Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2010

Toward an Architecture of Place: Moving Beyond Iconic to Extraordinary | Sustainable Cities Collective

Sure, ok, there’s starchitecture that *is* obnoxious. But you know what’s wrong with entirely “community-driven” design? It can suffer from Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS) and end up celebrating the merely subpar. TPS is when you cut everything down to the same size. There are plenty of supposedly pro-community/ pro-people spaces that were built by starchitects (Italian Renaissance, anyone?), and they wouldn’t stand a chance under the regime proposed by this article:
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We need to be very strong in our criticism. Both architects and landscape designers (many of whom are trying to outdo the architecture profession with shapes and forms and a “greenwash”) need to be challenged. Only then will they be pushed to support communities in their quest to create places that are comfortable – places where community members can have a sense of real ownership and the ability to adapt public streets and places to their unique aspirations and identity.
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Places that are “comfortable”? What does that mean?
(File s.v. “love hurts.”)

tags: architecture starchitecture urban_design community sustainable_cities

Researchers recreate bee collapse with pesticide-laced corn syrup

Feed bees high fructose corn syrup (and the corn was treated with neonicotinoid pesticide) and you kill off the bee colony.

Doesn’t high fructose corn syrup also kill humans? Why do we use this stuff at all?
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It has taken a long time to understand the link between Colony Collapse Disorder and neonicotinoid pesticides, because scientists were looking for an instant-killer, and not something that caused slow deaths over several months, says Lu. In addition he adds that scientists ignored “the fact that the timeline of increasing use of neonicotinoids coincides with the decline of bee populations.”

Lu says policy makers “need to examine the effect of sub-lethal doses of pesticides throughout the life cycle of the test model (in this case honey bees).” He further notes the depending on LD50 findings (i.e. a lethal dose that results in the death of half of the specimens tested) “is not relevant to the modern day chemical toxicity testing.” In other words, regulators need to start testing the long-term impacts of chemicals in the environment, and not simply focused on whether or not they instantly kill test subjects.
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tags: pesticides bees environment

BBC – Adam Curtis Blog: BODYBUILDING AND NATION-BUILDING

Fascinating article. Not entirely sure I buy into all the connections between, say, British Colonialism and modern yoga (with stops in Iraq inbetween), but it’s a good critique. The embedded videos are priceless, too.

tags: new_age hokum bbc adam_curtis body_image england colonialism iraq yoga

Earth out of balance: The challenge of controlling corporate greed | Grist

Words of wisdom from David Rothkopf. He is so right:
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I love it when Ron Paul says, “If we get rid of government, freedom will sweep right in.” That’s just not what happens. What happens is that a bunch of elephants stampede in because they’re in a position to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, if you get government out of the way, the people who need government, they don’t have it.

There’s this myth that government doesn’t belong in the marketplace. If that were true, there would be no canals, no railroads, no highways, no internet. The government was a critical partner in many of the biggest innovations in U.S. history.

But if you buy into that for 20 or 30 years, and you say, “smaller government, smaller government programs,” who gets squeezed by that? It’s the cities. And the problem is that, as that happens, it accelerates. Kids drop out of school. Neighborhoods decay. Businesses leave. The tax base goes down. Cops get fired. Teachers get fired. It’s a cycle of pain.
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tags: cities grist david_rothkopf economy politics

Bike Lanes: The New Job Creators? « Project for Public Spaces – Placemaking for Communities

Can bike lanes create new jobs?
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The answer seems to be yes — at least in the case of Long Beach, California. More than 20 new bicycle-related or bicycle-inspired businesses have opened at last count. I toured some of these business with Charlie Gandy and Melissa Balmer during a recent trip to Long Beach to meet these entrepreneurs, and prospect for locally-sourced goods and services for our conference. Twenty new businesses is a lot, especially in this economy, so you may be skeptical of these numbers (I was); but after meeting some impressive young people, I can assure you that it’s all real.
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There follows a review of the businesses.
I’d say that my observations in Portland confirm the article. Cycling is another way of bringing “life at 10km per hour” (or slightly more) into streets (vs cars at 50km per hour), which contributes to capturing interest *in* the street.

