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DESIGN AT LARGE

Clark Kellogg — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:50:06 +0000

THE “S” WORD

July 23, 2009 by Clark Kellogg

It’s hard to find a person who is against sustainability. I can think of only two people I know. Sustainability is in the same league as Motherhood and Apple Pie. But in most conversations, sustainability’s approval rating nosedives somewhere between 14 and 31 seconds later. That’s usually the time when the gauzy notion of sustainability inevitably gives way to defining what it is (30 point drop in approval rating) or doing something about it (free fall).

What’s going on here? For one, humans are good at using our big brains to know a lot. But it doesn’t always translate into doing a lot. Second, we are on sustainability overwhelm. Staying current is like drinking from a fire hose – everyday. And that’s hard to swallow. Third, amid this explosive growth in knowledge and information the very meaning of sustainability has been diluted to the point of meaning just about anything, and thus meaning nothing.

We all support motherhood, apple pie and sustainability. We know what the first two mean and we know how to create them. Not so for sustainability. Even the Brundtland Commission’s definition – development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – is difficult to apply to the here-and-now of one’s own life. Paper or plastic?

Without an explicit shared agreement about the meaning of sustainability even the well-informed and well meaning among us cannot make much progress. Indeed, this lack of clarity enables avoiding the most neglected problem in sustainable design today: time. There are many projections about when catastrophic environmental events will take place (GHG, ice shelf melting, sea-level rise, water wars). It’s hard to know how accurate they are and it doesn’t matter. The plain fact is that we don’t have time to wait and find out if the projections are correct. What matters is taking smart bold steps now because here’s what we do know: the longer it takes to start meaningful healing of the earth, the less likely we are to have a viable future. In short, we don’t have time to waste.

Is there any hope? Yes, and its not false hope. Design – and design thinking – as a set of solution-seeking tools is spreading to every corner of the world. Indeed, we are all designers now and optimism is an onboard skill of designers (sustainable or otherwise). More importantly, healing the earth is igniting the largest movement of human energy in the history of the planet. It is a movement without precedent; amorphous, unorganized, instinctive, and blessedly uncontrollable. Literally billions of people are on the job. It is already the single largest public works project ever.

If we can get as good at making sustainability as we are at making motherhood and making apple pie we just could be very happy, be well-fed and live long, balanced lives. Cloth or disposable?

THINK LIKE A DESIGNER

June 13, 2009 by Clark Kellogg

“Everywhere you look today, Design has taken on new meaning. Design isn’t just about decoration; it’s a critical component of how we communicate, collaborate and compete. But behind the “look and feel” of any good design are a host of carefully conceived principles; fundamental propositions that define the essence of the design. The trick is to learn those underlying rules–to think like designers.”

- “Design Rules,” Fast Co. Mag, October, 1999

Two things about this quote stand out. First, it recognizes design as a

useful process beyond object-making. And, it was published ten years ago. It was also ten years ago that I started teaching a course at UC Berkeley’s architecture school called, “Beyond Buildings; New Sites for Designers.” The purpose was to help students understand what habits of mind they come to know (often tacitly) through the design studio sequence of classes. Then, we looked at how those skills can be used to make things other than buildings. Over time, that work has boiled down to a list of qualities – or habits of mind – that one could arguably title “How to Think Like a Designer.”

It would be foolhardy to claim this list is absolute or even complete. It has started many conversations and some debates. We are reproducing it here in that spirit. For now, here is the whole list. Your comments and insights are welcome.

Design Thinking: Clark Kellogg’s Ten Habits of Mind:

1. Focused Creativity

2. Generous Collaboration

3. Drawing and Thinking in Pictures

4. Comfort with Ambiguity

5. Non-linear Information Processing

6. Multiple Solutions

7. Learning by Doing

8. Communicate for Understanding

9. Charrette Culture: Shaped by constraints and bounded by time

10. Curiosity is better than Judgment

Clark Kellogg, Partner, Collective Invention

From his perspective as a consultant, architect and graphic designer, Clark holds forth on Design At Large in the D/Views Blog. Clark Kellogg is a designer and partner at Collective Invention, found HERE

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Tad Toulis — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:08:18 +0000

Poundbury – an essay in how not to design a new town

Poundbury is Prince Charles’ ‘exemplar’ urban environment, built on the edge of Dorset’s county town, Dorchester – in the UK. It is held up in some planning and design circles as a template for how we should design future towns, and in other circles it is ridiculed. As some of our contacts have been discussing it online in the last few days, I thought it would be appropriate to publish my perspective, in the form of a re-worked extract from my 2008 Royal College of Art Thesis – “The future of the car in the city”. The short essay follows:

Above: Pounbury streetscape – as seen from the green

Introduction

“It resembled an ancient relative to whom one was very close as a child, but who lacked any understanding of the adult whom circumstances had in the interim formed, whether for better or worse.”

Alain De Botton’s withering description of Poundbury village – a recent extension to the town of Dorchester in Dorset, is typical of those made by both mainstream and architectural media following the opening of Prince Charles’s ‘model’ town.

For many it is purely the architectural form that proves to be Poundbury’s undoing, but the most interesting aspect of this place – and what makes it a worthwhile study, is its urban design principles and attitude towards the car – both in terms of the theories and ideologies its designers used, and in the physical manifestation of the place itself.

Background and history

Poundbury exists today primarily thanks to HRH Prince Charles – the Duchy of Cornwall. His views on architecture, and how in turn the architecture profession has received this, can be read elsewhere. What specifically interested me was that Poundbury’s “…entire masterplan was based upon placing the pedestrian, and not the car, at the centre of the design.” To understand the relevance of Poundbury when considering the relationship between urban environments and the car, it is necessary though, not to focus on Poundbury’s visionary Prince Charles, but Leon Krier – Charles’s masterplanner, and New Urbanist.

Krier’s book – ‘Architecture: choice or fate?’ – sets out the principles that form the basis of New Urbanist theory which he employs at Poundbury. Not a fan of large, modern, metropolitan cities – he argues that they develop in problematic ways – nor Suburban sprawl, Krier instead suggests a model of ‘the city within the city’. These are smaller urban villages, situated close to one another, yet that don’t physically connect. The intention is to “re-establish a precise dialectic between city and countryside.”

Poundbury embodies these ideals, situated approximately two kilometers from the heart of Dorchester town centre. In between the two is a less dense, greener, urban ‘strip’. The place is split into four quarters, being built in phases (currently only phases one and two have been completed). Each quarter comprises it’s own mini-centre – a square intended as a focal point, for people, rather than cars.

Above: Pounbury schematic layout in relation to Dorchester, as I see it

Experience

Yet visiting Poundbury and observing how people actually live there, reveals deep flaws in Krier and Charles’ model. Poundbury feels like a village that has not yet been through the industrial revolution – yet (paradoxically) it feels dominated by the car. The central squares are not ‘people’ places – they are car parks. The streets around them are deserted of both people and vehicles. Ultimately, you discover the cars have been shoved out of the way, into back alley muses containing nothing but garages, eating up acres of space. The result is that both streets and courtyards are devoid of life and feel soulless.

