August 23, 2012 - Design in Nature

Above you see one branch of the maple tree and its leaves. The seeds in particular are what serve to me as a design in nature. Though there are many examples of design in nature, this one stuck out to me because of the unique way that the seeds help the tree to survive in nature. As each of the helicopter-like blades (as pictured above) falls to the ground, theystart to spin just as if when a helicopter is descending. This process causes the seeds to fall slower to the ground than any other seed you might find, causing the seed to gain maximum distance. Gaining maximum distance allows for seeds scattered out to actually become another tree in a wide range of the landscape around them. When you think about helicopters in the real world, this seed makes you wonder if the helicopter design actually originated from the maple seed!

August 21, 2012 - What is Design?

Above is the Chicago Cathedral, and buildings such as this do well at asnwering the question of what is design. In basic terms, Design is simply the plan or creation for something one has thought up for any particular object, system, or whatever it may be. In terms of architecture, design can be defined as the "blueprints." Design can be releveant to many subjects in many more ways than just one as mentioned previously; however, when I think of what constitutes as design I think more along the lines of architecture. In the picture above, you can see many levels of thought and design that was put into making the cathedral look as antique as it does. Every piece of the building serves as it's own piece of art. Even just taking a quick glance at the picture you can tell that the building was carefully planned out and every little detail was constructed very carefully. The Chicago Cathedral and everything that was just mentioned describes what exactly design is not only in an architectural sense but in life overall.