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Design & Nature Reimagined: Evolution in Industrial Design
Published 15 days ago • 2 min read
ISSUE #53
DESIGN & NATURE REIMAGINED
MARISA MORBY
I was listening to a podcast with Denny Royal on biomimicry and heard about an industrial design method called the "Soft Kill Option". It's actually a method that's been used for decades, but not something that I'd ever heard about, so I decided to do a bit of a dive and learn more.
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design, nature, reimagine
In industrial design an option called the soft kill option method exists to optimize the structure of design. Bones remove material where it's not needed so that they're as light as possible while still being able to hold weight. The image below shows the spongy bone layer, which is where unnecessary material has been removed, but the strength of the bone remains intact.
The best explanation I could find into why it was named "soft kill option" was because voids are replaced with a weak material instead of being removed completely. This structure can lead to a lighter, stiffer, and more sustainable product. I personally prefer the term Evolutionary Structural Optimization.
There's also ESO furniture by Joris Laarman, which is a really beautiful combination of taking inspiration from nature and reimagining it into a beautiful design. I think Evolutionary Structural Optimization is a perfect example of how we can learn from nature to improve our own built objects, and you can see a few of them below!
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