The poem “Jerusalem” by William Blake was mentioned in one of our lecture talking about the Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships. Industrial Revolution had given many different opportunities for people and had improved their living qualities but it is also undeniable that at the same time, it had great effect on our environment. Human population growth tied together with the increase use of natural resources, energy, land for growing food and for living, and most importantly waste by-products that cause pollutions. The exponential population growth led to the exponential requirements for resources, energy, food, housing and lands, as well as the exponential increase in waste by-products. As the population grow, the need of natural resources increase but the amount of natural resources does not increase as fast as the population causing greater need. This is an issue began when Industrial Revolution started but continued until today.
Due to the realization of the limited resources, many designers use nature as their inspiration and some may even use waste by-products as their materials. In one of our readings, “Nineteenth-Century Design” by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., it is said that many experts believe that knowledge of nature was the best basis of design. Many designers are influenced by this idea and they were spilt into two groups; “some wanted to copy natural forms as the most perfect ones, a variant academic ideal; others wanted to analyze natural forms to extract their principals of structure and relationship, an approach modeled on scientific inquiry” (p.59). The idea of using nature as a reference and material to design began during Industrial Revolution and had been continually used. Many designers nowadays have interest in developing the relationship between nature and design and also how to combine them together including interior design, fashion design, and many more. One of the example is Alexander McQueen(1969-2010), many of his collections were based on nature. He had many collections that were inspired and based on nature including flowers and animals. It was said that the reason he was so into nature is that nature is unpredictable, spontaneous, something that cannot be controlled and beautiful. Many designers nowadays use natural resources as a medium to their designs because as the world develops more and more, our nature has a greater chance of distinction. As to what Edgar said in his article, nature is the basis of design and by developing accordingly to nature, great designs are created.
Kaufmann, Edgar. “Ninetieth-Century Design”. Perspecta 6 The Yale Architectural Journal: 56-57.