Walking through Poundbury is analogous to Jim Carey’s chatacter in the Truman show. Life feels somewhat fake. In part, this is unsurprising – The Truman show was based on and filmed in Seaside, Florida which was designed by the ‘fathers’ of New Urbanism – Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and a place which Krier speaks about enthusiastically in his book.

Ultimately, despite being planned as “…a high-density urban quarter of Dorchester which gives priority to people, rather than cars, and where commercial buildings are mixed with residential areas, shops and leisure facilities to create a walkable community”, Poundbury’s fails in three key areas, expanded upon below:

• Services

Richard Rogers argues that for a place to be truly ‘walkable’ one needs the ability to work, live, play, (by inference meet people, eat, shop, entertain and be entertained) within the same (1 mile or so?) area. Although Poundbury was developed as a mixed-use community, as one might expect, many of the people who live there do not work here, and vice-versa. Likewise, the keystone services and amenities taken for granted in cities and towns – the supermarket, cafes, bars, a cinema, restaurants, educational and academic institutions, gyms, theatres, a take-away, a library or bookshop – simply do not exist in Poundbury. Poundbury has a high end hi-fi store, three wedding and bridal shops, and a ‘Budgens’ mini-mart shop masquerading as “Poundbury Village Stores”. Bluntly, being denied the amenities modern people and modern life require, strangulates Poundbury.

• Accessibility

If the designers had truly wanted the residents of Poundbury to use their cars less, then would it not have been more pertinent to explore and create better links, pathways and services between two of the places which Poundbury residents might most frequently be predicted to need access – Dorchester and the nearby Tesco’s supermarket? The supermarket sits only 1.4 km away as the crow flies (fig.26), but there is no path, no route for pedestrians, or other vehicles – so almost everyone drives there, as the supermarket is just around the ring road. Dorchester itself is 1.6 km from Poundbury’s central square. These distances (around 1 mile), equate to around 20 minutes walking time – too great a distance and time to prevent time-pressed people from using their cars. Alternatives options to jumping in the car are needed, and they are notable by their absence.

Above: an annotated aerial view of Poundbury with key landmarks and POIs in Dorchester marked

• Parking and streetscape

This area is the one Poundbury comes closest to getting right. However, some short-sighted ideas, and odd implementation, create issues. Krier is right for suggesting, “The speed of vehicles should be controlled not by signs and technical gadgets (humps, traffic islands, crash barriers, traffic lights, etc.) but by civic and urban character of streets that is created by their geometric configuration, their profile, paving, planting, lighting, street furniture, and architecture.”

Yet somewhere between drawing board and physicality, things have gone wrong. Poundbury does feature narrow, winding streets with ‘dropped kerbs’ that seem to discourage cars drivers from traveling particularly quickly. At the same time however, its lack of real hierarchy and distinction in building types – and the apparent desire to completely remove street signage, or implement any technology – means that the place does, to use his words about certain other places “demonstrate [its] unique capacity to disorientate, confuse…” Poundbury isn’t readable; it isn’t legible to an outsider.

Parking is worse still. The overarching desire to maintain ‘order’ – for everything, including the car – and to be neat and tidy, seems to have created issues when it comes to dealing with where to put stationary vehicles, and how much space they are allowed. Vast parking mews at the rear of houses tends to keep vehicles off the main road, but the benefit of this is questionable. The garage mews take up enormous space in the areas behind houses, occupying huge tracts of land that in ‘real’ cities simply isn’t there. Squares and courtyards have no focus, no life, and where there is some focus like a shop, simply become car parks.

Above: one of the many garage mews, which take up acerages of space in Poundbury

If the intention was to put pedestrians (or even cyclists and other small vehicles) first, Poundbury might have looked at employing the incredibly successful ‘Woonerf’ system seen in Holland – which limit the space for cars on residential streets – and makes the street-spaces vibrant, safe environments in which children can – and do – play. Might it not have been better to move the cars out to two, maybe three main ‘areas’ on the edge of the development? But then this would raise the prospect of creating multi-story car parks, which Krier criticizes for little good reason, but at great length, in what he has written.

Conclusion

Poundbury is an interesting example of an attempt to build a new development in the early twenty-first century. Objectively, its failure is not down to the plain-to-see distaste for modern, nee modernist architecture which its facades embody, and for which it is most commonly criticised. Instead it is the failure to provide any vision or any excitement, about how the future of urban environments might be, and how people and vehicles might move around and share space, that disappoints most. Worryingly, for a place that is intended as a counterpoint to sprawl and overcoming car dependency, Poundbury provides little in the way of a blueprint for how things could be done.

It is also a lesson in why not to look at mobility as only being about cars, and why a creeping agenda of discouraging or limiting movement and mobility could be dangerous. Should others try to ape Poundbury’s developers, they too risk becoming preoccupied with trying to create well meaning solutions that don’t take into account the needs and desires of modern lives. One hope that if future developments try to counteract the car and its impact, they don’t forget about other forms of private mobility, which can complement or repurpose traditional cars. Sadly, for all the anti-car bluster, there is not a hint of a cycle lane, a bike park, a PRT system, a car-share scheme or a Segway to be found here.

An opportunity has been missed here, because of a refusal to embrace and experiment with new ideas, technologies, and products. This place could, and should have been an exemplar or a test bed in how we might live and move in the future. Instead, what best encapsulates the failures of Poundbury is this: its inhabitants appear condemned to a life on Dorchester’s ringroad, traveling to a big-box Tesco’s store, built on a greenfield site, in a car that weighs twenty times their weight, and typically has three empty seats.

One can only hope that those tasked with helping shape future towns and cities – both in the UK and abroad – who are now bussed to this place to ‘learn’ from it as some kind of example, recognise its failures and don’t condemn the inhabitants of their future towns to the same fate.

Published by Joseph Simpson on 17th February 2010

Some notes and information on this piece:

This piece is an adaptation from part of Joseph Simpson’s Thesis “The future of the car in the city” – Royal College of Art, June 2008. A full set of references for this piece are available on request, but are not included here in our usual hyperlink fashion as they mainly refer to offline sources.

The piece is not creative commons licensed in the way our usual pieces are, as it is subject to some copy right from The Royal College of Art. Please contact me if you would like to use or reference it so that I can grant permission. A copy of the original piece in pdf format is available on request.

Joseph Simpson visited Poundbury in October 2007

Blog courtesy of RE*MOVE http://movementbureau.blogs.com/projects/

February 17, 2010 in architecture, Cities, Design, Leon Krier, Observations, Parking, Poundbury, Prince Charles, Sustainability, urban design | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

FREE: The Web as Big Box Retailer

July 15 by Tad Toulis

A few days ago I stumbled across an interesting pair of companion pieces: Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker review of FREE and Chris Anderson’s response to that review – Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened? Read back to back, the two pieces make for an interesting, if disjointed, debate.

Anderson has shrewdly tapped into (and consequently helped frame) an emerging and controversial debate over the future of business. Taking a page from Stewart Brand’s “information wants to be free”, the core observation of Anderson’s book is that the triple threat of ever cheaper processing, unlimited storage and increased bandwidth conspire to drive web based business models toward a no-cost formula. It’s a sexy premise and one that’s clearly in evidence all over the web.

