I have been reading a newish book from Japanese designer Kenya Hara, which came to me as an incredibly thoughtful gift. “Designing Design”, which is excellent, is not so much a portfolio or biography as much as a treatise on Hara’s philosophy of design, a philosophy that is both insightful and interesting, distinctive, and deeply immersive. His work is iconic in many ways, but not because of anything remotely approaching a signature flourish. He places significant focus on how allof our senses are affected by design, which encompasses everything from objects to environments.
Inside his book are beautiful images of his work, as well as that of others who have collaborated with him or contributed to projects he has curated. The images provide important references to his ideas and observations, and they are well integrated. The book functions almost as an illustrated guidebook to Hara’s design philosophy, visually representing the application of his thinking. Also, the design of this book is superbly elegant and engaging:
As a designer, Hara’s work reflects thought and consideration that seems contradictory in that it is both minimalist and comprehensive. It is evident that this is not a person who takes design lightly, and perhaps considers it more of an epistemological exercise:
“The human brain likes anything that entails a great deal of information.”
Kenya Hara
The book is divided into chapters that individually and collectively investigate:
This post would be a continuation on my theme about thoughts on the future building culture, at least for my immediate team. You can read related posts here, though you have to scroll down for some of the more inflammatory ones. In any event, our team has been deep into investigations of business model and approach as it relates to the built environment, and one organization and one person continues to surface as a vanguard and a contrarian, and consistently at the heart of the examples we provide to each other. Pictured above is Rem Koolhaas, the founder of OMA and AMO. He has a well-known and well-developed record as an architect and designer, and has managed to be seemingly ubiquitous with active projects dotting the globe. OMA has been tireless in execution, and is providing solutions to the domain of exclusive and high profile clients. Pushing boundaries is hard, intense, and expensive work and it takes clients with the money and steely resolve to partner with the likes of Rem Koolhaas. In any event, the results seem to be beneficial for all involved.
Via Eikongraphia I came across a conference held in Rotterdam last November with the overarching theme of how the future of architecture, “Architectuur 2.0″, is presently being shaped. All of the speakers (whose lectures can be viewed here in the archives… in Dutch, I am still looking for full transcripts in English), collectively the group known as the SuperDutch, seemed excellent. But it was a couple of Rem’s comments that stuck with me. He talked about partnerships, and how they are incredibly underestimated, and went on to list a number of examples that, in his view, regardless of the result, helped him move the needle. As you survey the density, and audacity, of the work being done by OMA and AMO worldwide it is evident that none of this could happen, none of it would really even be possible, without that approach to the collective project team. How we partner, and how well we partner, is ultimately the determiner of project success. This obviously extends far beyond just the built environment, but if there was an industry that was plagued with the challenges of navigating partnerships successfully, I would have to say it is architecture and design. At least in the United States.
This is changing, though, and architects are beginning to reconnect with the making, and reconnect with clients. Or, perhaps, connect differently. Smart architecture teams are organizing around projects in new ways that are incorporating research and technology for a remix of the user experience. They are fast, nimble, innovative and not afraid of risk nor of liability. All of these are givens. They approach challenges holistically, with a design brief informed by smart, comprehensive research and well-reasoned conclusions. If it is your goal to create value, to do more than just meet minimal requirements, than this approach is a necessity. The alternative is to let the value of design be eroded, and ultimately distributed across an increasingly complex vendor environment. Not an option. But to prevent this, or to circumvent it entirely, goes right back to Rem’s comments regarding partnership, that “partnership is an underestimated theme.”
The dreaded curse of knowledge, that as we become more expert in something we also begin to limit and eventually lose the ability to innovate. Is this possible?
Janet Rae-Dupree thinks so, and in an article in the New York Times titled Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike, she looked at how innovation is actually better supported by toning down the level of expertise. The premise she explores is that once we become expert we lose the ability to think freely, and operate instead from the place of our expertise. She points out that as we become more knowledgeable and expert in our fields our language and thought patterns change to such a degree that outsiders and non-experts often will not understand. This knowledge/action patterning then begins to wear behavioral paths for us that inhibit our ability to operate without the support of what we know to be true, and instills avoidance tendencies for things that are outside of that expertise.
This would seem to align with my post earlier regarding building innovative cultures, and the idea that you need to attract talent to your team that bring both a unique perspective AND a willingness to challenge convention, argue on behalf of ideas, and embrace risk.
We have spent a fair amount of time on this site investigating issues and ideas around innovation (especially back in October of last year). This is because few things can so substantially affect the fortunes of a company to the extent that supporting innovation can. Nothing new here, open any business magazine or visit any number of blogs and innovation is being discussed. This pervasiveness is born out of the priority and value we place on being able build the cultures that allow us to innovate consistently, and well. It is also because creating these cultures is incredibly challenging, and we benefit from learning how others have navigated these challenges.
I read yesterday an excellent article in Architectural Record by Andrew Pressman titled “Creating a Firm Culture That Supports Innovation” that offered a perspective that warrants sharing. This perspective begins with the increasing recognition that a firm’s cultural environment is a critical factor not only in producing the best possible design work but also in attracting and retaining both new staff and clients. In any creative enterprise you are only as good as your people, teams, and degree to which they are supported. A significant component of the talent war is demonstrating to prospects that you offer the culture that will support them in their creative work. Additionally, just as the business press is permeated with investigations into innovation, so are clients. The expectation for design excellence, and for teams and methodologies that put innovation front and center, should be considered a best practice by clients looking for creative services. For creative teams, fostering this culture and being able to identify successful outcomes is a significant competitive differentiator.
