alex bitterman design.intelligence
this is alex's online home for design-oriented stuff.Archive for Sustainability
Holy Cow
My Design Applications II graduate students made their presentation to the Hertel Avenue community in Buffalo today. Their work was exceptionally well received, so much so, the presentation was featured as the afternoon headline buffalonews.com, and was also featured on NPR-affiliate WBFO, NBC-affiliate WGRZ, and even the afternoon Shred and Regan show on WEDG. What a day!
You can read the whole article from the Buffalo News at http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/569302.html
Design Loves a Depression
from
read the article online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/weekinreview/04cannell.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
January 4, 2009
Design Loves a Depression
By MICHAEL CANNELL
Few of the arts benefited from the late economic boom more than design. After all, when the wealth is flowing, people don’t covet the concerts you see or the books you read. They covet the couch you bought, and then they buy a cooler one.
MODERN COMFORTS The Eames chair, left, is an enduring classic; the Vermelha chair, by the Campana Brothers, right, is in MoMA.
In the recent giddy years, signature architects and designers came to be known by their first names — Rem, Philippe, Zaha — and they were photographed as prolifically as Bono in new design hotbeds like Miami and Dubai. Brooklyn designers became the apotheosis of indie cool (thin portfolios notwithstanding), and the British collective Established & Sons and other skilled maneuverers learned to breed their self-conscious furniture selectively into limited editions that sold for the kind of prices more often found in the art world. All of which was chronicled in self-celebratory books like “S, M, L, XL” by Rem Koolhaas, a 1,300-page monograph as lush as glazed fruit and weighty as firewood.
Looking back, those of us with front-row seats might have known that this design surge would not sustain itself. Two years ago, at the Milan furniture fair, Marcel Wanders, a Dutch designer known for arty provocations, held a thumping party to show off his 15-foot-high lamps and other furniture of distorted Alice-in-Wonderland scale. Never mind that his work was upstaged by his girlfriend, Nanine Linning, who hung upside down half-naked while mixing vodka drinks from bottles affixed to a chandelier. Form followed frivolity. Function was left off the guest list.
Now, given that all those slick Miami condos are sitting empty in the sky, designers like the Campana Brothers, with their $8,910 Corallo chair, and Hella Jongerius, with her $10,615 Ponder sofa, might have a harder time selling their wares. Already designers are biting their knuckles over the damage reports. The American Institute of Architects reported that last month’s billings index, a gauge of nonresidential construction, reached its lowest level since it began collecting data in 1995.
The pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two — and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process. That was the case during the Great Depression, when an early wave of modernism flourished in the United States, partly because it efficiently addressed the middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings.
“American designers took the Depression as a call to arms,” said Kristina Wilson, author of “Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design During the Great Depression” and an assistant professor of art history at Clark University. “It was a chance to make good on the Modernist promise to make affordable, intelligent design for a broad audience.”
The most popular American designer of that era was probably Russel Wright, who acted as the Depression’s Martha Stewart, turning out a warmed-up, affordable version of European modern furniture, tableware and linens for a new kind of informal home life. A bentwood armchair cost $19.95. “They were not just cheap, they were beautiful, and that was a powerful combination,” Ms. Wilson said.
Design tends to thrive in hard times. In the scarcity of the 1940s, Charles and Ray Eames produced furniture and other products of enduring appeal from cheap materials like plastic, resin and plywood, and Italian design flowered in the aftermath of World War II.
Will today’s designers rise to the occasion? “What designers do really well is work within constraints, work with what they have,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. “This might be the time when designers can really do their job, and do it in a humanistic spirit.”
In the lean years ahead, “there will be less design, but much better design,” Ms. Antonelli predicted.
There is a reason she and others are optimistic: however dark the economic picture, it will most likely cause designers to shift their attention from consumer products to the more pressing needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy. Designers are good at coming up with new ways of looking at complex problems, and if President-elect Barack Obama delivers anything like a W.P.A, we could be “standing on the brink of one of the most productive periods of design ever,” said Reed Kroloff, director of Cranbrook Academy of Art.
On the other hand, the design community talked up its role in safeguarding the world after 9/11, with little result.
Modernism’s great ambition was to democratize design. Ikea and Target have shown that the battle for cheap design can be won. The emphasis will most likely shift to greater quality at affordable prices. This time around it will be the designer’s job to discourage consumers from regarding that $30 Ikea side table as a throwaway item.