While I generally agree with the observations Anderson sets forth in FREE, I can’t help but find the premise worrisome. The present recession not withstanding, the information economy is in full swing all around us – and there are some troubling signs amidst its apparent success. The 24/7 media culture that started with the mainstreaming of cable television some twenty odd years ago has taken up full residence on the web. That’s hardly surprising given the role that cable providers had in helping to boost broadband subscriptions. With the proliferation of cheap ubiquitous internet access, the hucksterism many of us sought to steer clear of, by turning to the web, has increasingly become standard practice. Which raises a question very much at odds with FREE’s premise. What chance does ‘free’ on the web have of avoiding the ‘Buy one Get one Free’ culture that defines ‘free’ in big box culture?

Many, including Anderson himself, believe that the meritocracy of the web will somehow help it circumvent a noisy future full of digital penny-saver equivalents and cash back coupons – but I for one remain doubtful. Sure, the web has a great history of fighting to maintain its neutrality but those days fueled by an academic altruism are fast receding. The popularization of broadband brought about through bundled cable packages and device offerings like the iPhone, the PalmPre and $300 Netbooks have introduced more and more consumers to the possibilities of the web. This surge in demand has helped fuel the web’s meteoric growth and made much of it easier to use, but this same influx has meant that the web has necessarily had to change, becoming increasingly reflective of the world beyond it.

While much is made of the web’s ability to support a place for everyone and everything, recent events in China and Iran demonstrate that like all other broadcast media– the web can be manipulated and controlled. If that strikes you as paranoid think of it this way– control need not come from an organized nation-state, it can come from the passive censure of popularity and relativism. Within the fresh vision that FREE sets forth, resides a parochial soul: more stuff to more people for way less. That vision should inspire as it simultaneously cautions us. Given that the consumer in both the physical and digital world remains us, the dynamics that drive commerce are still dangerously subject to the same old same old: Business as Usual.

FEATURISM IS FAT–AND NOT THE GOOD KIND
Lessons on consumerism from the organic food movement
June 19, 2009 by Tad Toulis

A month or so ago I attended a conference in Portland, Oregon held by the APDF where I caught a presentation by Benjamin Linder from Franklin W. Olin’s College of Engineering. Among the slides in Linder’s lecture was one which re-imagined Michael Pollan’s bestseller In Defense of Food as “In Defense of Product”. This idea struck me so violently; I stood up, walked out of the auditorium, went directly to Powell’s and bought a copy.

For some time I, like so many in design, have been trying to conceive of the next ‘big’ model. Seeking to reconcile, often with mixed results, what it is I do for a living with the world I see taking shape around me. Equating product with food isn’t new, but when re-examined in the contemporary context, the corollaries between organic agriculture, low impact manufacturing and environmental sustainability become as numerous as they are thought provoking. What’s more, having achieved critical mass, the mechanics of the organic movement are finally mature enough to start informing other sectors of the economy.

The premise of Pollan’s book is summed up in his eater’s manifesto: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Central to his argument is the notion that nutritional marketing is a shell game devised to sell processed foods as the technical equivalent of their natural counterparts: whole foods. Pollan goes on to explain how longstanding scientific tampering with nutrients has left the North American diet chemically rich but nutritionally vacant. When seen through the product lens, the practice of adding nutritional value to industrial foods reveals itself as the produce equivalent of adding features and upgrades to poorly conceived product lines. It’s self-deluding tomfoolery: a myopic focus on capability over need that ultimately leads to systemic and environmental ruin.

Extending the metaphor, the strategies that Pollan describes for coping with industrial agriculture can be viewed as sketches for how we might re-imagine our relationship with mass production as a whole. Viewed in this light, the growing popularity of Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs), Cow-Pooling and the interest in Urban Farming become potential benchmarks for tomorrow’s production, distribution and revenue schemes. By artfully wedding long-standing components of small and mid sized production with hyper coordinated demand and delivery, these programs successfully and consistently deliver high quality produce in a schema that’s both efficient and sustainable.

Most provocative of all, food – cutting as elegantly as it does across issues of sustenance, commerce, and culture – has the capacity to affect societal change on a massive scale. Perhaps, motivated by the growing body of evidence implicating industrial agriculture in rising rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, consumers may yet surprise us all and demand the type of legislative change so sorely needed to bring about real change. Something, which the comparatively abstract issue of sustainability, has thus far failed to do.

I’ll leave it to you to imagine the full depth to which the food movement could invigorate design. But incase you find this whole conceit laughable consider this, in preparing this piece I debated a comparison between slow food and slow design only to find the concept already well established. So let me leave you with this my fellow traveler: Buy Stuff. Not too much. Mostly services.

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CHEZ SPARK

Constance Crump — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:06:57 +0000

Welcome to Chez Spark, where good design is reason for living.

NEW CENTURY FASHION
August 25, 2009
You have until September 26 to catch the superb work of an iconoclast in Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out at The Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT.) http://www.fitnyc.edu/aspx/Content.aspx?menu=FutureGlobal:Museum:Exhibitions
Known only to cognoscenti until Michelle Obama donned her lemongrass wool lace coat and dress ensemble for the Inauguration, Toledo is a mistress of draping and shaping. Her approach is architectural and sweeping, often using fabrics of her own design.

Cocoon Sleeve gown, taupe silk taffeta, spring/summer 1998
Photo by William Palmer, courtesy of the Museum at FIT, New York

The huge selection on display is a delight, reflecting Toledo’s wide-ranging interests. It’s obvious why she was chosen to receive the 2008 Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion. Her husband, Ruben, shares honors with his marvelous illustrations that help her realize her creations.

Hermaphrodite dress, circa 2005
Garnet silk taffeta
Photo by William Palmer, courtesy of the Museum at FIT, New York

Both clothing designs and illustrations feature in the terrific coffee-table book catalog that accompanies the show. It’s printed in Italy with all the quality that implies. (By Valerie Steele and Patricia Mears, Yale University Press, $60.)

FIT usually provides extensive web coverage of its exhibits and this one is no exception. http://www3.fitnyc.edu/museum/Isabel_toledo/
Although less familiar than the Metropolitan Museum’s fashion extravaganzas farther uptown, FIT shows are more focused and far easier to navigate.

Woodgrain dress and jacket, Spring/Summer 2008
Black and white silk moiré ikat
Photo by William Palmer, courtesy of the Museum at FIT, New York

Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of the museum and gallery at FIT. Her eye is impeccable and she’s given fashion fans many glorious reasons to visit FIT on Seventh Avenue at 27th Street in New York City. I’m still dreaming of the mysterious and gorgeously gloomy fashions that made up the Gothic: Dark Glamour show last year. http://www3.fitnyc.edu/museum/gothic/
Alexander McQueen forever!

DON’T LEAN OUT TOO FAR

July 20, 2009 By Constance Crump

It’s one thing to cruise around some murky Cancun lagoon in a glass-bottom boat. What about looking down through a glass floor to see the street 1,353 feet below? Ack!

The Ledge First Steps, Photo courtesy of Willis Tower

The Ledge at Skydeck in Chicago’s Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, offers the latest opportunity for a heartfelt ack! At least two more thrilling glass balconies are available in North America – at the Grand Canyon Skywalk and Toronto’s CN Tower.

Kicks just keep getting harder to find – and ever more expensive. These three viewing stations are blissfully affordable, unlike, say, Virgin Galactic’s sub-orbital space flights. Perhaps a $200,000 plane ride is OK for your tax bracket, but most people would have to give it some deep thought.

