Biomimicry 2 - Biotope

May 2021 - September 2021

Team : Louis Richard Marschal, Samuel Lefebvre & Thibault des Rochettes

Exhibition at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Nantes during Nantes Digital Week

Product Design

Interaction Design

Sustainability

Project Overview

The Biotope devices, directly installed on concrete walls, are self-sufficient ecosystems for wild urban greening.
They're built for keeping humidity, offering hanging points and ideal sunshine for allowing life to emerge.

My Role

As an interaction design student, my role in the team was to build an app for the public to know how the device works.

Brief

Biomimicry project was initiated by Nantes Metropole and the Museum of Nantes.
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The aim was to educate and raise awareness of overgrown vegetation at L'île de Nantes, a former industrial district. At first glance, the nature is quite poor because of urbanization.
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As a small team of industrial and interaction designers, our role was to shed a light on this nature. The solution must take inspiration from nature and was exhibited during Nantes Digital Week in the Muséum of Nantes.

"Biomimicry is a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges—and find hope". (Biomimicry Institute)

Research

Interviews with biodiversity experts
Field observations
Highlighting the vegetation of the concrete slipways on the island of Nantes

Goals

After several iterations, we worked on highlighting nature and building a device as low-tech as possible.
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The concept was to create a natural habitat to help nature thrive.

As our role was to facilitate and educate the public to this overgrown vegetation, we worked on a solution that involved human interaction in a non-invasive way.

My teammate Louis Richard Marschal worked on a push-turn button mechanism, bio-inspired by coral reefs.

Solution

The final concept is "Biotope", a vertical ecosystem attached on urban concrete walls.

"biotope (noun) : a region uniform in environmental conditions and in its populations of animals and plants for which it is the habitat". (Merriam-Webster)

Push and turn mechanism
By turning the device, the vegetation can get sun exposure. In fact, plants thrive with between 3 and 6 hours of direct sun per day.

To explain to the public the operation of the device, we designed a mobile application integrating augmented reality.

As a virtual instructions manual, users can scan a QR code leading to a web-app.

In this app, the public can learn more about the device and its operating system.

Biomimicry exhibition at the Muséum during Nantes Digital Week 2021

The Biotope ecosystem is designed to be usable for as many people as possible.

Biomimicry 2 - Biotope

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