You've never really dined until you've dined next to a stripper pole.

Superstar designer Tom Dixon--whom we've covered frequently before--recently finished his newest interiors project, for a new restaurant in London called Circus.

Obviously, restaurants with a circus theme have been done over and over ago--there was the original Le Cirque, with monkey-drawings everywhere. And Aureole, in Las Vegas, features trapeze performers that fetch your wine. But where Le Cirque and Aureole are pure kitsch, Circus aims more for trust-fund cool-kids that wear Helmut Lang.

The building itself used to be housing for the animals performing for the Royal Opera House--a fact that Dixon and the Seven Dials restaurant group have used to inspire the design. Only this time, the performers are human: The wait staff does double duty, performing in cabaret acts.

Ergo, you'll notice the "Circus" theme referenced in the harlequin pattern on the wall below. And also the stairs attached to the long dining table, so that it can quickly become a stage:

Meanwhile, the lounge actually has a stripper pole:

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Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when trying to find responsible, ecological solutions: If we're trying to do it, chances are, nature already did it better.

Biomimicry is quickly becoming a cornerstone of sustainable design (read our story on biomimicry from 2008), but for designers who want to incorporate biomimicry into their work, many don't know where to start. Some famous biomimetic solutions have gotten passed around the mainstream press--including examples like self-cleaning surfaces modeled on lotus flowers, or the sticky repositionable tape inspired by gecko feet--but biomimicry isn't as easy as using nature as a crib sheet. "One of the big realizations that designers have when they play with biomimicry is that it's not a tool, it's a mindset shift," says Dayna Baumeister, who co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Benyus in 1998. "Because of that--because of the fundamentally different way of thinking--it's hard."

Biomimicry expert Janine Benyus' 2005 TED talk

Even for biologists, it requires a shift in thinking, says Baumeister, from learning about nature to learning from nature, including how each of those processes fit within a larger ecosystem. In a way, it's examining nature's solutions for survival, but through a design lens, says Chris Allen, project manager for AskNature.org. "You can look at brilliant engineering and strategies for living over thousands of years."

A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGEThe Biomimicry Guild has worked alongside companies to help them achieve that shift in thinking, from a longstanging relationship with flooring and finishes company Interface, to a team currently on-site at an architectural project in India, where they're creating buildings that not only are made from natural materials, they actually behave like natural organisms. Currently there's a great deal of excitement bridging algorithms found in nature and information technology or "generative design," where we're able to extrapolate data from the way that nature goes through its iterative design process in evolution.

A rainforest strategy in need of a real-life application: The bill of toco toucan acts as a heat exchanger to regulate body temperature by adjusting blood flow

And, using biomimetic principles, we've also been able to learn more about our own species: The Biomimicry Guild is starting conversations with global companies that manufacturer things like cosmetics--in which case their own in-house scientiststs have been studying hair and skin for decades.

Because biomimicry experts believe that designers play an integral role in making sustainable, nature-inspired decisions in a project, they believe that's where their influence is best appropriated. A biologist working in biomimetic design is known as a Biologist at the Design Table, or, in a biomimetic-appropriate acronym: a BaDT. There are currently very few BaDTs--only about 75 worldwide--since they have to undergo extensive training. But eventually, the goal is to have a BaDT in every design firm who can help guide the designers towards smarter, more nature-influenced solutions--and that's where we come in.

A lightweight chair design inspired by spiderWebs, by Linda Dong as part of the Student Design Sketch Challenge

A REAL-WORLD BIOMIMICRY CHARRETTETo start a larger conversation between biologists, designers and businesses, we thought we could help by seating at least three BaDTs at three design tables of Designers Accord adopters across North America. We've tapped teams from three firms: Smart Design, New York; IDEO, Chicago and Boston; and Taller de Operaciones Ambientales, Mexico City. Each team will be paired with a Biomimicry Guild BaDT who will lead them through a two-day biomimicry design workshop as they work to solve a business problem, documenting their processes and reporting back to us in a little over a month with their bio-inspired solutions and how they got there.

Now all we need to complete the puzzle is your company's challenge! Do you have a real-life design problem that you just haven't been able to crack? Do you have a system, material, structure, process in your business that's seriously in need of innovation? Explain your problem as clearly as possible in the form below, including what limitations have prevented you from being able to achieve your goals in the past. If we think your challenge is a good match for one of the firms, we'll contact you for more information. Your company could be featured on FastCompany.com as "clients" for one of three biomimetic challenges, and receive a solution for your problem--courtesy of nature, of course.

If you have any questions, feel free to add them in the comments, and be sure to submit your challenge by 11:59pm PST, March 17, 2010. We'll see you back here in a little over a week with an update.