The Ledge across the Ledge, courtesy of Willis Tower

The Ledge is actually a series of retractable glass boxes that extend from the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower – both building and balconies were designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM.) Another thrill: the multi-media elevator ride is one of the fastest in the world. Check two boxes on the bucket list. These Skydeck thrills can be yours for only $14.95 for adults.

A few hundred miles northeast, in Toronto, the venerable CN Towerboasts that it’s the world’s tallest building and free-standing structure. Not at the top but plenty high up, a glass-floored balcony is 342 meters (1122 feet) above ground. Adult tickets are around $30 Cdn. YouTube has some scary, er, pertinent videos such as “CN Tower – The Glass Floor” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I0S9MFgQBc&NR=1.)

Grand Canyon Sky Bridge, courtesy of Grand Canyon Skywalk Development

Out West, where Arizona and Colorado meet, the Glass Bridge at Grand Canyon Skywalk hovers 4,000 feet above the canyon floor and the Colorado River. It is awesome (for real, not the teenager “awesome.”) Nature and the Hualapai Tribe of Native Americans have collaborated on one of the most thrilling experiences available to the average human. It’s a bargain for $30 plus whatever Dramamine costs at your local pharmacy.

Some people can’t even look down and see their feet. It’s all about the view.

WHATEVER IN THE CITY

July 15, 2009 By Constance Crump

Early on, I vowed never to live anywhere without pay phones or public transportation. R.I.P. pay phones, thank goodness. Still, I’ve kept my promise to enjoy city life for life, albeit in a city of little significance except to its denizens.

Then comes Monocle Magazine and others, ready to rank burgs worldwide for quality of life, aka liveability. The lists proliferate daily. My city is Top 10 for places to retire and to walk around, also the second healthiest place to be pregnant and the fourth smartest city in America.

None of those cut it with Monocle’s ilk. Their liveabilty is based on other factors. Zurich and Copenhagen are Monocle’s cities with the mostest. I adore Copenhagen. (See Chez Spark archives.) Never been to Zurich.

New York and London weren’t in the top 25. Neither was Ann Arbor, Michigan. Despite its backwater location – off the route of wagon trains headed West in the 19th century, among other geographic deficiencies – Ann Arbor is quite liveable.

Please don’t tell anyone – 135,000 people are enough.

Editors of fancy magazines would sneer at our lack of amenities. Ann Arbor has ignored its once-beautiful riverfront. Its proximity to Detroit makes it a tar baby from the same brush that paints Motown a goner.

Southeastern Michigan is not dead. Sure, it looks bad. Nobody wants our cars. But we’ve got fresh water – and beautiful – up the wazoo. Don’t tell anyone about that, either. Chinese and Indian companies are bringing operations here – go figure. No good Szechuan food for miles; a fair amount of decent curry.

What makes it liveable? There are trees when you leave the house. You can walk most places and bus to the rest. There’s more to do than you can do. Food resources are terrific. The airport is 25 minutes away.

Michael Skapiner says convenience is not important. The Financial Times (www.ft.com) columnist wrote recently that the fun of city rankings is that they get people worked up. He supports the criteria used by A T Kearney, which favors those cities whose ideas and values shape the world. I’ll drink to that, too.

COPENHAGEN IS AN URBAN MARVEL DESPITE SECOND-PLACE FINISH

June 29, 2009 by Constance Crump

There’s no shame in being the second most-livable city in the world, even if it’s a downgrade. Last year, Copenhagen topped the quality of life rankings by lifestylist Tyler Brûlé and Monocle Magazine. This year, it slipped to second place behind Zurich.

Credit: Ukendt/VisitDenmark.com

A recent Chez Spark visit to the island city found that things are still just ducky in the Danish capital. A duck would feel completely at home. Glorious sea views abound.

Credit: Cees van Roeden/VisitDenmark.com

The neighborhood around Nyhavn (New Harbor) is the epitome of hygge, the Danish word for cozy, a great base for exploring the city. The canal (new is a relative term) is lined with warehouses converted into chic shops, florists and restaurants. They retain their classic color schemes: old gold, soft but bright blue, ochre and brick red.

Credit: Henrik Stenberg/VisitDenmark.com

Everything is within walking distance – especially the lovely window displays of the pedestrian shopping streets – or a short subway ride away. Danish bakeries caused some marital discord, as the choices were so varied that bickering ensued over which apple tart to try.

Hotels nearby range from loft-like contemporary spots (Hotel 71 Nyhavn) slotted into renovated warehouses to a vintage sailors’ refuge.

Visit the Round Tower, a unique brick ramp that once served as an observatory, for birds-eye views of the central city. Nearby, design shops and fashionable boutiques line the linked streets and squares that form Stroget, a pedestrian haven.

Credit: Ole Christiansen/VisitDenmark.com

Don’t miss the design museum, fine arts museum, public gardens and most of all, the restaurants devoted to smørrebrød, Denmark’s signature open-faced sandwiches. The landmark Restaurant Ida Davidsen offers more than 80 varieties of smørrebrød. It’s heaven to bite into an impeccable little pile of crawfish tails on pumpernickel or wrap your lips around the Vet’s Midnight Snack, a classic combo of liver paté, salt beef and onion rings. Whatever you choose, it’s accompanied by beer and a tiny glass of aquavit.

JADED? OVERCOME IT WITH GOOD DESIGN

June 14, 2009 by Constance Crump

It’s easy to assume the obvious is boring. The Prince Regent’s Royal Pavilion at Brighton suffered my indifference for years. Two factors moved it to the top of the to-do list. A movie and the weather got me to Brighton and I’m grateful.

Before traveling, I saw “Beau Brummell,” a 1954 MGM film. Beau ran with Prinny, the future King George IV and builder of the Royal Pavilion. While in the UK, a chill rainy day made an hour on a southbound train look good compared with staying in the London congestion zone.

Good call.

The Royal Pavilion is one of the world’s best buildings. Why? It’s thrilling, unique, bizarre. Like all memorable travel experiences, it transports you to another realm.

Like other historic sites (the Leaning Tower at Pisa, for instance), the Pavilion stands in a dense urban setting. You come upon it without warning.

The palace with Indo-Sino-Moorish flourishes is currently under restoration. It was heavenly for a pair of old-building fans. (The loved one is a restoration craftsman.) Seeing the nuts and bolts behind the elegant décor gave the flavor of the structure’s back-story.

Normally audio tours are despicable. The Pavilion’s exceptional audio explains the quirky themed rooms, dragon chandelier, incredible wallpapers, magnificent kitchen (with palm trees!) and traffic flow – a visitor-controlled guide to the dazzling environment.

While not pristine yet, the Pavilion’s imperfections are endearing. Prinny would feel right at home and so will you. It is a tourist attraction not to be missed by design mavens.

Photos courtesy of The Royal Pavilion, Brighton

–Constance Crump writes about travel, food and design from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She loves low fares but only if the flights are non-stops.

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ARCHIVED CHEZ!

MS Crump’s Views From 2008:

THOSE WERE THE DAYS

Voting For Design with Dollar Votes

Record-setting prices for the recent Sotheby’s auction of Important 20th Century Design brought the total take to $10.8 million, more than 10% above the total of high estimates for works by modernist icons such as Ron Arad, Edward Wormley and many others.

