapidly renewing, strong, and resistant making not only suitable for building but also beautiful. I loved what Elora Hardy said that bamboo will treat you well if you use it right. Bamboo is a great resource that I feel isn’t being utilized enough in current architecture and design. The use of bamboo in a design will hit many of the 14 patterns of biophillic design. It is a visual connection with nature, a material connecting with nature, has complexity and order, and a little bit of mystery in the fact that bamboo is hollow but incredibly a really strong building material. I would personally love to live in a bamboo home. I feel that it would be a relaxing and visually pleasing place to come home to after a long day. Similar to the home shown in the TED talk my bamboo home would be very open to the outdoors for maximum usage of daylight and views. The article about bio-inspired design talks about how important daylight is. It provides us with object identification, time, weather, signal of prospect and refuge, signal of safety, warmth and comfort, and synchronization of bio and social rhythms. All of these things are effected by light. Using ideas inspired by nature and relating to biophillic design I feel are very important in designing homes and commercial building and also being more sustainable for our environment!
