Brilliant!

Naming science as his chief inspiration, Mathieu Lehanneur shows a selection of his ingenious designs -- an interactive noise-neutralizing ball, an antibiotic course in one layered pill, asthma treatment that reminds kids to take it, a living air filter, a living-room fish farm and more.

And by science, he includes behavioral science too.



Unfortunately, this video is not on YouTube yet, so you might need to go here to see it.

Architecture that repairs itself?

Discusses the beginnings of "living" building materials, other known as "protocells", creating limestone structures from the bottom up. Considering how my last post made a point of the influence of natural elements in public places, this recent video is a great example of how some people see buildings in a similar way. But instead of staying with the decay aspect, they are pioneering the creation part.

Color me extremely impressed. I am very delighted to see this technology being pursued.

Art and public spaces

Olafur Eliasson does a wonderful job of showing how making public spaces an art piece, especially interactive, can help people become more aware of their surroundings and relate to them more. He also explains why this happens with things, such as waterfalls.

Of course, Eliasson uses artistic elements that reflect nature into his public spaces, which makes them more human than many man-made spaces. I believe that this reflection of nature that creates a common ground for all humans, whereas the obviously artificial space limits the way people relate to it.

Teddy Roosevelt saw the same thing in nature's effect on humans when he created the US Natural Parks system. He saw the National Parks where people of all classes could visit and be the same.

So nature reflected in art creates common ground. What does other styles of public architecture do? During the Federalist Period in the United States, elements of Ancient Greek architecture was used to bring a sense of order, beauty and achievement from that ancient democracy to the young country. Romanesque architecture was meant to life the spirit and strengthen faith. Crisp, clean, artificial architecture is meant to drive the imagination into future endeavors.

Likewise, shoddy buildings, and other signs of urban decay, negatively affect the psyches of those who live around it. The only exception to the "building decay=depression" rule I've found is when the decay isn't a crumbling into dust, but a reclaimation into nature. In which case, it often strikes me as nature embracing the structure--a marriage of art and life.

Engineering, art and nature

This is another example of using a perspective that is based on usefulness. The artist considers his sculptures to be alive. That belief obviously helps him to create this fascinating moving structures.



Now this video keeps me glued to the screen every time. I love how he explains that evolution works on the "just good enough" principle and the extreme constraints of living organisms. Being inspired by nature tells us more than bio-mimicry. And who could not be fascinated by the robots they developed?

Deconstructing and Interacting with Art

As with the exception to parenting I mentioned a few blog posts ago, I only partially agree with Dr. Pinker in his discussion of art and beauty. Classic beauty is probably a human constant and modern art does tend to reject it, but there is a purpose for the exploration of deconstruction and minimalization. The problem is, in my opinion, that many "progressive" artists stop at the deconstruction and never finish the journey to reconstruction. Therefore, making their own label an oxymoron because they never complete the process to allow true progress.

Golan Levin, on the other hand, does. As an engineer and artist, during the second half of his talk, he shows the progression from simplicity of gaze to one very engaging robot eye.



I see no problem with merging art and engineering. Di Vinci was an excellent example of an artist and engineer. Michelangelo and other artists were also scientists. So, again, we see the creative cycle of divergence and the convergence.

Going back to the first half of Levin's talk, he gives examples of mixing sensory inputs. Evan Grant also works on making sound visible, through the science of cymatics.



Sound does have form and affects matter. There is still much data hidden in nature for us to find.

Creative Environments

Not a TED.com video, but still a wonderful example of a creative workplace.




It is a shame that not all engineers are like Golan Levin, who I will discuss in the post after the next one. I admire the BMW design team's sensitivity to their engineering colleagues; however, it really irritated me that the engineers at BMW couldn't think outside their own box. It seems to me that, while the communication part is very important, that the engineers themselves could use a good dose of Google's environment.