Even the most creative minds out there may at times find themselves in a rut or feel suddenly drained when it comes to innovative ideas for new designs. This happens in all the arts, even though fashion designers seem to be the ones who have more frequent creative crises, maybe due to the relentless rhythms and pressures of the industry. When that happens the best thing to do is looking at another field or discipline and get inspiration from it.
Biology is a great resource for some great biomimicry inspirations, but there are particular researches that may lead to extremely intriguing results. Architect and Professor at Technion, I.I.T. Haifa Israel, Michael Burt has for example developed in the last ten years in-depth researches in sponge and polyhedral surfaces.
For his studies Burt moves from morphological ideas: while carefully observing the shapes and forms of what surrounds us in nature, Burt took an interest in structures shaped like solids or containers from historical cultures up to our present times and including pyramids, prisms, anti-prisms, star polyhedra, deltahedra and zonohedra, just to mention a few of them.
The architect realised that not all polyhedral forms have a proper name yet and that among them there are sponge-like labyrinthian, polyhedral, space dividing surfaces. The spongy structures Burt has studied so far are characterised by porosity and visual permeability, among them there are microscopic radiolaria bones, eroded rocks and gigantic cave labyrinths.
Burt analysed therefore sponge polyhedra, eventually getting to a sort of categorisation of the polyhedral universe and coming up with an essay entitled "The Periodic Table of the Polyhedral Universe", conceived to provide an overview of his thoughts and analyses.
Some of the sections of the essay, in particular the ones regarding parameters and calculations may be rather complex for non-experts, but the mathematical patterns and Burt's thoughts on space lattice configurations and polyhedral tessellations are particularly fascinating, just like the images featured in "Periodic Sponge Surfaces and Uniform Sponge Polyhedra in Nature and in the Realm of the Theoretically Imaginable" in which he juxtaposes sponge polyhedra to images in nature and man-made architectures. There are more information on Burt's studies on his site and online such as his essay "Uniform Networks, Sponge Surfaces and Uniform Sponge Polyhedra in 3-D Space". Get inspired!
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