Design in context: Systems, Business and Society

This month we are pleased to be featuring two courses geared towards professionals seriously looking for innovative, creative solutions within the multi-faceted disciplines of industrial/product design, business strategy and organisational change: Biomimicry and Systems Thinking in Practice.

Biomimicry is tailored for all design-related professionals looking for innovative sustainable design solutions – from industrial architecture to packaging design – as well as social entrepreneurs looking to learn about social organisation from systems in the natural world.

Systems Thinking in Practice is for cutting-edge thinkers who want to incorporate holistic thinking into the way their organisations and businesses function in order to bring about greater economic, environmental and social cohesion. If your work involves any form of entrepreneurship, strategy development, supply-chain management, CSR or innovation, this course will give you the tools to create workable solutions to your business or organisation’s future challenges.

We are offering a discount of 15% for advanced bookings made by 20th July 2008.

Go directly to website for all short course information.

Biomimicry: New directions in sustainable design, 20 – 24 October 2008

Background to the course content

If future generations are to enjoy a reasonable quality of life then we urgently need to redesign our buildings, our products and our systems to be completely closed loop and running off solar income…Biomimicry offers completely new ways of approaching design such that radical increases in resource-efficiency can be achieved.

Michael Pawlyn, Director of Exploration Architecture Ltd and teacher on this course.

The time has come when energy and resource efficient structures and products should be the globally accepted standard, and biomimicry offers up some fascinating revelations as to how the natural world functions from a sustainable design perspective.

Participants on this course will explore architectural and engineering applications that are yielding radical increases in resource efficiency, whilst also achieving often huge financial savings. Biomimicry affords the solutions for the scale of change needed in order to address the sustainability problem many design professionals feel unease about.

Biomimicry offers radical, workable solutions that have already transformed architectural approaches to certain types of building (for example, horticultural architecture). The course will also touch on the broader applications of biomimicry that extends to include management, industry and society – these are disciplines that are increasingly looking to biomimicry for inspiration.

An article on biomimicry by Michael Pawlyn

Proponents of biomimicry contend that many of the solutions that we will need during the sustainability revolution are to be found in nature: super-efficient structures, high strength bio-degradable composites, self-cleaning surfaces, zero waste systems, low energy ways of creating fresh water, and many others.

There are countless examples of plants and animals that have evolved in response to resource-constrained environments and a lot can be gained by treating nature as mentor when addressing our own challenges. Natural forms also represent fertile territory for designers.

The Eden Project was a radical re-interpretation of an established building type, inspired by various natural forms including soap bubbles, Buckminster fullerene molecules, pollen grains and dragonfly wings. The result of this biomimetic approach was a highly dramatic piece of architecture that achieved a factor one hundred saving in its envelope design at a third of the cost of a conventional approach. The superstructure of the Humid Tropics Biome is lighter than the air that it contains.

To read the complete article by Michael Pawlyn, click here.

Biomimicry: New directions in sustainable design – Teachers and booking information

The teachers on this course include:

Book your place before 20 July 2008 and get a 15% discount. For course booking information click here.

Systems Thinking in Practice, 9 – 27 March 2009

Course introduction

The 1990’s brought us globalisation. Now as we enter the 21st century, economic, environmental and social degradation continue to make the news headlines.

What next for business and governments? How can our socio-economic infrastructure harmonise with eco-friendly technologies? This three-week course will explore how to apply holistic thinking to the complexity of our global social and economic systems.

This course will help participants to join the dots and will illustrate how, for example, unsustainable business practices are economically unviable.

Book your place before 20 July 2008 and get a 15% discount. For course booking information click here.

An article by Gunter Pauli on Systems Thinking

Have you ever got excited about biodegradable plastics? Maybe – until you realised that increased demand for corn for bioplastics and biofuels leads to a doubling of the food prices based on using the same corn in Latin America.

Have you ever been fascinated by the biomimicry technology that permits the conversion of CO2 into plastics with a catalyst from citrus fruits? Maybe, until you realised that plastics always have additives like fire and flame-retardants based on endocrine disruptors like brominated compounds.

The time has come for us to start to make connections, to foresee linkages and understand that we are not living in a world where only “one thing” matters, but rather we inhabit a web of life where everything is connected. Once you start to make connections, a new business model emerges, a new competitive game can be played – and many unsustainable practices simply do not make economic sense anymore.

When we put systems thinking into practice then we realize that entrepreneurs, regional development authorities, and industries are likely to see a whole new type of innovation: innovation of products, innovation of processes and … innovations of systems.

To read the complete article by Gunter Pauli, click here.

Gunter Pauli is head of the ZERI Foundation and a teacher on this course. He will be joined by other creative thinkers and doers including Don Beck, John Wood and Rob Hopkins.

Photograph: Daniel Thistlethwaite

Also now available on our site, full details for the following courses

Earth Jurisprudence: Making the law work for nature
September 22 – 26, 2008 | Cormac Cullinan, Mellese Damtie, Ng’ang’a Thiong’o, Ian Mason, Elizabeth Rivers

Sustainability and Leadership: The personal challenge
October 14 – 17, 2008| Richard Olivier

Biomimicry: New directions in sustainable design
October 20 – 24, 2008 | Michael Pawlyn, Julian Vincent, Neil Thomas, Graham Dodd

Sustainability and Leadership: The organisational challenge
October 27 – 31, 2008 | Allan Jones, Gaynor Coley, Nick Robins, Paul Dickinson

Roots of Learning: Educating the whole person
November 3 – 7, 2008 | Jack Miller

Real Food, Slow Food: Championing sustainable food
November 17 – 21, 2008 | Andrew Whitley, Carlo Petrini

Ethical Pioneers: an interactive masterclass for the new entrepreneur
November 24 – December 5, 2008 | Including Chris Nichols, Karen Blincoe, Galahad JD Clark

Walking with the Earth Pilgrim
June 15 – 19, 2009 | Satish Kumar

Schumacher Certificate in Education

MSc in Holistic Science

For the full Schumacher College short course programme please click here.

Summer deal: 15% off many of our Short Course fees. Applies for bookings made until 20 July 2008 only. Click here for booking details.

Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.