The article highlights an approach promoted by Robert Sutton in work featured in the Harvard Business Review back in 2000/2001, but still right on the money. It is an extreme approach to fostering innovation and acknowledges that new perspectives and ideas often emanate from “mavericks” with wildly diverse backgrounds, who harbor no preconceptions, and who are undaunted in challenging the status quo and championing their ideas. These mavericks are invaluable to successful innovation subcultures, and their ultimate impact on the organizational culture at large. Sounds good. The main points of this approach:
- Hire naive misfits who argue with you
- Encourage failure
- Avoid letting client input limit your vision
- Fully commit to risky ventures
I’ll let you read the article to get the full story, but there is some particularly valuable insight offered by Ted Hoff, an innovator and inventor of microprocessors, with respect to how client input can limit your vision. He says:
“Don’t do what your customers want; Do something better.”
Ted Hoff
I think all of the points above are important, and while they may sound somewhat intuitive they are very difficult to maintain in practice. Many organizations exist specifically to limit the existence of these behaviors, they are counterintuitive to an “established” enterprise and threaten the order that some managers can spend their entire careers trying to create. They defy predictability, and therefore deny managers the ability to financially model and plan. Therein lies the challenge, to encourage these behaviors in support of an innovative culture and in contrast to the ubiquitous corporate model. To realize and champion that business as usual in creative enterprise is a definitive path to extinction.
The Cold War was the catalyst for the development of a diversity of interesting vehicles, platforms and technologies, but few have been of more interesting to me than the Soviet “Lun” ekranoplan pictured above and below. The Soviet Union began developing the wing-in-ground (WIG) ground effect technology in the 1930’s, but the craft reached a pinnacle of sorts in the 1980’s with the Lun (one of which can be seen at Google Earth), though WIG craft have yet to reach any broad application, whether military or commercial. Ekranoplans benefit from WIG in two important ways, the first being the ability to achieve incredibly high speeds and the second that flying at 10 to 50 feet above the surface makes them largely undetectable by radar.
WIG works as a high pressure region develops beneath the wing’s lower surface and above the water surface, which enhances its lift compared to a conventional wing in free air. The close proximity of the water also disrupts the formation of wing-tip vortices, which are a major cause of induced drag on conventional wings in free air. To benefit from WIG, the airfoil must have a relatively flat lower surface in order to increase lift. WIG craft have an advantage over water-bourne craft in that a huge amount of power is needed to overcome the drag of the water. By flying just above the water that power can be used for speed and carrying capacity.
Ekranoplans were developed in a range of sizes and applications, but they could reach enormous proportions and cargo carrying capacity. The Lun, among the largest to be developed, spanned 240 feet long with a wingspan of 144 feet. Its size would be comparable to a Boeing 747. It had a maximum takeoff weight of 882,000 pounds and a range of over 1,800 miles. This behemoth could cruise at 341 mph, leaving traditional naval vessels quickly in its wake.
Several nations, including Russia and the United States, continue to explore the potential of WIG (like the Boeing Pelican), and China appears to have an active WIG program, but to date none have pushed this technology to the limit as Soviet designers and engineers did towards the end of the Cold War.
A Soviet Lun Ekranoplan transport at rest with crew on the exterior giving an idea of the size of the craft.
Few things have been as expansively influential in the world of design and the emerging Modern movement as the Bauhaus school and design movement that originated out of Dessau, Germany shortly after WWI ended. Bauhaus translates roughly into English to mean “house of building.” Though very short lived, existing only from when Walter Gropius (a recently decommissioned German officer) founded the school in 1919 to its disbanding in 1933, enough people were touched by the design leadership and thinking at the school to carry it throughout the world. That, and many of the instructors found themselves at schools elsewhere in the world where they could continue the good work and sharpen the minds of future designers and architects. Walter Gropius ended up at Harvard’s design school in 1934, subsequently helping a number of students and instructors make their way to positions and careers in the United States. This migration of Bauhausians to the United States set the stage for the launching of a design movement here that lasts to this day.
There is a concise article in the IHT that gives a nice overview of the Bauhaus and some of the personalities that made it happen. The article is in response to what sounds like an excellent exhibit tracing the history of the Bauhaus at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
That graphic above looks like it could have been from 1969. I posted about the Constellation and Orion programs earlier, but just spent way to much time on HowStuffWorks and found an excellent and concise summary of the details around the Orion CEV. It is interesting how much from the Apollo program we are leveraging for Orion and Constellation. NASA has gone back to the future, so to speak. It makes perfect sense, in the vein of continuous improvement, as the Apollo program worked very well nearly forty years ago. With today’s advancements in electronics, computers, materials, and propulsion (not to mention everything we have learned from the shuttle and the ISS), Orion should benefit from a very long list of innovations and improvements. Earlier I had read that this program would not be coming online until 2015, five years after the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle leaving quite a gap in our ability to reach space without the help of others. Now I am seeing estimates of 2011 for Orion to be operational, keeping us in what is building up to be an incredibly competitive space race with China, India, Japan, Russia, and the ESA.
