Martin Kemp, draws on the column that he has been writing in the journal Nature for five years, to present an overview of how artists and scientists have, knowingly and inadvertently, shared intuitions about natural design. Creative artists, architects, engineers, designers, and scientists have all looked at nature with intuitions about underlying patterns of organisation. A range of artists in various media feature, as well as architects and engineers including Antoni Gaudi, Buckminster Fuller, Cecil Balmond, and Toyo Ito.

Martin Kemp was trained in natural sciences and art history. He was a Wolfson Research Professor at the British Academy (1993-8) and is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. His contributions to Nature are published in book form as Visualizations: The ‘Nature’ Book of Science and Art (2000). He was co-curator of Spectacular Bodies: the Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now, a major exhibition at the Hayward Gallery London (2000-01).

Martin Kemp was a CCA Mellon Senior Fellow in 2004.