If household furnishings are to avoid landfills, says Julie Lasky, editor in chief of I.D. magazine, they must be capable of withstanding the vicissitudes of fashion — like the Aalto stool, but at a fifth of the price. “It will be about finding the sweet spot between affordability and durability,” Ms. Lasky said. This kind of innovation means rethinking the economy of production and distribution so that goods are made cheaply closer to home (or in the home, if the most radical ideas are to be taken seriously).
One way or another, design will focus less on styling consumer objects with laser-cut patterns and colored resin and more on the intelligent reworking of current conditions. Expect to hear a lot more about open-source design, and cradle-to-cradle, a concept developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart that calls for cars, packaging and other everyday objects to be designed specifically for recycling so that their parts and materials are used and reused without waste.
The old paradigm — epitomized by shelter magazines like Architectural Digest and Dwell — that found romance in single-family homes, each with its own lawn, detached garage and septic system, may crumble under the weight of its wastefulness. One challenge will be for designers to coax us to a more efficient way of living, as the architect Lorcan O’Herlihy is doing with his light and airy schemes for multifamily dwellings in Los Angeles, a city where backyards and driveways are all but a birthright. Fewer buildings will go up, and the stock of mid-century buildings nearing the end of their lifespan will be thoughtfully reworked to make them efficient and in keeping with principles of sustainability.
If Ms. Linning’s dangling from the ceiling was a cultural moment now passed, we can look forward to others for an age in which beauty and austerity go together.
Michael Cannell is a former editor of the House & Home section of The Times and founder of thedesignvote.com.
The Ties That Bind
This is a great blog post that appeared on Allison Arieff’s New York Times blog. Some definite food for thought.
by: ALLISON ARIEFF
When my mother, Carol, passed in 2004, I found myself spending hours at her empty apartment, sitting amid her things, desperate to find traces of her. I pored over her hundreds of books on art and antiques, looked through the baskets of art postcards she’d collected on her travels for scribbled notes, and flipped through years’ worth of day-planners, searching for evidence of her presence: a signature, a sketch, a smear of her trademark orange lipstick. I found one manila envelope of old family photographs and another containing every postcard I’d sent her during my junior year abroad in London. I cursed my 19-year-old self for not being thoughtful enough to keep the ones she’d written back to me.
My mom used e-mail, of course. And, for a time, I’d been proactive enough to save the meaningful ones she’d sent. But having gone through various versions of Outlook, Entourage, Gmail, et al., I have no idea where they are now. For all that’s miraculous and innovative and convenient and (insert superlative here) about our digital reality, it often seems poorly designed for posterity.
My most treasured find was a falling-apart book my mom had made in a children’s book illustration class she’d taken in the ‘70s (she’d been trained as a painter). She reinterpreted the classic “Noisy Nora,” by Rosemary Wells, with my father, my younger sister and me taking the place of Wells’ family of mice.
This pre-digital era class project hearkens back to the days when graphic works were hand-drawn and assembled. My mom’s drawings were done with a fountain pen, the text typed on a typewriter, each phrase individually cut out with scissors and glued to the page. Not long after the birth of my daughter, my graphic-designer husband scanned the delicate, fading artifact and created a brand new book, one that will not fall apart at the binding as we read to our young daughter.
(Bryan Burkhart)I am grateful to have this small token. I do worry about what we’re all going to leave behind for those looking for tangible evidence of our existence.
It’s true that never in history have so many people been able to tell their stories, and I love that about digital technology. But will we be clamoring to read “The Collected Text Messages of John and Jane” or “E-mails to My Father”? (It’s no coincidence that so many bloggers are in search of book deals.) Call me old-fashioned, but I remain committed to paper, to something I can hold in my hands and, ultimately, pass on to future generations.
(Princeton Architectural Press)That’s why I’ve been so incredibly taken with two slim volumes published this year: “A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart” and “The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings” (both by the incomparable Princeton Architectural Press) These two books elegantly address various notions of impermanence, remembrance and observation.
In “The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings,” the photographer KayLynn Deveney befriends an elderly neighbor and begins to notice and eventually photograph the meticulous ways he orders and organizes his day.
Excerpt from “The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings.” (Princeton Architectural Press)Bert, 91, outlived his wife, daughter and grandson, and the absence of family is reflected in the attention he pays to the most mundane details of life: preparing a list of TV programs to watch, receiving his pension, checking his medication. Deveney observes his daily routine with sensitivity and indeed manages to elevate it to the level of art.