tags: jobs economy bicycles cities

How To Talk About Cities Without Ticking Off Folks Who Don’t Live There – Politics – The Atlantic Cities

Yes, much more productive to see both cities and small towns through an economic lens, and to encourage resilience in place and civic engagement.
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“To me, it seemed a little preachy,” he says. “These people who lived in urban areas would come out and tell me how to live, tell me that you shouldn’t enjoy living where you do, you shouldn’t like your job, you shouldn’t feel good about the lifestyle that you’re living because it’s bad, and what we’re doing is good. What you’re doing is dumb and what we’re doing is smart. What you’re doing is sprawl, and what we’re doing is smart growth.”

(It’s interesting here to pause and ponder if “sprawl” is one of those words that naturally sounds odious – like “phlegm” or “yuck” – or if it has just taken on that connotation as a result of so much sneering).

Marohn says he has realized over the past decade that he and the New Urbanists are actually often talking about the same thing. The urban experience and the small-town experience have more in common than people think. And they’ve both been distorted by the suburban experiment. The picture looks different. In cities, it looks like an army of surface parking lots has devoured our downtowns. Small towns have also been hallowed out at the core and nipped at their edges by encroaching subdivisions.

But the effect is the same, Marohn says: an erosion of civic space, which has led to an erosion of the financial viability of communities. And this is the language he uses to talk about planning – the language of economics, of debt and prosperity and gas prices.
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tags: cities atlantic_cities sprawl density

The Science of Quieter Cities – Design – The Atlantic Cities

Sounds [ahem!] good to me…
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The whole idea here is that we don’t have to accept cities as noisy places, that apartments can be private and roads can be calmer and whole neighborhoods can sound, if not like the countryside, then something more humane.

“To just accept the status quo is turning our back on innovation and design,” Antonio says, “and why we’re doing this in the first place.”
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tags: cities atlantic_cities noise urban_design

Coworkers of the world, unite! Better architecture for co-work | SmartPlanet

Interesting. Co-working working hand-in-hand with disruption?
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It takes more than a few couches, high-speed internet and the espresso maker to compete in coworking.

For architects, it’s a huge opportunity to bring novel workplace technologies and a livable aesthetic to these dynamic, changeable and often very messy environments. The winner of the Unconference video contest suggests the overarching vibe — energetic community — while tenant needs are listed in articles like PC Magazine’s “10 best” list, which at least shows what geeks favor in coworking.
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tags: architecture coworking

It’s Not About the Bikes | General | Portland Mercury

This quote/observation is just crazy. My observations of Portland drivers are that (compared to other cities) they are overwhelmingly deferential to bicyclists, and to call Williams “too dangerous” for cyclists strikes me as just plain weird. (Full disclosure: I’m currently living in an apartment that overlooks this bike corridor.) It makes me wonder what people actually want. I’ve noticed that many people here (including younger ones) really fear density (Portland overall is very low density, population-wise), and resist development changes that would “densify” the city. They like the suburban-y feel of these eastside neighborhoods, but want all the goodies that gentrification also would bring. Meanwhile, the racial question in Portland is IMNSHO huge. Every time I’m out and just chat casually with strangers who happen to be African-American, I get the impression they think it’s weird that a white person (female) is talking to them. Why would that be the case, if not for the fact that is *is* unusual? And how sad it is that it’s unusual… Neighborhood sports games (at Unthank Park, of all places) are observably segregated, as I’ve seen: white adults playing some version of softball, while black kids hang out dribbling a basketball in a separate play lot a few yards away. It’s a strange town. So much bs. For example, this:
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“I’m not selling my property, so I don’t give a shit,” says Goldsmith. But while the city help for new businesses has been great, in the hubbub of bikes, cars, and buses, Goldsmith no longer feels safe biking down its main business street. “I love living here, I love being here… but I don’t bike with my kids on Williams anymore—it’s too dangerous.”
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tags: portland race bicycles cities density gentrification