Those that know me well will be shocked by this post. Yes, I have been a Dell hater. My personal experiences with their products over the years have left me both very frustrated and disappointed. Then I went to Adaptive Path’s MX Conference in San Francisco in February of 2007, just about a year ago. It was a dense, terrific conference loosely themed around managing for the user experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing all of the speakers. One in particular, though, really caught my attention. It was Brooks Protzmann, the manager of the then recently launched Experience Design Group at Dell. I would be nice saying that he had his work cut out for him in front of this obviously predominantly Apple loving crowd. I think he did a great job presenting. He owned Dell’s past mistakes regarding the user, and made a point to own why those mistakes had happened (despite these realities being inherited challenges). That alone was refreshing. He then outlined how Dell’s approach to product design and the user experience was in the process of being radically transformed. He was incredibly honest and open, and provided us a window into the course he and his team were setting for Dell.
The results of that direction are now evident. Though I have yet to interact with any of these products, it includes a range of desktops, laptops and the above monitor (a refreshingly complete, if somewhat overwrought, departure from Dell’s design language) the photos for which made it to all the various gadget blogs late last fall. This is certainly a step in the right direction for design and user experience over at Dell, and these changes are beginning to surface not just within Dell’s product line, but with Dell’s entire customer engagement strategy and is evidence that Protzmann delivered on his promise to improve experience and interaction design for Dell customers. This is an exciting transformation to see, and it has been enough of a change for me, and many others, to take notice. What is even more impressive, and demands attention and acknowledgment, is how quickly Protzmann and his team were able to redirect Dell’s approach to interaction and product design, and ultimately redirect Dell’s culture and approach to their customers. It’s been less than a year since MX. That’s impressive. The big question, though, if it will be enough to truly transform Dell and market perception in the long term.
Update: Just saw another new product design leaked over at Engadget, a laptop, that definitely looks nice.
I have been following this story like the wide-eyed ten year old that I am when it comes to anything related to even the remote possibility that I might someday be able to experience the weightlessness of space. Earlier this week Sir Richard Branson unveiled the design of Virgin Galactic’s new orbitalspace launch system, the carrier vehicle WhiteKnightTwo and the suborbital craft SpaceShipTwo (pictured above). This would be phase two of Virgin Galactic’s plan to “improve” humanity’s access to space. At $200,000 per seat that would be wealthy humanity, at least initially until the operation scales and ticket prices come down dramatically. Back in 2005 Branson’s Virgin Group and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites announced an agreement to form a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and launch aircraft. The new company, The Spaceship Company owns the designs of the SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two launch systems. See my previous post on Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipTwo will hold six passengers and two pilots and will fly higher than SpaceShipOne, the craft created by Scaled Composites that became the first private venture to enter Earth’s orbit, winning the Ansari X-prize in the process. Virgin Galactic hopes to launch its first public flight before 2009 and is now taking seat reservations. 200 people have already purchased tickets.
The commercial flights will be about 2.5 hours in duration with only a few minutes of that actually being spent in orbit experiencing weightlessness. At $200,000 per flight, that is $1,333 per minute.
We live in a world of technology fetishism, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of consumer electronics, and few have had as significant an impact on design in this category as Dieter Rams. Renowned for his work at Braun and for creating the “Braun style”, his work in interaction and interface design not only shaped an entire generation of consumer electronics, and industrial designers, but set a standard for clean, excellent design that we see manifested today in seminal products like those from Apple. Back in 2004 Metropolis did a feature on him in which he provided his design philosophy in ten points, which I recently came across again and thought important to highlight:
“These points cannot be set in stone because just as technology and culture are constantly developing, so are ideas about good design.”
- Dieter Rams
1. Good design is innovative.
Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology and can never be an end in itself.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of the product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.
5. Good design is honest.
It does not make a product more innovative, powerful, or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
6. Good design is unobtrusive.
Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are
neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
It avoids being fashionable, and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years–even in today’s throwaway society.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Nothing must be arbitrary. Care and accuracy in the design process shows respect toward the consumer.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the life cycle of the product.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.
Less but better–because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with inessentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity!
More on Rams and an interview with him at designboom.
1. He just turned 85 and still has a firm and influential grip on high performance car design.
2. He not only built fast, winning racing cars… he raced too and won in his own right.
3. He usually wears a black cowboy hat.
4. In addition to a multitude of fast cars that have his name, there is also his signature chili.
5. Summing up his consistently successful approach to creating winning racecars, he said:
“It’s a massive motor in a tiny, lightweight car. “
As cool as he is, I’m going to have to pass on the chili. That’s Carroll Shelby up in the photo above posing next to one of his winning Ford GT40 Mark IV’s from the 1960’s. I posted a little bit about that a few months ago. I wasn’t born yet, but the Ford team’s victories with Shelby’s direction and leadership are legendary. They were also instrumental in burning in me a passion for fast sports cars, racing, and winning against the odds.
More about Carroll Shelby here, here, and here (ignore the goofy soundtrack…)
I don’t love this car. I love what this car represents, which is a significant departure from the mainstream in racing car design. Motorsports, and automobile design as a whole, seem dominated by incremental, and sometimes imperceptible, changes. This concept, the Furai from Mazda that debuted at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, is going its own way. It furthers the Mazda design team’s expression of its Nagare, or “flow,” design language that was unveiled earlier at the L.A. autoshow. The body of the car applies Mazda’s design language to achieve incredibly complex geometries that in some areas appear grotesque, while in others refined and beautiful. I especially enjoy the roof as presented in the image above. I want more building architecture that can achieve this elegantly complex folding and crossing.