A Greene & Greene chair from the living room of the Robert R. Blackwood House (seen above in a vintage image courtesy of Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library) went for $913,000, a near-record for the Arts & Crafts designer brothers.

Chez Spark’s own scribe attended the Contemporary Art auctions at Christie’s New York in Rockefeller Center recently and came away a convert. Thrilling, spectacular and the farthest thing from the image of little old ladies timidly raising white paddles that came to mind when you read the first part of the sentence before this one. Admit it – you almost yawned. Don’t – get there any way you can. It’s the best free show around. No, not as fun as Cirque du Soliel’s “Love”, but a heck of a lot cheaper.

Guys in Armani suits who never stopped talking on cell phones, Hong Kong buyers bidding up Jean Michael Basquiats, a phone bank that must be seen to be believed. When a caller bids, the phone-banker shoots out the arm that isn’t holding the phone and screams “BIDDING!!!!!!” while an unflappable auctioneer fields competing bids from the floor, from the Internet, from the phone bank and from the house itself.

Overhead, a giant flip board displays the current high bid in multiple world currencies like the train schedule in Bologna’s Central Station. Some people have too much money, like the bidder who scored a B&W Warhol painting of the Heimlich maneuver poster. (Don’t vote for irony with that many dollar votes.)
New World Heritage Sites to be Added, Some Already Designated Are Endangered

Forty-eight sites in 39 countries are being considered for World Heritage Site listing. Since 1972, the UNESCO-run program has given 830 precious cultural or natural sites the nod, including the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, Timbuktu and Stonehenge. BBC News said the committee will also debate whether any existing sites are endangered by war, tourism, climate change, over-development or neglect.

Among the sites proposed for designation are icons such as Corfu, Sydney’s Opera House and the Bordeaux region. Others are less well-known, such as Teide National Park, Canary Islands, shown above. Not all the candidates are willing. The private owners of the Brussels Art Deco masterpiece, Palais Stoclet, are fighting to keep it, if not obscure, at least lower-profile.

In the named-but-not-secured category: The Tower of London may be overwhelmed by construction of an adjacent 1,016-foot skyscraper. Dresden may be marred by a controversial modern bridge. (Chez Spark loves modern bridges and they haven’t harmed the historic ambience of Boston or Rotterdam. Do we want to live in museum cities or thriving urban centers layered with structures from many eras?) Macchu Picchu might be too popular for its own good.
Conrad Black’s Lavish Lifestyle Puzzles Prosecutors

Okay, Chez Spark does have better things to do than slavishly follow the fraud trials of fallen capitalists who might be criminals. But occasionally, design enters the picture – completely justifying time spent.

At the trial of Canadian media magnate Conrad Black, accused of using Hollinger company coffers to finance his lifestyle, the chief prosecutor would not even try to pronounce “guilloche” and confessed that he did not know what a barbiere was. You’ll recall from those history of art classes that guilloche is a continuous scroll pattern of intertwined bands, sometimes featuring rosettes. And who doesn’t know that a barbiere is a shaving stand?

Lord Black’s barbiere is a $12,500 mahogany number with a porcelain bottle, the former property of Napoleon, who used it during the Russian campaign. LB spent $4.6 million in all to make his 4,500-square-foot loft livable. Chez Spark finds the coverage in the Financial Times is the most entertaining, but if you haven’t been following the trial, catch up at all-Conrad, all the time web site, ConradBlackOnTrial.com.

Meanwhile, can somebody take up a collection to send that prosecutor back to art school or at least give him a pair of tickets to Il Barbiere di Siviglia? “Figaro, figaro, figaro…”

Zaha Hadid Teams with Chanel for Mobile Art Project

Starting now and continuing through 2010, Chanel will travel the world with its Mobile Art project, housed in a collapsible futuristic pavillion (above) designed by Zaha Hadid. Women’s Wear Daily reports (June 12) that the “gleaming white UFO-like structure” will be filled with works by 15 contemporary artists, commissioned by Chanel to create homages inspired by its iconic handbag – quilted leather, chain handles and all.

Up to 2,000 people per day can visit the 7,500-square-foot pod with exhibition space of more than 6,000 square feet. Hadid describes her design as a taurus with a defined loop through which visitors pass, exiting the same place they entered.

The show, designed to communicate the brand’s heritage in a new way, kicks off in Hong Kong next January, then travels to Tokyo, New York, LA, London, Moscow and Paris. In the immortal words of Chanel designer – and design maven – Karl Lagerfeld, “I think design and architecture are the real art today…Architecture and fashion are like Russian dolls. One fits inside the other.”

Ciao for now, but stay tuned!

–CC

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Column Archive–Still good reading!

Of Course Food is Art

The choicest chocolate shops from Brussels to Barcelona feature on the terrific luxuryculture.com web site. Click on City Guides – “Choctastic” will appear to drive you mad with chocolate craving.

Several of Chez Spark’s pet chocolate shops are favored, including Pierre Marcolini’s boite on Place Grand Sablon in Brussels and Richart in midtown Manhattan, but there are some new-to-us gems as well, such as Amsterdam’s Puccini Bomboni which rated the dynamite dual descriptor “good/strange” on another travel website.

And the 2007 Pritzker Prize Goes to… Richard Rogers

You’ve read the news reports by now…but did you go to his web site to peruse his portfolio? No worries – we did it for you and here’s the link: http://www.rsh-p.com

In addition to the project photos you’d expect to find, it also features terrific sketches, like the one above of the Ashford (UK) Designer Retail Outlets – a single-story anti-mall built on brownfield land with a high-tensile fabric roof, the antithesis of featureless American rigid-construction factory outlet malls. Yeah, okay, some critics are carping about Rogers’ showcase Madrid Barajas Airport project, but let’s take a look again in 10 years. We’re betting it will still look spectacular.
Promises, Promises

It was weeks ago that we threatened to tell you about magazines to make your lobby look good and we’re finally getting around to it. It’s a thrill to report that the first issue of our Monocle subscription just arrived. Gosh, I mean, wow. It almost seems worth the staggering annual cost.

In our neck of the woods – and that’s no mere figure of speech, Chez Spark is nestled in a mid-continental backwater – we can’t buy Monocle on the newsstand. As long-time admirers of Editor-in-Chief and Chairman Tyler Brûlé, we had to have it. We’ve been experiencing withdrawal since his Fast Lane column ended its run in the Financial Times at the end of last year.

None of that is your concern. Here’s what you need to know: Monocle is National Geographic for a new generation of multi-media explorers with great graphics, good quality paper, dense with information. Only the cover is glossy. Our new arrival, issue #2, April 2007, has a manga insert with story and art by Takanori Yasaka.

It will take longer to read this puppy than a double issue of The New Yorker. Is the double truck “Panasonic X Monocle II” an advertorial? It’s ambiguous, in any case. We snickered over the cultural essay about Identikit blondes on US television news. You read about the new Roche HQ building in Basel here, first – but we didn’t have the dope on rival Novartis efforts to trump Roche in the architecture sweepstakes.