Excerpt from “The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings.” (Princeton Architectural Press)“A Year of Mornings,” by Maria Alexandre Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes, started out as a blog. The two women, who’d met through their work with craft, initiated a yearlong visual conversation with each other: Every day they’d take and post a photograph that in some small way documented their respective mornings.
Excerpt from “A Year of Mornings.” (Princeton Architectural Press)Akin to the images recorded in “Albert Hastings,” these are vignettes of simple everyday things: a cup of coffee, soft-boiled eggs, rain boots kicked off at the front door, the stem of a flower, many crumpled napkins, many spoons. Though the two women were 3,191 miles apart — one in Portland, Ore., the other in Portland, Maine — the images are complementary in their color and composition more often than not. Sometimes startlingly so.
The blog, and the book that followed after a year’s worth of images (and 3,000 visitors a day from Australia to Iceland), capture the rhythms of everyday life, often surprising the viewer by the sheer beauty of the most quotidian element. That each woman paused to record the curve of a daughter’s ear, a bowl of cereal or a shadow cast across the floor before sitting down in front of a computer is an act that carries with it the most clichéd, yet essential, of all messages: stop and smell the roses (and the coffee, the toast, the morning air).
We’re living in difficult times, and it seems it’s exactly these tiny details and fleeting moments that can offer us the most solace and even joy. Just as I hold “Noisy Nora” dear, so, too, I believe, will the children of Mav and Stephanie be grateful for “A Year of Mornings.” Its transformation from blog to book helps to insure its preservation through the inevitable, endless iterations of technological innovations to come.
10 Ways to Take Design Action and Make a Positive Difference in the World
This is a great post, and worth checking out. My friend William sent it to me. [click here to read the entire post]
Small is, well, not so good.
Nanomaterials could pose health risks, need more oversight, council says
Last Updated: Thursday, July 10, 2008 | 11:12 PM ET
CBC News
Not enough is known about the health and environmental effects of nanomaterials and nanoproducts, says a new report released Thursday, and more must be done to regulate items that contain them.
The report, released by the Council of Canadian Academies — a not-for-profit organization whose mandate is to provide independent, expert assessment of the science underlying matters of public interest — identified major gaps in knowledge about the safety of nanomaterials.
The council’s reports are commissioned by the Canadian government.
A nanometre (nm) is a unit of measurement useful only for measuring the very small.
It’s too small even to measure human cells practically. A red blood cell, among the smallest in the body, is up to 8,000 nm wide.
It is useful for very small biological and technological objects:
A single double-helix strand of DNA is about 2.5 nm wide.
The smallest transistors on the microprocessors of computers currently sold are 45 nm long.
An AIDS virus (HIV) is about 120 nm in diameter.
The depth of the pits on the surface of a CD is 125 nm.
Nanoparticles are microscopic, often engineered particles that are measured by the nanometre, or a billionth of a metre. They have a variety of commercial applications: they’re used in stain-resistant fabrics, in skincare products like anti-aging creams and sunscreens, as delivery mechanisms for drugs and to improve such things as the functioning of car exhaust systems.
As of April 2008, more than 600 nanotechnology-based consumer products were known to exist, according to the council.
Because nanoparticles are so small, they have the potential to migrate beyond the products in which they are used, such as into the human body or the environment — and that is where their effects are unknown, says the report.
Another implication of the small size of nanoparticles is that they have different chemical properties than larger particles of the same compound. Titanium oxide nanoparticles in sunscreen, for example, are transparent to visible light, but absorb UV light. The same chemical in its conventional form is thick, white and opaque, and is used in house paint.
A chemical in nanoparticle form has a much larger surface area than the same amount of that chemical in larger chunks. In the same way that powdered sugar dissolves faster in water than sugar cubes, chemical reactions involving nanoparticles can take place much more quickly, meaning they could be much more reactive, and possibly more toxic.
The report says that chemicals that have been reviewed and approved may have very different properties in nanoparticle form, and may have to be reviewed again before they hit the market.
“There has been no identification of unique biological effects associated with exposure to nanomaterials, but there is still a poor understanding of the pathways by which these effects may occur,” the report reads.
“Changes in the potential for nanomaterials to cause harm at different stages — from production, through usage, to final disposal — implies the need for a full, life-cycle approach to risk assessment,” write the authors.
The council is calling for:
Development of standardized definitions and nomenclatures for nanomaterials to help regulators oversee these materials.
Consistent monitoring of the exposure of employees and the public to nanomaterials.