The overall feel of the car is very organic… or alien. Your choice. After following automobile design and motorsports for just about my entire life it is exciting to see a manufacturer make a bold, radical move. It has been a while.
The British Design Council has emerged from a period of serious introspection and reinvention. The results? New leadership and direction in the form of Chairman Sir Michael Bichard (pictured above with sleeves rolled up and ready to dig in and get to work), and sharper focus replete with a new tagline:
“Helping businesses become more successful, public services more efficient and designers more effective.”
Not so much catchy as vitally important in describing its direction, I suppose. The Design Council has long been a resource for the design industry, but has suffered mounting criticism in the last few years due to a predominance of product, industrial and graphic design focus in its efforts and events. This despite the reality that the Design Council has done much to show businesses all over the world the real value of design when applied to a diversity of industries.
Sir Michael Bichard’s recent appointment as chairman is in support of the refined Council mission of being the strategic body for design in the UK. The operative word now being “strategic.” Bichard has a long record as a successful public servant, leader in arts and education, and vocal supporter of the value of design. He received attention recently for his Five Rules of Design:
1. Great design can change the world and move people
2. If you think good design is expensive you should look at the real cost of bad design
3. Design, creativity and innovation are essential if we are to meet the global challenges of sustainable development
4. Design is not just about products and communications, it’s also increasingly in the services we receive or buy
5. To consume design is a creative act - and everyone can be creative!
I chuckle each time I read rule number two, as it is so, so true. These rules are important as the Council still finds itself embroiled in debate about exactly how design fits into the British, or global, economy. Despite their best efforts, the design community in the UK still finds itself somewhat adrift from the core of British industry and business. This is partly due to overconfidence, and partly due to the increasing irrelevancy of design education in the face of the realities of real world practice. These challenges are no different than those faced here in the United States, and amount to a massing of missed opportunities for design. Changing this begins, perhaps, with the importance of combining a deep understanding of business and business processes, of business thinking, with the methodologies and practices of design thinking, a concept getting much airplay in a diversity of business magazines as of late. It would seem that the British Design Council is going down this road, and most probably in a smart way, and as they are known for their quality publications and case studies I look forward to learning more about their new focus in the coming months.
Solar power generation offers amazing potential, but is hampered by the impracticality of being used effectively in urban settings. This is because the scale of solar power generation required for urban areas requires appropriately large solar power generators, and these require huge amounts of open and unfettered access to the sun. In many urban areas there just is no empty space left, and acquiring contiguous space to create large-scale urban solar power generation is cost prohibitive.
Not to be hampered by this, Sanyo, has offered up an innovative and beautiful solution that allows a large, effective solar power facility to coexist with the Japanese need for esthetic harmony, and fit into many urban and sub-urban situations. They call it the Solar Ark, for visually obvious reasons, and it is located in the Gifu prefecture in central Japan. It can be appreciated from the JR Tokaido bullet train as it jets past at 300 km/hr on an adjacent railway track. It is visually unique, impressive and memorable, and beyond being a highly effective solar photovoltaic power generation facility (collecting over 630 kW from over 5,000 solar panels generating upwards of 500,000 kWh of energy per year) it also serves as an ambassador to increasing awareness around the value of solar energy serving as a center for activities related to solar energy, ecology and science. Interestingly, the majority of the monocrystalline modules used were production rejects headed to the scrap pile. More images:
I orginanally came across the Solar Ark at Inhabitat.
Another Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld passes and the consumer electronics world breaths a collective sigh of relief. This close to CES, I think everyone is just about exhausted. Though Steve announced a range of smart, cool new gear… those following his keynote presentation seemed a little let down. I believe that this mood was also reflected in Apple’s stock price, which oddly closed lower for the day by 5.45%. Is this the dreaded “iPhone affect”? Was the anticipation and hype around the release of the iPhone too much for Apple to match? Who cares. The fact is that what Apple presented to us today represents the future direction of both personal computing and media.
In the event that you live under a rock, the star of the day was the elegant and minimalist MacBook Air, Apple’s appropriately reductionist take on the laptop computer, stripped down to the important essentials and built for speed. It presents a much more transportable (and beautiful) form factor and clearly shows the influence of the successful experiments with multi-touch from the iPod Touch and iPhone. Apple also offers the opportunity to upgrade to solid state memory, further eliminating moving parts. Interestingly, and not surprisingly given the speculation, the MacBook Air is also a definitive statement by Apple that optical drives are not long for this world, as it does not have one. To my mind, all very cool and a welcomed departure from the now classic Powerbook/MacBook ubiquity. Yeah, I want one. But my MacBook Pro is doing just fine and the reality is that I don’t NEED the MacBook Air. At least, not yet. Though I definitely appreciate what it represents for portable computing, which is to actually be portable.
Back to the pervasive post keynote mood, people are let down today because just about everything released was anticipated by the speculative technology press in detail, relentlessly, over the last few weeks. That, and Apple has set the product launch bar very high - and consumers and market analysts have, perhaps, unreasonable expectations which apparently Steve Jobs did not meet today, given the drop in stock price. Give it a week, the stock market is a terrible indicator of Apple’s Macworld performance.
Incidentally, Steve Jobs also announced today that Apple has moved 4 million iPhones since the launch 200 days ago (do the math). This has garnered Apple a 19% stake in the smartphone market. In 200 days.
See also my post on the iPhone launch from last September.
