Based on an actual project, this studio explored issues of designing a distribution prototype for a new start-up energy company, Heartland Fuel. Heartland seeks to become the leading retail brand of renewable fuel in America and will launch in late 2007. At the heart of the Heartland's venture is a vision to completely reinvent and redefine the industry. The goal of this research-driven studio was to design a prototypical Heartland fuel station, taking into consideration three main components of investigation: sustainability, corporate branding, and prototyping technologies.

Even more than the automobile, the built environment has been a significant contributor to the degradation of the environment and natural resources. As the physical embodiment of a company that seeks to evoke and profit from the public's shift to a more conscious regard for their environment, naturally, issues of green design need to be incorporated into the station. One of the major objectives of the studio was to really understand, question and form an opinion about the integration of such principles. It is not only the point to question the principles of sustainability but more important to ask what role they will play in design as a willful creative process.

Sustainability is proving to be a successful marketing term, but it does not automatically equivocate good design. Although green architecture immediately conjures up radical 60's projects with applied solar panels and crudely recycled materials, the project demands a much more sophisticated, elegant and integrated translation of sustainability. In particular, students looked closely at the enormous realm of possibilities within the biomimetic approach.

Biomimicry analyzes the way nature designs and deploys these lessons to design applications.