Alteration of current regulations to reflect the new chemical structures of materials.
Canada to work collaboratively with other countries to study and regulate nanomaterials.
The report, Small is different: A science perspective on the regulatory challenges of the nanoscale, is sponsored by Health Canada. It has been sent to the federal government for review.
Buffalo on AlJazeera
A show that is hosted and produced by Avi Lewis, husband of my hero, Naomi Klein.
Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?
By Lara Farrar
For CNN
(CNN) — When Shaun Yandell proposed to his longtime girlfriend Gina Marasco on the doorstep of their new home in the sunny suburb of Elk Grove, California, four years ago, he never imagined things would get this bad. But they did, and it happened almost overnight.
“It is going to be heartbreak,” Yandell told CNN. “But we are hanging on.”
Yandell’s marriage isn’t falling apart: his neighborhood is.
Devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis, hundreds of homes have been foreclosed and thousands of residents have been forced to move, leaving in their wake a not-so-pleasant path of empty houses, unkempt lawns, vacant strip malls, graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks and even increased crime.
In Elk Grove, some homeowners not only cut their own grass but also trim the yards of vacant homes on their streets, hoping to deter gangs and criminals from moving in.
Other residents discovered that with some of the empty houses, it wasn’t what was growing outside that was the problem. Susan McDonald, president of a local neighborhood association aimed at saving the lost suburban paradise, told CNN that around her cul-de-sac, federal agents recently busted several pot homes with vast crops of marijuana growing from floor to ceiling.
And only a couple of weeks ago, Yandell said he overheard a group of teenagers gathered on the street outside his back patio, talking about a robbery they had just committed.
When they lit a street sign on fire, Yandell called the cops.
“This is not like a rare thing anymore,” he said. “I get big congregations of people cussing — stuff I can’t even fathom doing when I was a kid.”
For Yandell, his wife and many other residents trying to stick it out, the white picket fence of an American dream has faded into a seemingly hopeless suburban nightmare. “The forecast is gloomy,” he told CNN.
While the foreclosure epidemic has left communities across the United States overrun with unoccupied houses and overgrown grass, underneath the chaos another trend is quietly emerging that, over the next several decades, could change the face of suburban American life as we know it.
This trend, according to Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, stems not only from changing demographics but also from a major shift in the way an increasing number of Americans — especially younger generations — want to live and work.
“The American dream is absolutely changing,” he told CNN.
This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.
Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” — both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything — from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.
The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls “drivable suburbanism” — a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.
Thirty-five percent of the nation’s wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable suburban landscape.
But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor of the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s. He says it is being driven by generations molded by television shows like “Seinfeld” and “Friends,” where city life is shown as being cool again — a thing to flock to, rather than flee.
“The image of the city was once something to be left behind,” said Leinberger.
Changing demographics are also fueling new demands as the number of households with children continues to decline. By the end of the next decade, the number of single-person households in the United States will almost equal those with kids, Leinberger said.
And aging baby boomers are looking for a more urban lifestyle as they downsize from large homes in the suburbs to more compact town houses in more densely built locations.
Recent market research indicates that up to 40 percent of households surveyed in selected metropolitan areas want to live in walkable urban areas, said Leinberger. The desire is also substantiated by real estate prices for urban residential space, which are 40 to 200 percent higher than in traditional suburban neighborhoods — this price variation can be found both in cities and small communities equipped with walkable infrastructure, he said.
The result is an oversupply of depreciating suburban housing and a pent-up demand for walkable urban space, which is unlikely to be met for a number of years. That’s mainly, according to Leinberger, because the built environment changes very slowly; and also because governmental policies and zoning laws are largely prohibitive to the construction of complicated high-density developments.
But as the market catches up to the demand for more mixed use communities, the United States could see a notable structural transformation in the way its population lives — Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute, estimates, for example, that half of the real-estate development built by 2025 will not have existed in 2000.
Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.
The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.
“What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe,” said Nelson. “There will probably be 10 people living in one house.”
In Shaun Yandell’s neighborhood, this has already started to happen. Houses once filled with single families are now rented out by low-income tenants. Yandell speculates that they’re coming from nearby Sacramento, where the downtown is undergoing substantial gentrification, or perhaps from some other area where prices have gotten too high. He isn’t really sure.
But one thing Yandell is sure about is that he isn’t going to leave his sunny suburban neighborhood unless he has to, and if that happens, he says he would only want to move to another one just like it.
“It’s the American dream, you know,” he said. “The American dream.”