Quick post, but I absolutely had to share this (via A Scanner Darkly), and you have absolutely got to watch it. Very impressive to see this scene come together, and how they did it. The video is the making of the D-Day attack at Omaha Beach is for the BBC television show Timewatch.
The speculation around next week’s MacWorld 2008 was kicked into overdrive over the last 24 hours. Funny, the feelings I get before MacWorld are like the feelings I USED to get before xmas when I was a child. Giddy with anticipation. I guess that makes me a fanboy.
Anyway, the Apple store went down yesterday morning which is what happens when Cupertino adds new and enhanced products. When it came back online, Apple announces new Xserve and Mac Pro 8-core computers capable of supporting eight 30 inch flat panel monitors. That’s cool. But why do that now? See the image above, or at least that is the speculation of the respected gadget and tech blogs around the internet. This could be a great start to 2008, if that’s how you roll.
And to add incredible fuel to the speculative fire, suddenly this was being passed around. Watch it, just for fun.
I feel eight years old again.
Update2 - Now the video is back. Enjoy. What do you think?
Update1 - Adding to the excitement, the video has been taken down. Trust me, it was very, very cool.
We’re going through some very important exercises at work. The goal is a real and unflinching assessment of the state of our industry, architecture and design, and the role we play in that industry. The goal is to seriously challenge notions of status quo, and to question accepted practices. Hard questions are being asked. Tough answers are being put up on the white board. None of us disagree. But, what are we to do with this information, with these confirmations?
We are to change.
Actually, we have already been changing. We know that architecture has become a largely commoditized business, that the value provided by many architecture design firms has been slowly and consistently eroded in the United States over the last 20 to 30 years. Architects have allowed this to happen, and it has happened as issues of liability and responsibility have come to dominate project realities. But instead of embracing this and accepting the challenges, architecture has retreated behind drawings and plans and allowed others to step in and manage the process of building, of making. A long list of other trades were only too happy to step in and take on the historically traditional role of the architect, that of a master builder. Allowing this has effectively removed architecture from the value stream of building. Many, many firms now exist to produce drawings. They are production houses.
What we are finding is priority is the importance of reinserting ourselves into the making and effectively taking back the control of the value stream. We know that we must do what it takes to become the most relevant and influential force in building culture, this much is clear. What is unclear is exactly how we will get there, and I suspect we will continue to challenge and explode traditional notions of design and building. Embodied in this is the reinvention of our firm around core goals of design excellence, as we define it, and the reconnection of our design to implementation, to execution. Architecture is a strategic move, and that move will not be successful if architecture does not protect the value and integrity of the idea, the idea power, from inception through implementation.
While I have framed this discussion around my immediate industry, the reality is that it is powerfully meaningful for a diversity of creative professions who face very similar challenges.
After posting about Oscar Niemeyer and his 100th birthday I felt compelled to discuss another great Brazilian modernist architect, Paulo Mendes da Rocha. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2006, the second Brazilian architect to win the Pritzker after Oscar Niemeyer in 1988. In 2000 he was awarded the Mies Van Der Rohe prize for Latin American Architecture, also a tremendous honor. At 79 years old, Mendes da Rocha’s career now spans six decades since beginning his own practice in 1957. Considered one of the father’s of “Brazilian Brutalism” and part of Brazil’s avant-garde design movement, his work is signified by a simplicity of materials and forms. Brutalism for Mendes da Rocha was not about adherence to a style, though, and is instead about being guided by resolute design principles:
“Architecture is a human endeavor inspired by the nature all around us. We must transform nature; fuse science, art and technology into a sublime statement of human dignity.”
Paulo Mendes da Rocha
He is widely considered the most outstanding architect of Brazil and has steadfastly devoted his career to the creation of buildings and spaces guided by a sense of responsibility to those who inhabit then. His work also shows a responsibility to society, and a focus on honoring the context in which his architecture exists. Some of Mendes da Rocha’s work:
His residence in Sao Paulo. Mendes da Rocha has lived here since its completion in 1960.
The Chapel of St. Peter, Campos de Jordao, Brazil completed in 1987.
The Brazilian Museum of sculpture, noted for its unification of the museum with the landscape.
The architect reclining in a chair of his design, the “Paulistano”, created for the Paulistano Athletic Club in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Last evening, December 31, 2007 on New Year’s Eve, Ettore Sottsass passed away at his home in Milan. He was 90 years old. Remembered as one of the founders and the father of the postmodern Memphis design movement (of which I am definitely not a fan, but can respect from a distance), he was also the designer of many, many products that endure to this day. An architect by training, when Sottsass was able to break from Memphis he returned to his collaborative architecture practice in Milan where he practiced up to his death, enjoying a renaissance of his work in recent years with retrospectives in New York, Los Angeles and London.
A memorable Sottsass quote:
“Every color has a history. Red is the color of the Communist flag, the color that makes a surgeon move faster and the color of passion.”
Bear with the shameless self-promotion for a moment while I make a point.