SUBMIT YOUR DESIGN CHALLENGE

If you have a design and sustainability story to share, let us know about it! Check out the brand new Designers Accord Web site. And follow us on Twitter @designersaccord to hear what the Designers Accord community is thinking about.

Browse more Designers Accord Case Studies

Media companies worldwide are struggling with ad sales and budgets, desperately trying new business models like online pay walls to scrape by. But what if they moved into selling something other than journalism -- like, say, music?

Enter China's KKBox, which takes the unique approach of working as a streaming music service that happens to give away music journalism as a bonus. It sort of flips the Spotify model on its head, too. The music streaming isn't free. Users pay about $4.50 a month to access to a huge, Spotify-style library of the latest songs, available on the computer and mobile devices like the iPhone and Android phones. As a bonus, they get an online music and entertainment magazine.

KKBox has its own editorial staff of 30 or so editors, interviews Chinese pop stars, has columnists, hosts its own awards show and so on. Embedded in artist profiles and other places throughout the site is music, which listeners can preview a la Amazon's MP3 store or the iTunes preview feature or, presumably, go find and stream from KKBox's catalog if they're paid subscribers.

In other words, they come for the music, stay for the music coverage, says Stanford-educated founder Chris Lin. He says the site has about 200,000 paid subscribers but 6 million non-paying visitors. "They're here because this is a fun music destination. We've grown into a very popular media outlet" outside of selling music, Lin says.KKBox is the largest digital music service in China--and it's profitable. Lin says there's no magic secret to profitability, just common sense. "Per-stream royalty costs is what's going to suck you dry. You're giving your best service out for free, then asking people to pay later. That's awkward. If you can get all the music for free with ads, the willingness to pay for it is not very high."Right now the service is mainly focused on Hong Kong and Taiwan, but later this year, KKBox plans to roll out a North American version, targeted at the 8 million ethnic Chinese living here. "They are hungry for information about artists and entertainment news from home," says Lin. "We want to be a sort of entertainment Chinatown for them." Lin expects the North American service to run a little more expensive than its Eastern brother, but says the price will definitely be less than $10 a month, depending on negotiations with the labels in Taiwan.After the North American rollout, Lin wants to move the company's efforts to greater China starting in 2011, when 3G is more widely spread. "Smartphones and 3G have helped us in converting visitors to paid users," he says.

It's practically impossible to say anything bad about online retailer Zappos. They've got a sparkling customer service record, quirky corporate culture, let's not forget that $847 million check from Amazon, and now--for a company that probably doesn't even have to advertise--some of the funniest ads on TV.

Boston-based ad agency Mullen took a page from another genre of phone call-inspired hilarity, the Comedy Central show Crank Yankers, created by Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel. They used real audio from actual customer service calls, and enlisted puppeteer Randy Carfagno to create a cast of plush characters cheekily called the "Zappets." The director is Aaron Duffy, who you'll remember from that awwwwww-inducing Super Bowl spot for Google. More spots are on the way.

[@Zappos]

Wondering how that barista knew your name before asking you? Check-in-based social networking game Foursquare has taken another step toward relevancy by adding analytics tools for businesses that participate. The new dashboard feature, still in alpha testing, gives data such as total number of check-ins, unique visitors, gender comparisons, and breakdowns by time. It also shows how people are sharing (over Twitter, for instance) and can differentiate between customers and staff members.

And this is just the beginning, according to the company. Tristan Walker, director of Foursquare business development, tells Mashable that big innovations like weather tracking could allows business owners to offer specials based on real-time events. Imagine "It's snowing, so come into Joe's for a free small coffee with purchase!" popping up on your iPhone when you're outside freezing and just a block or two away. Hello Joe.

A new staff page feature also allows venue staffers to see who is currently visiting and communicate with customers. Notice a regular hasn't been in your store in a while? Tweet them about a cool new shirt that just came in to entice them back.

The data available is great for small, local businesses, and will allow them to engage with customers in an ultra-targeted way. But imagine, too, when it's scaled up to the Walmarts and McDonalds of the world. Voluntary real-time tracking of this nature is unprecedented. (Foursquare users will have the ability to opt out of business analytics, but isn't sharing sort of the point in the first place?)

The dashboard has been in testing with 30 businesses and venues for the last week and will soon be rolled out to the other 900+ businesses that currently run coupon specials on the app. But with priceless data like this, it's easy to imagine a blow-up in participating venues coming soon. More businesses means more users, more users means more businesses, and suddenly Foursquare is the Facebook of check-ins.

[Via NYTimes' Bits Blog]