In the natural world, when something is introduced to an environment, it becomes an integral part; it provides for the overall system as opposed to adding waste and taking from it without giving back. Implementing biomimetic solutions into a project makes it work with, instead of against the overall system. Designers Mike Knowlton and Stephen Cornelius from MDKD Studio had a goal which was to create a sustainable system to access, manage, and distribute water in urban areas around the world with high density and a lack of open spaces. Utilizing the spaces between large scale urban projects, they created an integrated system that acts to access, store, and distribute water and energy. In this case, they focused their first analysis for the city of San Diego’s water usage and collection management.
Being that 80% of San Diego’s water supply is imported from northern California, it was crucial to implement a system to collect water runoff and distribute water back to its urban environment. Making this water purification and structural tree system into pre-fabricated modular units allows for efficient global implementation. After being adapted to its local setting, the system begins to remove waste and runoff from the surrounding environment; it then uses the waste and runoff to give back to the local community in the form of urban agricultural distribution, water recirculation, and community involvement. The system mimics the closed-loop sustainable model of a natural ecosystem and introduces that model into an urban environment.

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