Flavorwire » What Comes After the Hipster? We Ask the Experts

I agree with Bruce Michael Conforth here:
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The sociologist Robert Jay Lifton has written about the “Protean Man” who is more comfortable with images than with words and with fragmentation than with wholes. This, of course, is nothing more than the fruition of McLuhan’s “the medium is the message.” It is our mediums that have become the driving forces in our culture and society, not the ideas they transmit. The Internet is reshaping not just the way we communicate but reprogramming our neurological makeup in ways we can’t even yet imagine. We want, indeed NEED, tiny instantaneous fragments of information: sound bytes, word bytes, info bytes, image bites… the instantaneously and ever changing visual imagery ushered in by things like MTV, computer screens, split screens, virtual reality, etc. And the speed by which things appear, go viral, and then are gone almost precludes the possibility of there being a subculture that lasts anywhere nearly as long as ones in the past have.

And do you know what made the Beats, Hippies, and Punks possible more than anything else? There were no distractions. There were three television networks, no cable or satellite. There were only a few radio stations, and they still featured live, local djs. There were no video games, nothing digital, no iPods or mp3 players… there weren’t even cassette players for most of those times. There were no VHS tapes or DVDs or CDs… you wanted to see a movie you had to go to the theater. No Internet of course. No computers of any kind. There were no ATMs or credit cards… no cell phones… there weren’t even xerox machines until the 1970s. The only things we had were each other. The only things we could do was hang out together, talk, have sex, do drugs, and make our own music and art. Yes, there were all the cultural influences I mentioned earlier but the only way to share them all was face to face real human interaction.
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tags: flavorwire hipsters trends futurismo

Tech entrepreneurs use Italy’s design legacy as inspiration | SmartPlanet

Learned about Openwear via this article.
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Long before Silicon Valley began dominating the innovation landscape with its ambitious, creative engineers and designers, there was, of course, the Italian Renaissance. A recent event in Italy, World Wide Rome, placed the rich history of Italian design ingenuity in a contemporary context. It focused on start-ups and entrepreneurs with new business models based on digital fabrication and open-source production–and with the do-it-yourself trend of today’s “makers movement” in mind.
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tags: inspiration italy design

The Building You’re Sitting In Now Has Its Own Social Network, Too – Technology – The Atlantic Cities

Not sure I’m ready for this…
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The built environment, Boltuch and his colleagues believe, is in need of a social network of its own. So today they’re launching one – called Honest Buildings – that could connect people to the physical spaces where we live and work, the landlords (or companies) that own them, and the tuck-pointing guys and architecture firms who want to compete for our business.

The scope of the site is a bit mindboggling; as of this morning, you can type in any address in America on Honest Buildings and generate a page devoted to it. Imagine, in other words, if Facebook came pre-loaded with a basic profile for every name in the phone book.
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tags: socialmedia buildings architecture cities atlantic_cities technology honest_buildings

City Seats: 14 Examples of Unconventional Urban Furniture | WebUrbanist

Some great ideas for public seating here:
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The boring benches installed in urban areas around the world are purely functional: you take a seat for a little while, and then you leave. But why shouldn’t public furniture be visually interesting, comfortable and even interactive as well? These 14 chairs, benches, loungers, tables and more often double as art objects, with designs that consider a wide range of needs.
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tags: public_space seating benches urban_design cities furniture

See-through solar window creator invents invisible wires | SmartPlanet

I want smart windows on my house. I want a smart house.
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On Thursday, New Energy Technologies announced a new complementary conductive wiring system that will transport electricity over glass windows laid out in a fine grid-like pattern that’s virtually transparent. United States Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) scientists collaborated on the technology.