Yes, that is me on the cover of a local commercial real estate publication. It came out last month and something about the interview with me inspired them to put me on the cover. Good times. The point of the interview was a conversation about how the modern workplace has changed, and will continue to change, and how my firm is beginning to experiment on itself to navigate this change and determine those workplace innovations that work, and those that do not. This is as much about organizational dynamics and ergonomics as it is about technology and communications, and it is part of a much larger exercise we are undertaking to develop a comprehensive program and master plan for our office and studio environments. By 2010 my firm will be in a new environment, and ideally one that we own, and this programmatical exercise will inform the type of space we ultimately need to occupy. It is also the inception of a longer term plan to treat our entire office environment as a laboratory, to experiment on ourselves, and be able to model different workplace innovations for our clients by using our own environments as proof of concept. Currently, we have an experimental area of our office, featured in the magazine, that is a studio dedicated to one comprehensive project, and we have used this studio to co-locate the central project team of 8-10 individuals. The space is flexible, surrounded by collaborative tools, and emphasizes the immediacy of communication. It is not private, it is not perfect, but it is a valuable experiment and the quality of work from this team has greatly benefited as a result.
The point that I want to make is that without having experienced and experimented with workplace innovations and organizational concepts it is impossible to appropriately represent them to our clients. For lack of a better expression, this would be “walking the talk.” A significant focus on this blog has been the concept of “the workplace of the future”, but what does that really mean? It means an environment that is about the work to be done and not about place. It means that substantial thought goes into the way an organization works, into its culture and business strategy, and how a work environment can manifest in support of these key aspects. It means that the conservative notion of office organization and layout is not only increasingly irrelevant, but actually counterproductive to the longer term success of a company. At its core, this is the physical embodiment within the environments that we create of superior occupant quality, of environments that are supportive of work and task while also enhancing health, well-being, and ultimately productivity. We know that an environment that we create today may be challenged anywhere from one to five years from now, that is how fast organizations and the markets within which they operate can change. The challenge to us is how we build in flexibility and anticipate this change so that we create value on behalf of our clients that allows their work environments to grow and change in advance of the demands of their markets and their people, without sacrificing the occupant quality of the environment. This is workplace innovation, and at its core involves a thorough understanding of organizational dynamics, occupant quality, product design, communications, materials technology, cultural analysis, and of an organization’s long term business strategy. These are the catalysts to the creation of successful work environments, and it mandates a rethinking of legacy notions of office and a focus on innovations that begin with an individual person’s needs and experiences as they relate to the physical environment.
Earlier this month an icon of modern design and architecture celebrated his 100th birthday. Oscar Niemeyer, the highly regarded and respected Brazilian architect, turned 100 on December 15th. He was an early innovator and pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete, and his stunning work blankets the cities of Brazil, but especially in Brasilia, the newly conceived capital city for Brazil for which he famously did the planning. Neimeyer continues to practice architecture (old architects never die…), and is active in projects that include a new city in Algiers and a cultural center for Avila, Spain.
Niemeyer is a committed communist, having joined the Brazilian Communist Party in 1945, and an atheist. Fidel Castro once exclaimed that “Niemeyer and I are the last Communists of this planet.” That aside, he began practicing architecture in 1934 and maintains a nearly 75 year legacy of design and innovation in the practice. Some images of Niemeyer’s work:
The Palácio da Alvorada, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, was the first building to be inaugurated in Brasília, in 1958 (two years before the official inauguration of the city).
Theater in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Brazil, which opened in October 2005, in a park Niemeyer designed in the early 1950s.
Oscar Niemeyer Museum (NovoMuseu), in Curitiba, Brazil, completed in 2002
“Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.“
That puts him in alignment with a number of innovation leaders, those that believe that success is born out of learning from failures and capitalizing on that learning. In an intensely competitive world, not fearing failure and successfully mitigating and taking advantage of risk can be the difference between whether or not you are relevant next year. Anyway, a comment on my post What’s Left For Architects offered up a quote from Burt Rutan in reference to his employees at Scaled Composites, the company building SpaceShipOne, shown behind him in the photo above. Here’s the quote:
“You don’t get the privilege of designing something unless you have the capability of building it with your own hands.”
That’s a powerful statement, and incredibly prescient for a number of industries, the most obvious for myself presently being architecture. Architecture in the United States has done an impressive job moving about as far away from the actual making as possible. In many ways this has occurred due to a fear of failure, and a fear of risk. But that’s changing. Slowly. Stay tuned. Moving on, the comment and the quote it contained motivated me to do this post on Burt Rutan. Easily one of the most prolific innovators and leaders in the world of aerospace, Rutan is championing the first privately funded venture to put humans into orbit. Back in 2004 he and his team won the highly publicized Ansari X Prize for successfully sending SpaceShipOne into orbit. Twice. In two weeks. I do not think that NASA has ever accomplished that with the same launch and orbital vehicles. Though they suffered a tragic setback earlier this year, Rutan and his team are still focused and unwavering on their goal set. That is because this is a really big deal, and smart business people like Sir Richard Branson see the enormous potential of broadening our access to Earth orbit. Beyond SpaceShipOne, though, Rutan has a laundry list of innovations and achievements including Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the Earth without refueling. The man is a relentless, tough, smart, designer, engineer and collaborator. He is also an accomplished team builder, and while it may be his name that is linked to all of these achievements, his success has been from putting together exceptional teams, and supporting them. I leave you with one last smart quote from the man:
“If you don’t have a consensus that it’s nonsense, you don’t have a breakthrough.”
