In millions of years, nature developed versatile strategies to transport seed around the world to drive evolution of flora and fauna. Students in the project “Bionic – Flying“ did research on the underlying strategic and design concepts in order to reveal and reflect the function and objectives of these transportation strategies. The insights have been clustered within different dimensions like the way of transportation (f.e. migratory birds vs. maple leaf) or active/passive transport (apples just fall down and use hungry animals for public transportation). Inspired by these insights, students started their own project by defining a problem and trying to find a solution within the given framework.
A part of the group just experimented with different wing or catapult constructions and some combinations of them in order to find the best way to transport a specific weight.
Going more into practical solutions, some students developed a refugee helping kit that could be discharged by plane and smoothly sinks down without harming humans. The whole wing can be transformed into a backpack that includes survival material and can be used as a tent.
Using the power of warm airflow, some students experimented with the heat of a bulb to design a rotating lamp shade that combines simplicity with elegance.
Finally, a student managed to produce a series of edible maple leaf made of chocolate and rice paper to give new inspiration for the design of flying chocolate.
The two-week project was full of research and trial and error experiments to train the detection of problems and to design respective resolution concepts inspired by survival strategies of nature.