Architectural glass has can be found on many modern buildings. Apple has become renowned for encapsulating its stores in massive glass panels, and large glass windows have shrouded skyscrapers for decades. The business concept behind New Energy’s system is to retrofit these conventional glass structures.
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tags: smartplanet windows solar_power energy glass

Wood buildings reach new heights | SmartPlanet

Amazing. It was news when British Columbia allowed 6-story wood-*frame* construction a couple of years ago. But *30* stories? Interesting, that this is coming out of Vancouver.
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Architect Michael Green is designing a 30 story building constructed with wood in Vancouver and advocates for more tall wood buildings…
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tags: architecture high_rise wood_frame_construction vancouver

Why Conservatives Are Afraid of Cities – Politics – The Atlantic Cities

The endangered middle class…
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Several thousand years ago, Socrates and Plato warned that citizens who loved money above all would divide into rich and poor, with class war and mob rule the unhappy result. That’s a message Republicans still have a chance to deliver this election cycle. But it’ll take a change in the way they think about cultural politics to do it.
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tags: atlantic_cities class_distinctions class politics cities

What turns a man’s mind to mush? A female observer | SmartPlanet

I think I knew this already.
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People tend to think of specific individuals as having performance anxiety, but it may actually be a whole gender.

A new study show that men’s cognitive performance declines if they will be told a woman will watch them. And that’s it. The woman doesn’t actually have to watch them and they don’t even need to see her for their cognitive functioning to suffer.
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tags: psychology smartplanet gender women

What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have in Common? – David Zweig – Entertainment – The Atlantic

This is fantastically interesting, especially in light of the recent fiascos around Mike Daisey and Malcolm Gladwell, both of whom seem to think that disrespecting journalism and factuality is somehow ok.
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The book is a reprint of an essay about a suicide in Las Vegas that D’Agata submitted to the Believer along with text from the wildly extended and heated argument that then ensued between him and Fingal, his fact checker at the magazine. Things started off poorly. The now-infamous first sentence alone was riddled with errors. Here’s just one of them: D’Agata writes that there were “34 licensed strip clubs” in Vegas at the time of the suicide. Fingal’s research suggests there were only 31, and he asks D’Agata how he got 34. “Because the rhythm of ’34′ works better in that sentence than the rhythm of ’31,’” D’Agata replies, as if this were a fiction workshop. Things degenerate from there.
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tags: atlantic_monthly fact_checking david_zweig journalism

I’m Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web – Alexis Madrigal – Technology – The Atlantic

As an aside: actually, there are people working on the idea of users owning their data – and selling it to companies.
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The bad news is that people haven’t taken control of the data that’s being collected and traded about them. The good news is that — in a quite literal sense — simply thinking differently about this advertising business can change the way that it works. After all, if you take these companies at their word, they exist to serve users as much as to serve their clients.
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tags: atlantic_cities privacy advertising

Why Don’t Real Estate Developers Just Ask Us What We Want? – Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities

Article about popularise.com – sounds intriguing:
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“We found a lot of the answers people were putting out were not directly answering our question, which is what do you want here?” Miller says. “It was ‘what do I want in my neighborhood?’”

But this isn’t a bad result. If anything, the flood of random ideas reflects the fact that no one has been asking these people what they want at all. It’s like they’ve just been waiting to plead for a fitness center, and these are the first folks to come along remotely broaching the topic.

Miller says one of the Popularise front-runners – a local bar manager who wants to open his own spot – was even offered a property two blocks down the street and $150,000 in build-out capital by another developer in the neighborhood, thanks to the display of enthusiasm on the site.

“When we saw that it was like, ‘OK, this is not a zero-sum game on our property,” Miller says. “We should rethink of it as what do people want in their neighborhood?”
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tags: atlantic_cities real_estate urban_development

The City, Covered With Logos – Arts & Lifestyle – The Atlantic Cities

Corporate brand imagery as kudzu. Great points.
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The logo-ing of our cities and neighborhoods is this process in reverse. Instead of borrowing the ambiance and associations of a place, the product infests it with its own characterless generica, diminishing and voiding out its authentic qualities. The omnipresent logos, like a kind of corporate kudzu, cover and conquer all.
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tags: richard_florida atlantic_cities branding marketing cities advertising

Why Apple’s New Campus Is Bad for Urban America – Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities

I too have to admit that I don’t get the benefit allegedly bestowed by this donut (or “whitewall motorcycle tire”), either. In downtown Portland, Apple may tear down an existing retail building across from Pioneer Square and build in its place a one-story Apple Store. Downtown. Why, Apple, why?
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While communities all up and down the Silicon Valley are trying to repair sprawl by replacing it with smart growth, Apple is actually taking a site that is now parking lots and low-rise boxes and making it worse for the community. Yes, it will be iconic, assuming you think a building shaped like a whitewall motorcycle tire is iconic, but it will reduce current street connectivity, seal off potential walking routes and, as I wrote some time back, essentially turn its back on its community. With a parking garage designed to hold over ten thousand cars, by the way.
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tags: apple architecture atlantic_cities kaid_benfield corporatism

How Big Is Your City, Really? – Arts & Lifestyle – The Atlantic Cities

Fascinating article about how we perceive scale, the scale of the cities we live in:
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We often have a certain sense of cities’ importance and size, but this is too often founded on a fairly parochial context; our perceptions of cities are based on other cities we are familiar with or that are around it, and we neglect to recognize how big or small cities really are.
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tags: cities atlantic_cities scale

Can Urban Highways Be Fixed? – Commute – The Atlantic Cities

Dwight D Eisenhower’s interstate freeway plan did not intend for freeways to run through cities. Too bad that memo was ignored…
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But Eisenhower never intended that the Interstates be built through densely populated cities. A memorandum of a 1960 meeting in the Oval Office, available in the archives of Eisenhower’s presidency, makes this crystal-clear:

[The President] went on to say that the matter of running Interstate routes through the congested parts of the cities was entirely against his original concept and wishes; that he never anticipated that the program would turn out this way . . . and that he was certainly not aware of any concept of using the program to build up an extensive intra-city route network as part of the program he sponsored. He added that those who had not advised him that such was being done, and those who steered the program in such a direction, had not followed his wishes.

The Secretary of Commerce and head of the Federal Highway Administration were in the room. (Thanks to urban transportation whiz Rick Hall for finding this memo.)
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tags: atlantic_cities freeways highways eisenhower kaid_benfield transportation

Silicon Valley Homeless Feel The Grip Of Recession’s Long Reach

An undoubtedly frightening article (or rather: an article reporting a frightening reality).
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“The whole face of homelessness is changing, and a lot of that has to do with unemployment,” says Craig Billman, who was Michele’s case manager when she arrived at Maple Street and is now associate program director at the facility. “People from the professional ranks are becoming more prevalent. You’re seeing more first-time homeless than ever before.”

That this is happening here, in the crucible of high-tech affluence, is a testament to the fact that it is happening almost everywhere in the country, part of a wave of suburban poverty that began in the 1990s and has accelerated since the beginning of the Great Recession.
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tags: silicon_valley homelessness unemployment economy depression usa recession

“Over It” – The rant of an angry, Agnostic, British, Indo-Pakistani woman of Muslim heritage. | .

Brilliant “rant” (not really a rant, more like good old common sense)!
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I am over members of my community putting pre-pubescent girls in a hijab when they are not even old enough to understand or give consent to this. I am over the fact that so many parents don’t understand that they are sexually objectifying their own daughter since the intention of the hijab is predominantly to conceal the sexual attraction of women from men.
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tags: the_opinionista fundamentalism islamism opinion feminism britain muslim

Susan Cain: The power of introverts | Video on TED.com

Been following Susan Cain’s work for a while – this is a lovely TED presentation she gave in Feb.2012.
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In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.
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tags: ted_conference susan_cain introversion introverts

Evgeny Morozov: The IGod: Steve Jobs’s Pursuit Of Perfection—and The Consequences. | The New Republic

Brilliant article about Steve Jobs and Apple, by Evgeny Morozov. Here’s something to think about: Jobs as Henry Ford, radically changing the landscape (or: the internet) with his inventions and innovations…
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On the surface, the car analogy seems flawless: both technologies allowed customers to do what they wanted, and boosted their autonomy, and gave them more choices about how to live their lives. But as any environmentalist, urbanplanning activist, or committed cyclist can attest, liberation was only one part of the impact that the automobile had on how we live, especially in America. Congestion, pollution, suburban sprawl, the decline of public transportation, the destruction of public space in the name of building more highways—these are only some of the less discussed effects of the automobile. Of course, the automobile did not have the same effects everywhere—compare how easy and pleasant it is to get around without a car in Portland versus Dallas—so simple appeals to technological determinism, or to the zeitgeist, or to the canonical myths about how the automobile would transform and liberate our culture, do not explain very much. Some cities and communities simply approached the automobile with the kind of philosophical sensibility that Jobs applied to his washing machine, and others did not.
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tags: evgeny_morozov steve_jobs apple innovation