One of the most comprehensive and significant ways in which we can positively enhance the health of individuals, and society, in relation to their interactions with the built environments that we create is through the applied concept of building performance. Building performance is a broad organization of how these environments affect us. This occurs on both a micro, or personal, level as well as a macro, or broader societal level. At the micro-ergonomic level it has to do with the ways buildings balance human factors and provide basic environmental elements and systems that support health and well-being. This includes lighting and daylighting, thermal comfort, air quality, acoustics and privacy. While these all seem like logical qualitative elements of a healthy environment, we all know that they still go largely disregarded. With this is the macro-environment of a building, or how it performs in relation to the whole and in relation to the greater community. Ideally, a building that adheres to certified standards of building performance has been designed with a sustainable agenda and incorporates not only energy savings, but also schema for rain water runoff, waste and recycling, materials life-cycle, and systems that minimize the need for natural resources.
Historically, the science of building performance has done much to honor the perspective and experience of the individual, to ensure that the design of these environments is not in conflict with the health of those who will ultimately inhabit them. More recently, and in line with the larger sustainable movement within design, is how the inclusion of building performance analysis as it impacts the greater environment, and how it exists within this greater context. Taken as a whole this is a sensitive approach to building design, one that embraces constraints that ensure that architecture design is indeed doing no harm. This might sound trivial, but it is a growing movement. Sustainability and human factors are gaining ground within the design of products and services, and those early to this holistic approach are seeing the first financial and productivity based results.
“White space” is a term describing areas within flexible work environments that represent the diversity of work styles and the supporting environments sought by people who demand alternative ways to work. White space is the focus of an article in the New York Times, and follows an employee at an advertising firm as he spends his time being productive everywhere but at his desk. I think that is a terrific name for a flexible work environments, one that is more about our work and less about place. At its core, white space challenges the traditional notions and expectations of how we work, and the environments that we work in, and represents the growing movement in office design to provide employees with flexible space that can adapt to their tasks and their work styles.
Realize that this is not a generational thing. Most people, regardless of age, would prefer flexibility in their work environment and the freedom to tailor that environment to what is optimal for them. That might mean working at a stand-up desk, or while sitting in a common area. Also, the tasks that we need to perform, the work that we need to do, over the course of a day can change dramatically and are better supported by environments that can flex with these changing needs. What do I mean? Think about the productivity savings if meetings did not have to be in conference rooms and always scheduled for an hour. What if, in lieu of a fixed desk, an office was actually made up of a diverse series of work areas with each supporting specific types of work… from intense concentration and focus that might require quiet privacy, to a raucous and energetic brainstorm, to an open and ongoing collaborative environment that fosters easy communication and connectedness. The net result is a radically different approach to the way we work, and one that defies the 1950’s notion of an open plan work environment. Finally. Beyond this, though, it yields very different space demands for companies that ultimately result in smaller, more efficient office environments which changes the real estate equations and potentially saves tremendous investment in space.
A good example of an office environment that successfully blends white space is pictured above and is one of the environments in Google’s headquarters. Much thought and research went into their environment with the ultimate goal being real support of their people in their work. Google realized that tying people to desks is limiting, and in a fast moving and innovative company the people that make it up need to be fast moving and innovative. The environment of their offices is a manifestation of this need. People are rarely at their desks as they are busy engaging in work that is collaborative, impromptu, and occurring over a large campus. A desk would take them out of the flow.
While Google might be an extreme version of this, suffice it to say that more and more companies are seeing the value of white space in their environments. We know that the office as we know it has been under siege for over a decade. Our work has intensified to a point that the traditional office environment can no longer keep up. The value is in adaptive, flexible and customizable environment that empower and support people and allow them to tailor the environment to the immediate task at hand.
That question is on the whiteboard of Bill Johns office at Lockheed Martin, and is his mantra as he engages in what is perhaps the most important program for the U.S. space program in the last thirty years. The question has a box around it with a “do not erase” pointing to it. Johns is a senior manager at Lockheed Martin, which in August 2006 won the $8 billion contract to build the next generation of NASA’s reusable space vehicles. Called “Orion,” and depicted in the rendering above in orbit around the moon, this crew capsule is being designed to take six astronauts into orbit in support of the International Space Station, or four astronauts to the moon. The space shuttle, initially the darling of an aggressive NASA in the 1970’s and 1980’s, continues to be plagued with problems and technology challenges. That, and it is incredibly expensive and inefficient to operate. NASA is decommissioning the three remaining space shuttles in 2010. It should be noted that as a wide-eyed 10 year old I wrote a letter to NASA expressing my own excitement with the shuttle program. Not only did NASA respond, but they sent me an enormous trove of images, press releases, and an autographed photo of the first shuttle crew. That was 1979. I think I speak for many when I acknowledge the disappointment that has become the shuttle program.
The Orion crew capsule, part of the larger Constellation program, is scheduled to replace the shuttle by 2015, leaving a five year gap in the United State’s ability to get into space without any help. This is a bit of a digression, but it is important to point out that during those five years we will see a proliferation of space exploration and orbital entry vehicles from Japan, China, India, Russia, the European Space Agency, and private ventures like Virgin Galactic. We are at the beginning of a new space race, and the competition is intense.
