Wild Design: Nature’s Architects

Ridley (The Secret Pool) offers an elegant if abbreviated tribute to nature as “the original architect and designer” that “has been churning out stunning forms, structures, and materials for billions of years through evolution and the tremendous forces of Earth.” Urging a breaking away from modern “hyperwired lives,” Ridley equates isolation from the natural world with feelings of despair. Connection with it, on the other hand, offers perspective and a sense of wonder, she argues. Highlighted specimens include minerals and rocks; “elegant, durable, and mysterious” shells and reefs; fungi (the “demolition crews” of the forest); birds’ nests (“works of both beauty and functionality”); beavers’ dams; and prairie dogs’ tunnels, in which the creatures “contend with many of the same challenges facing human landscape architects, such as managing water and creating sustainable communities.” Ridley offers scientific explanations of the forms and creatures as she encourages stewardship and conservation of what she calls a “living library, a repository of knowledge that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years.” While beautifully written and illustrated, it’s a dip, rather than a deep dive, into the subject. Design aficionados, though, will be in heaven. (Nov.)