Other lobby-worthy periodicals: the hefty, Hong Kong-based, WestEast Magazine of Style, Culture and Design has gorgeous graphics, oversized pages, and Kate Moss in all the ads. Nope, here’s one for Gianfranco Ferre with Julia Roberts. The masthead lists text and image contributors separately. Matt cover, glossy editorial and ads.

Style over substance, certainly, but what style. Just sit quietly and let the images flip past as you turn the pages. Its coverage of heritage luxury brands is less noxious than competing magazines’ thanks to the visual quality. Glossy through and through and at $15, it’s 33% cheaper than Vogue Italia on the same themes. (Find it at Borders; not to be confused with East West Magazine, an Asian-American lifestyle title.)

Matt paper is the new gloss or so one would suspect from a visual survey of the shelter-mag section. Objekt International: Living in Style, a newish entrant to the category, is published quarterly in Amsterdam. Issue #36 spotlights interiors, architecture, gardens, art, antiques and design – good thing it’s as hefty as W E.

Superb photography, layout and printing, with features on light and architecture, Tuscan art glass, French fashion bad-boy Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and much more – Objekt could give The World of Interiors a run for its money. ($14.50 at Borders.)

I know what you’re thinking. This woman is one of those people who has stacks of magazines and papers everywhere. Well, you would be right, except I have a strict rule about the living room and the second floor. My study is another story. Life is meaningless without magazines. Publishing is not dead, brothers and sisters, it’s only sleeping. Sleeping in piles in my office and the den.

One of the biggest piles is the aforementioned World of Interiors. I just can’t bring myself to throw or give any away. (Unlike The Week which has the half-life of a pizza box.) WOI is my number one recommendation for your lobby. It’s a steal at $8.99 at Borders.

Compared to the titles above, it’s looking a little dated (I feel so disloyal giving voice to that last statement). It’s nothing like Sunset Magazine, which ought to shuffle back to 1958. Its contents are more imaginative, the writing fresher, the coverage more wide-ranging than anything you’ll read in a decade of Met Home or Elle Décor.

It’s glossy. It’s frothy. Truly international, its taste level is impeccable. It’s by no means stuck in the English country house thing, although it covers them once in a while, if it gets a quirky candidate. It scorns no design if the inspiration is worthy.

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Take That! Gherkin

Roche is reshaping Basel’s skyline with the construction of its new headquarters and Switzerland’s tallest building, a 40-story eye-catcher designed by Pritzker prizewinners Herzog & de Meuron. The project, which also includes a low-rise lab and research facility, is set for completion in 2011, and budgeted at $640 million. Roche is Switzerland’s second largest pharmaceutical company.
Speaking of the Gherkin

Photography: Grant Smith

London’s modern landmark has been chronicled by filmmaker Mirjam von Arx. Building the Gherkin tells the story of the giant pickle – real name: 30 St. Mary Axe – built to be the Swiss Reinsurance Co.’s UK headquarters, designed by Foster & Partners. Von Arx records the design, construction and subsequent controversy over the 594-foot tall building in a 90-minute documentary (now available on DVD).
Keep Your McMansions Off My Dunes

Beloved by generations as the final repository for furniture too shabby to keep in the town house – too shabby even for the Shabby Chic clique – the beach shack is over, according to a new book, Beach Houses Down Under, by Stephen Crafti. The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald quotes Crafti on the demise of beach shacks and their replacement, the beach monument, which “starts at 300 square metres” and is emphatically not “designed to be filled with muddy dogs and sandy kids trailing wet, salty towels”. Elizabeth Farrelly writes: “The new beach house is a masterpiece of design and architecture, says Crafti, complete with ensuites, air-con and guest wings, using sophisticated materials that reflect ‘a new aesthetic and lifestyle – a world of luxury and design, glamour and desire.’ The beach house argument, as Crafti puts it, is an economic one. Having paid through the nose for that piece of cliff or dune, the last thing you’re going to do is put a shack on it.”
This Winner is a Real Corker

We like this contest almost as much as the Spark Awards. Make a chair out of a Champagne cork and cage for glory and honor from your peers. Don’t miss the tour of most charming entries, coming soon to a DWR Studio near you – check the list here. Watch for next year’s contest around the first of 2008 – it’s a great excuse to drink Champagne. In fact, we’re headed for the ‘fridge right now.
Exhibits Worth a Detour

Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City:

June 9-October 27 – Trouble in Paradise: Japanese Contemporary Art

Spotlighting a trio of bad-kid artists – Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara and Chicho Aoshima – this show will turn your ideas of Japanese art inside out. Playful with undertones of sheer evil, its cute protagonists clearly don’t have the best interests of the world at heart. It will be one of the inaugural exhibits of the new Bloch Building, a landmark of contemporary architecture by designer Steven Holl.

June 9-December 30 – Developing Greatness: The Origins of American Photography, 1839 to 1885

300 works from early daguerreotypes and snapshots to the Civil War, Western landscapes and portraits of the era’s “celebrities” – both classic images and newly discovered ones never before seen or published – all chosen from the recently acquired Hallmark Photographic Collection.

And mark your calendar for next year’s follow-up:

March 8, 2008-June 2, 2008 – In the Public Eye: Photography and Fame

Before People Magazine and after, i.e., from the 1860s to the present, the camera toiled ceaselessly, recording the doings of the stars, shutter clicked by the likes of Mathew Brady, Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Imogen Cunningham, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Arnold Newman, Andy Warhol and Annie Liebovitz.

All, at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
The Bra-Burners of the ‘60s Had Early Inspiration

May 9-August 5 – Poiret: King of Fashion

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) put Edwardian women in pantaloons and urged them to discard their corsets. His groundbreaking designs for comfortable and beautiful women’s clothing will be featured in the latest outing from the Met’s Costume Institute along with the obligatory book/catalog. Arguably the first modern designer, Poiret draped fabric designed by Raoul Dufy and others into creations of superb style. A Don’t Miss Exhibit.

Barcelona Si, Gaudí Si Si Si

It doesn’t matter what your own house looks like, as long as there are great-looking houses across the street and next door, right? Perhaps the ultimate expression of that philosophy is currently on offer in Spain’s design capital, Barcelona. In the heart of gorgeous Passeig de Gracia, PG45 is a new condo developed by Hines. Chez Spark is seriously thinking of relocating to one of the penthouse duplexes, hang the cost. From there, we reckon, we’d have the best views of two neighboring Modernist masterpieces, Gaudí’s Casa Batllo next door, and his stupendous, there’ll-never-be-another-like-it apartment building, La Pedrera, a.k.a. Casa Milà across the boulevard. Other Modernist icons surround the block. We’re so there.

The Holidays are Over, Hallelujah

But the melody lingers on. If you have any cash leftover, hasten to Target. You might get lucky and find the Tord Boontje dishes on sale. They’re swell and a steal at twice the price. They’re scarce but try the oldest Target store in the neighborhood. Talk about a Dutch Master.

Americana Stars in Auctions This Week

The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal says decoys, Victorian furniture and weathervanes are hot properties in the current round of New York auction house offerings. Chez Spark can get behind two of those but faux ducks have never been something we’d want in our Passeig de Gracia pied-a-terre.

