This is the Sonoran desert Arizona State University Associate professor
Prasad Baraka is taking us on a nature walk at South Mountain in phoenix,
a location that is not only a hot spot for people who like to walk and
hike, It's a place where all kinds of plants and reptiles call home.
What's interesting about the Sonoran desert Is that it also has a
significant amount of biodiversity. For instance, it has more than 2000
species of plants. There are some incredible adaptations that the Saguaro
has done to deal with this sort of arid climate. There are these pleats,
accordion type pleats into in the Saguaro that serves two key functions.
One is that the pleating opens up when it rains to allow the water to soak
up more water. The pleats also, if you look at, it also provides some
shade from the spines, protecting the Saguaro against predators to be in a
home for owls. Some students in the Innovation space Program at S. You are
coming up with product ideas just by understanding how plants and animals
survive In their environment. Baraka is the director. We think that nature
has been solving problems that has been dealing with environmental issues
for 3.8 billion years through evolution. And so we think that if we look
at the way nature has been solving problems, there's a lot we can learn
the students are learning by using bio mimicry or biomimicry is
essentially emulating nature's problem solving processes to apply to human
problems. What we do in this program is we bring together students from
Design business and engineering and have them work in teams over the
period of one year to develop new products. Adele hide fisher is one of
many faculty members working with the students. We try to ask them to um
look at what it is they're doing and look at what a waste that they are
creating and how that waste can be treated as a resource rather than a
liability curtain. Products include improving urban life to designing a
new cushion for those in wheelchairs. Termites are known for creating
their mounds and in those mounds they're able to maintain a flow of air.
So we're trying to learn from their ventilation systems and apply to the
cushion so that we can create a cushion that normally release pressure
sores, but also allows some breathability ideas that not only come out of
researching desert organisms but also by studying the behavior of human
beings and much more. So we are teaching students to think of this form of
multi functional design. So can you have something in your design that
doesn't just solve one function but solves tofunction