Form and Nature

Ramana Das

2nd year Industrial Design student

National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.- Albert Einstein

In this course, we understood and came to know the diversity of the mother nature. We studied how the forms and the nature is connected even before we humans started to acknowledge it, we studied and observed both the actions and stillness of the nature and the ways she communicates with us and how we are connected to her in so many ways. Stating that nature is the ultimate source of inspiration and energy we started the beautiful process of understanding form and nature through this course.

The task we got was to select one creature from nature and to study the form and everything throughout the upcoming four weeks.

Surfing through the internet and various books and encyclopedias, I stumbled upon the creature “bull” which was also both environmentally and spiritually connected with me.

It started with the primary research of the bull, and went up to researching about it’s lifecycle, living habitats, eating habits, anatomy and different postures.

clay sculpture of bull

During the primary and secondary research I got to know the different species of the bull found around the world, so here I narrowed down my research with one particular specie of the bull community which is “Toro Bravo Bull”.

Sketches of Toro Bravo Bull

Sculpture of Toro Bravo Bull

The next phase was the abstraction of the chosen creature, i.e., Toro Bravo Bull. With eliminating the features and details I tried to get the essence of the bull.

2d abstraction.

3d abstraction.

After going through these abstractions, I listed few attributes that I think will contribute the form of the bull:

1. Outrageous
2. Masculine
3. Dominant
4. Sturdy
5. Dynamic
6. Brave
7. Aggressive
8. Sharp
9. Movement
10. Divine
11. Power
12. Stubborn
13. Rage
14. Spiritual

The next phase was to find the abstraction of the bull in the existing products, directly or indirectly. It was really a fascinating task to find the ‘bull’ element in the products around, I looked into artworks, sculptures, packaging, spirituality including Yoga and many more.

Moving further, I tried to break my concepts into more smaller attributes, which in result will make the understanding of the concept much easier.

I chose the concept of attack because of the form and behavior of the Toro Bravo bull.

The attributes of my concept attack are as follows:

1. Sharp
2. Charge
3. Thrust
4. Power
5. Rush
6. Motion
7. Energy
8. Aggression

mood board for ‘attack’.

After this I worked more upon my concept and it’s attributes, where I tried to explore and ideate the abstract forms with the concept of attack embedded in it.

3d forms based on the concept “attack”

In the semi final phase, with the pool of the research and explorations done so far, I did the affinity mapping of the above, and stated the form-function connect.

affinity mapping

And, in the final phase, our job was to create a product from the pool of research and explorations.

final product