Not exactly Americana, but close enough, maritime art stars in its own auction at Christies on January 31 including such gems as this folk art diorama of an outbound clipper ship under full sail being led by a steam paddle tug, estimated to go for $2,500 to $3,500. Other lots are even more modestly tagged, including an assortment of various yacht china and silver and silver plate from the yacht Enchantress.

As a class of objects, Americana is decidedly iffy, but the best examples are thrilling – you can appreciate anything if it’s well-crafted. Want proof? Mary Emmerling’s 1980 classic American Country: A Style and Sourcebook is available on Amazon’s used listings. Many of her subsequent titles are also worthwhile. Among the best: Mary Emmerling’s American Country Classics and Mary Emmerling’s American Country Cottages. The lady herself is creative director of Country Home magazine, and her influence suffuses its pages. Thanks to her, we can all learn to appreciate the things we once scorned as corny, like the Stars and Stripes, or porch brackets covered in peeling white paint. The jury is still out on cut-outs of bend-over people for the garden.
Get Thee to Paris for Maison et Objet, January 26-30

With 2,500 exhibitors, there will be plenty of design eye-candy for the home. Don’t neglect the workshops: The Financial Times calls out the presentation on black humor in interior design and “Funk Shui” by designer Nelli Rodi, subtitled “a festive cocktail between disco revival and neo-cabaret.”

We hope the black humor workshop includes Timorous Beasties, a truly twisted take on toile and other fabrics, wall coverings and accessories for interiors – and we mean that in a good way.

The modern London skyline toile is a particular favorite of ours – note the Gherkin, aka 30 St. Mary Axe, the Swiss Re tower in the center medallion:
Japan and the Effect of Design on Home and Social Life

Might be ghastly, might be good, but when Japan’s involved, we’re willing to take a chance. Starting Sunday until Jan. 22, the City of Nagoya’s International Design Center hosts the 15th “Design for Social Innovations” conference on how design can make a difference in everyday life; its accompanying exhibit that runs through Feb. 4. It’s worth checking out the website for the speakers’ visual portfolios.

Frank Gehry’s design for the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute is of interest even simply as a model. The web site for the Institute features several views of the future Las Vegas memory research center. Construction is set to start this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, the project will anchor a mixed-use development on a 61-acre former rail yard near downtown to be called Union Park

For an even better view of Gehry’s design process, check out Sydney Pollack’s sterling documentary, “Sketches of Frank Gehry” (2005), now airing on PBS stations nationwide as part of the American Masters series. My attention didn’t wander for the entire 75 minutes. The film had a theatrical release, too – on Sony Pictures, which also has a swell web site on the documentary.
Through a Single Lens

Speaking of designing men, Tyler Brule, founding editor of Wallpaper and newly retired Financial Times columnist, will launch Monocle, an international business and design magazine in February. “I’ve spent a lot of time in airports and I see so many consumers picking up Conde Nast Traveller, Wallpaper, then Business Week and the Economist and … I thought there could be no harm in actually trying to combine those things,” he said in an interview in The Scotsman.

A European outlook with an eye for the burgeoning Asian market, “bookish” graphics and 240 pages of print content with video clips available via the Web will be produced by a 22-person editorial team based in London. The new mag will be funded by a very brave group of private investors, considering the existing competition, the upcoming Conde Nast Portfolio magazine and a wretched advertising climate. Brule will continue to run his branding consultancy, Wink Media.

More proof that Asia is worth careful scrutiny: check out the Design for Asia Award winners from the Hong Kong Design Centre, recognizing good design that is influential within Asia. They range from the predictable (iPod and iPod Nano) to the Odakyu Electric Railway “Romance Car”:

Three Must-See Exhibits

Made to Scale: Staircase Masterpieces

More than 20 staircase models, mostly French, mostly 18th and 19th century, through June 3 at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. Thrilling, if small-scale, the models take the viewer back to a time of quality and craftsmanship, as well as incredible engineering.

Extended through March 18 – so you have no excuse to miss this survey of French glass pioneer René Lalique at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Deco Lalique includes 60 examples of lighting, vases, jewelry and more created between 1910 and 1945, with complementary works by Lalique’s contemporaries.

“Fashion Show: Paris Collections 2006” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston highlights runway (as opposed to real-world) garments from all the hotties: Azzedine Alaia to Yohji Yamamoto, and eight others in-between. The Museum appears to be firing a shot over the gunwales of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, long considered the premier showcase for vintage fashion – itself having squashed the fashion ambitions of the Brooklyn Museum. Oh, I know, they’re all collegial and there’s room for everybody– right. Through March 18 with lots of tasty lectures and events on offer.

Are any tile adverts as inspiring as those from Bisazza Mosaico? Certainly Ann Sacks has some wonderful tiles but for sheer exuberance, give me the room-size (and what rooms!) Bisazza layouts. Leopard, giraffe, Dalmatian patterns, riotous colors – it’s the kind of thing that gives Italian design a good name. At Chez Spark, each new series is examined and discussed with the anticipation usually reserved for a new model of Porsche – and we’re NOT talking about the Cayenne. Bisazza is widely available or visit the New York showroom at 43 Greene Street or flagship stores in Barcelona, Milan, Paris or London.

Speaking of aspirational, the LVMH Magazine is exclusively promotional, but somehow it isn’t obnoxious. It’s just right in presenting new products from Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Does that mean excellent design trumps the marketing message? Strangely appealing, although printed in a typeface not sympathetic to middle-aged eyes, it brings a world of sophisticated products to a medium filled with schlock – that is, the Internet.

Detroit’s Capital Theatre built in 1922

We’ll agree in advance – you can’t go home again. But you can see what home looked like, if you visit Naviciti’s remarkable web views of Detroit and Pittsburgh in years past. Naviciti is a Detroit-based interactive mapping and digital design firm. The historic 1976 Detroit map combines aerial photos, 3-D renderings and hundreds of details of downtown buildings, both demolished and extant. It also incorporates the AIA Guide to Detroit. The whole thing is a swell example of what technology can do and it’s way cool even if you aren’t a child of the Motor City. (Crain’s Detroit Business , Jan. 1, 2007)
Fashion Gets Even More Personal

Style guru Tom Ford, former Gucci designer and Hollywood wannabe, talked to the Wall Street Journal about what’s ahead for fashion:

· Expanded personalization in accessories, custom scents

· More name-designer cheap chic from quick-fashion chains like H&M

· More celebrity marketing (as if we needed any more)

· Fewer logos plastered on asses or elbows

· Sensual is the new sexy – more subtlety, he avers

Don’t jump on trends if you don’t feel comfortable was his final advice. Thanks, T – I’ll put down that $6,000 bag right now.

–CC

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GRAPHIK

Jennifer Bostic — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:58:55 +0000

Just the place for a bracing look at the worlds of graphic design. Be sure to check in on a regular basis! Please send us your news and views to graphik @ sparkawards. com.

TIMES SQUARE: PULL UP A CHAIR

June 12, 2009 by Jennifer Bostic

This May, New York City officials closed Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street to vehicular traffic. This new pedestrian zone in Times Square was created after years of planning for the actual physical space. Orange cones appeared overnight. Traffic was diverted. In place of speeding yellow cabs, lawn chairs and chaise lounges appeared. In place of manic, moving pedestrians, a calmness came over these 5 blocks. The physical (and visual) pace of the area changed overnight. In what was once an area of speed, movement, constant activity—one finds stillness, the ability to sit back, and take in all that is Times Square.

