DesignLens: Life's Principles - Biomimicry 3.8

“Life runs on sunlight. Life rewards cooperation. Life builds from the bottom up. Life banks on diversity. Life recycles everything. Life builds resilience through diversity, decentralization, and redundancy. Life optimizes rather than maximizes. Life selects for the good of the whole system. In short, life creates the conditions conducive to life.... See more

As Fritjof Capra says: a machine can be controlled, a living system can only be disturbed. At best, we will find ways of carefully nudging a living system. According to Donella Meadows, we must find its leverage points, those pivots that allow us to influence system behavior. Most importantly: after each cautious inter- vention, we must patiently o... See more

Taking on a holistic approach to design and systems’ thinking can help us understand how different elements relate to each other — and helps us remember that the world is an interconnected web. Everything we design is part of a whole that has a wider social and ecological impact.