So, there is a lot of pressure on Bill and his team. And $8 billion is not that much money for a program of this importance. That is the equivalent of about six weeks of expenses for U.S. operations in Iraq. Needless to say, the Orion and Constellation programs have some daunting challenges to overcome, and it is how they are overcoming these challenges that is immensely interesting. Here are some details on how they are doing it…
1. Build on the successes of the seemingly antique Apollo program:
- Apollo is the model for Constellation, put a crew capsule on top of a giant rocket
- The hatch for the crew capsule is from the Apollo capsule with minor changes
- One of two heat shield technologies being tested is the one used for Apollo
- The reentry parachutes are slightly modified versions of those from Apollo
- The launchpad for Orion will be a rebuilt pad that originally launched Apollo 10
2. Take advantage of “off-the-shelf” technologies, which are superior to those currently in use:
- Flight control computers are engineered versions of those used for the Boeing 777
- Much of the avionics electronics are from already existing and massively tested craft
- The solid rocket boosters will be modified versions of those from the space shuttle
3. Utilize a “small,” agile and innovative team:
- The team that created Apollo numbered in excess of 400,000
- The Orion team is made up of 1600 at Lockheed Martin and 600 at NASA
- Orion utilizes rapid prototyping and environment testing with actual astronauts
- There is a focus outside of the space program for innovation (like NASCAR)
That’s a good question, and one the answer for which is elusive. Architecture, as a profession, is changing. It is also being subjected to change. Architects and architecture firms have little, if any, control over this and fight to stay ahead of the change. This involves technology, liability, commoditization, and asymmetrical competition (among many, many other things). While the world has changed, architects have retreated behind flimsy ramparts with a “let’s just wait this whole mess out” mentality, a recurring theme on schneiderism. This evening I came across a post on miragestudio7, a Malaysian, studying in Australia, architecture student’s blog which I have been frequenting (great writing, great perspective), that was a full-on shot across the bow. It was the posting of a comment left by a person who did their work in understanding where the value stream lies in the built environment. Here’s the entire comment as it is worth the read:
“I’m not an architect/architecture student. I’m a cad monkey. I did not chose architecture but I chose building design because the course was only two years, vs 5-6 and a 5 digit HECS debt.
It wasn’t just that, though.
I called lots of architects and building designers and the continuous complaint I heard from both is “grad architects are useless, they don’t know anything about construction or costing.” Also, there was the fact that building designers (evil, soulless creatures that we are) get 85% of the design work out there - and the grad architects I spoke to were only making 35-40K a year. Looking at Job ads, I realized that a building designer with 5 years experience earns around the same as an architect with 5 yrs experience (85-100K)-and the building designer has no HECS debt.
From my contact with the building industry so far (very minimal) it seems that architects have gotten a bad rep for often being impractical with actual building and structural specifics.
Construction is at the heart of building design and architecture. Whichever is better, if you don’t know construction and are depending on others to provide it you’re wages will reflect this. It’s that sentence, “As per engineers specifications” - everytime you write that, what you’re saying is, “I’m not capable of working this out, I’m referring it to someone who can -” and that engineer will be better paid than you because his skills are more necessary. A long time ago architects did all this technical planning themselves. The only modern equivalent is Santiago Calatrava. He says, “As per MY specifications.”
The more divorced architects become from the origin of their profession the less necessary they will be to it, and they’ll be paid less.”
Now, this comment echoes the reality of the place that architects have created for themselves. The money issue is but one manifestation of this place. The real implications are that for a process that was once architect driven, managed and owned… architects now find themselves sometimes totally ancillary, and not necessarily useful.
You hear the words “design thinking” a lot, and with greater frequency in the last year of so. It is not a new concept, by any stretch, but as the value of design has sparked the interest of a growing diversity of businesses in a wide range of industries, you are hearing it with more frequency and in places you might not have a few years ago. This hype around design thinking is also causing some conflict, as beyond the reality that few actually agree on what it means, even fewer people seem to understand what impact it might have on their business, or how to properly apply the concept. Here are four design thinking references pulled from the first page of a Google search:
Wikipedia: Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues. The stages of this process are suggested as: Define | Research | Ideate | Prototype | Choose | Implement | Learn
noisebetweenstations: Design thinking is collaborative, abductive, experimental, personal, integrative and interpretive
Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path: Design thinking is defined by a focus on customers, finding alternatives, ideation and prototyping, wicked problems, diverse influences, and emotion
iDesign: As an approach to understanding, design thinking is the establishment of needs, wants and goals, the defining of what is involved, the exploration of possibilities, suggesting possible solutions, innovating on your ideas, evaluating and measuring your success, and applying what you learn.
These are just from the first page of the search, which yielded 11,700,000 results. Reading through these four interpretations of design thinking there is commonality, but in a pretty vague way. Really, none of them are incorrect. It is that some have a more elaborate or well thought through concept of what design thinking is, and how it works. I do not think that anyone would argue that design thinking, as an approach to understanding and problem solving, does not offer a valuable alternative or complement to other methodologies of addressing problems and yielding solutions. The danger, though, is with the prevalence of the phrase and the hype surrounding it, there are situations where it might be the only approach considered. With the limited understanding and agreement on what design thinking really is, there are serious risks with thinking that it is a panacea for all of the problems we face. Clearly, it is not.
Without a doubt, design thinking is a buzzphrase, and with this is the real risk that it should be the de-facto approach to any kind of creative problem. This is limiting, and will ultimately produce solutions from only a certain perspective. Think of design thinking as a tool, and one that supplements the other critical analysis tools that are already at our disposal. When you approach problems with the appropriate tools, the path to solutions is well defined and supportive of goals. When you force a tool on an approach to a problem you stand to pervert and damage the process. Yes, design thinking is valuable, and it is especially valuable to clearly understand what it is, and is not. But it is in addition to the other tools for analyzing, understanding and measurement that exist.
Sun Microsystems is six years into a program that takes full advantage of their technology and is modernizing the way their employees work and adapt to a rapidly changing business envir