So what does this mean from a graphic design standpoint?

What does this slower pace mean in terms of communicating with environmental graphics, billboards, and media in the area? With years of planning behind the actual physical space, when does the planning evolve for the actual graphics and messaging in the area? How does changing one thing influence the other? How do the graphics surrounding this new pedestrian zone connect with the seated viewer—rather than the hurried walker?

The new vehicle of Times Square is not a car. It’s the vehicle of communication.

Most of the environmental graphics in Times Square were developed with short attention spans in mind. The quick five second sight of words on a screen. People coming and going from the theatre. Meaningless moving patterns. The attention-deficit-disorder style of communication. Static advertisements that are more visual clutter than communication vehicles. Moving cars, moving people, moving attention from one chaotic set of visuals to another. Short headlines. Images designed to grab attention from the chaos. But now, with the ability to sit for hours in the square, how can designers embrace this new opportunity to communicate?

Imagine playing a sponsored movie on a series of screens. Times Square as a living, breathing, outdoor theatre. Sitting back in one of the lawn chairs for 2 or more hours on a Saturday night with a pizza and friends.

Imagine using the square to screen a film festival, with various venues. Coordinating the color of the chair with the theme of the screening.

Imagine using design to communicate to the visitors to the square about cleaning up after themselves, about throwing trash away. This has become one primary concern for the area over the last week.

Imagine using the street surface to contain interactive graphics people can play around with. Painting a huge Twister on the ground. Or a human chessboard. Embedding interactive piano keys within the sidewalk where people can create music. Things that encourage people to stay in the Square and interact more with the environment around them instead of being dominated by it.

Instead of people being dwarfed in scale by the square, people playing a role in the drama of the environment.

Imagine using sound to broadcast the reading of a book, or project live concert feed from somewhere else.

Imagine other communication techniques that embrace the idea of someone sitting in the square for an hour (or two) lunch break. Print advertisements and billboards that instead of using a short sweet headline, they include text and messaging that embrace this feeling of time and saturation. Design that evokes this slower pace of Broadway.

What should Times Square become in the future based on the idea of people pulling up a chair, and taking a moment to be still?

I encourage you all to go to Times Square, pull up a chair. Look around you. Be still. And think about how the world around you should change based on this new perspective.

“A thanks to Tim Partridge for the inspiration.”

Jennifer Bostic, Principal, Paper Plane Studio

Specializing in corporate visual voice projects, print systems and books, identity design, and exhibition design, Jennifer is a welcome leading voice in the GRAPHIK Blog

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RE:START

Nathan Shedroff — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:56:46 +0000

RE:START is the new Spark blog dedicated to survival on, and of this planet. All things considered, with an emphasis on design. Please send us your news and views to restart @ sparkawards. com.

D-DAY FOR DESIGN

June 6, 2009 by Nathan Shedroff

(Here, in honor of the 65th anniversary of D-Day and the invasion of Europe in World War II—- a new call for courage. Ed.)

This past week, I spoke on a panel at the Sustainable Brands conference about the potential end of conspicuous consumption. Koann Vikoren Skrzyniarz, the founder of the conference, asked three of us to talk for 15 minutes about whether we had, indeed, entered a post-consumer world (as many writers posit these days) and, if so, what that means. For myself, I’m not sure we’re quite there, though I hope we are. The biggest issue is that we don’t yet know what it looks like, and our visions of what a more meaningful, sustainable, and post-consumer world might be are either too much in the past–like our entire history up until the 50s, or the future–imagine the latest vision of Star Trek.

One of my co-panelists, Teaque Lenahan, from gravitytank, a Chicago consultancy, showed a video his firm created. What it made clear was that our grandparents experienced not only a more sustainable world but one where reuse and recycling was standard operating procedure. In fact, during World War II, this was equated with patriotism.

People planted Victory Gardens, saved and recycled materials and didn’t use other materials unless absolutely necessary. People gladly sacrificed for the good of the nation.

Now, compare that to today. Perhaps, the most extreme reversal came in the moment after 9/11 when our president asked us all to go shopping in response. It may have even been a good idea but the lingering cultural reverberation is that patriotism = consumerism and that’s ever more scary. I’ve made my own case against the concept of “retail therapy” in my latest book, Design is the Problem. In addition, just about every study looking at the intersection of happiness and consumption shows that the two seem to be opposed (the more we consume, the less happy we are). Now, students and scholars are actually building-out the notion of Gross National Happiness, a term coined by the Sultan of Brunei, into a real economic indicator: http://grossnationalhappiness.com

One of the problems we face is that we don’t actually know what this new, better world looks or feels like. We can look to our past or find clues in the present from places like Cuba (the most sustainable country on the planet at the moment), India (the country with the least consumerist people), Curitiba, Brazil (a city that has transformed itself socially, economically, and environmentally–all on a budget), or Sao Paolo (a city that banned outdoor advertising in 2007). I was reminded at the conference that Vermont banned outdoor ads in the 70s. Though these places probably don’t resemble what the USA or other countries need to grow into, they all offer glimpses into a more sustainable, meaningful, and less consumerist culture. So, they’re a start. But they’re not the vision we need.

The reason why visions are so important is that most people need one in order to step off in a new direction. This is what leaders do so well. The more visual, aural, and verbal the vision, the more people it communicates to and the more vividly it communicates.

Gil Friend, who runs the company Natural Logic and whose new book, The Truth About Green Business just launched, took us to task after our panel for not approaching the most important question of this brave, new world: what are the new economics? For example, if everything lasts twice as long–or more–then which is more sustainable? And if people consume less (possibly because they don’t feel a whole lot of meaning in their lives), then most companies are selling half to a quarter to less of the goods and services they do today. What do their business models look like? How do they survive? And why is it in their interest to change?

I don’t yet have the answer to the fundamental change part of this question–the one that is really about the macroeconomy. However, I do have an answer to the questions posed by companies about why they should care about sustainability, transform their offerings into services where possible, and get ready to make less stuff overall. The answer is simply: if they don’t, they’ll be beaten to market by those that do. Learning these lessons early and devising the solutions to these challenges will put forward-looking companies in a stronger position, with a brand promise that resonates with customers more deeply. Try being late to this party– when a handful of companies have already reached radical resource efficiency, innovated their products and services, and aligned themselves with the customer trends that connect at the level of meaning–the deepest and most powerful point of connection possible.

These won’t be connections that can be broken by features, performance, or price. Apple’s already made that clear to anyone paying attention. We’re reaching an inflection point that combines Darwinian evolution’s first premise with the most hardcore market capitalism: this is going to be a test of Survival of the Fittest like we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. General Motors has already shown that playing the frog in the slowly warming water will no longer cut it in the marketplace. It’s astonishing that it took 35 years for the water to boil, but companies can’t count on that slow of a reaction in the hyper-global world today. Quite simply, those companies that don’t make rapid, significant strides in sustainability and meaning won’t be around in ten years. Period. And, we’ll all be the better off for it.

Nathan Shedroff, Chair, Design Strategy MBA, California College of Arts

Nathan connects interaction and information design in the Re:Start and DIGE Blogs. Cutting edge we think!

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