The Struggle for a Bigger Paris | stephanekirkland.com

Fascinating history and analysis of the politics that have made Paris the political entity it is today. Conclusion:
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We know from history that any institutional change in the governance of cities is a long and difficult process. Today, the issue is clear, the potential solutions are limited, and the months following the presidential election are a rare political window of opportunity. It will be fascinating to see if Greater Paris is able to organize itself to meet its challenges, if it will give itself a government appropriate to the ambition it needs to have for the future, or if it will continue to wallow in the gridlock of individual interests being put before those of the metropolis.
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tags: paris stephane_kirkland amalgamation politics cities

Can a new typeface inspire greatness in a city? | SmartPlanet

Who would have thunk? Interesting video.
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A city’s typeface. It’s not the first thing I think of when I imagine ways to make a city great, but in Chattanooga, Tenn. they make a strong case for the importance of having a custom typeface for the city.
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tags: chattanooga typeface design urban_design branding smartplanet

Short film captures the importance of ‘thinking cities’ | SmartPlanet

Must-see.
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The film, “Thinking Cities,” focuses on how cities are using Information Communications Technology (ICT) to start to come up with these solutions. It highlights interesting projects in cities like Boston, Seattle, and Stockholm where ICT is being used right now to address issues like waste, energy use, and civic engagement.
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tags: cities geoffrey_west urbanization smartplanet

Egg-making stem cells found in adult women | SmartPlanet

Not surprised, actually:
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…this week, scientists revealed that adult women have ovarian stem cells that are capable of becoming eggs.
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tags: smartplanet fertility women

Tribal Plan | Metropolis Magazine

2009 article about Ziba’s (then-new) HQ, which I visited recently when I attended GOOD Ideas for Cities. It’s a knock-out space and building, very beautiful. I found the following passage intriguing, given the interest in ‘pinning’…
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The workstations are situated amid an interlocking sequence of podlike meeting rooms connected by sliding doors. It’s in these rooms that teams spend most of the workday, pinning their inspirations and ideas to the walls. “At first they were looking at one big room for everything,” says Jeff Stuhr, one of Holst’s two founders. “But we suggested a sequence of intimate spaces that you could journey through.”
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tags: pinning ziba metropolis_magazine brian_libby portland architecture design

Why Alleys Deserve More Attention – Design – The Atlantic Cities

Alleys as tight urbanism – great way to characterize them.
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In America, by the way, it’s rare that you find a shop in an alley, but this is common in Melbourne, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. Even major department stores have cut storefront windows into the back of their buildings that open onto alleys. And in Melbourne in particular, graffiti is endorsed by the city, it’s become an iconic aspect of their laneways.
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tags: atlantic_cities daniel_toole tight_urbanism alleys cities design

What’s Behind the Urban Chicken Backlash – Arts & Lifestyle – The Atlantic Cities

If I kept chickens, I wouldn’t want to slaughter them myself (much less slaughter mammals), nor would I like to have neighbors who do so. At the same time, I see some value in children “witnessing grisly scenes,” because everyone should know where their food comes from – but getting an eyeful once or twice should suffice either to deepen your thinking about taking life away or turning you into a vegetarian (or both). Doesn’t have to happen on a regular basis… But with regard to slaughter: surely there are facilities to which residents could take their animals (even ‘real’ farmers don’t all do their own butchering)?
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Perhaps no city is as divided over the chicken question as Oakland. City officials are considering allowing residents to raise and slaughter not just chickens, but goats, rabbits, ducks and other animals, in their backyards. Backers argue that it would help alleviate food deserts.

Oakland’s anti-slaughter group sees the practice as a socio-economic problem. NOBS argues that the city’s approval of the slaughter of chickens “would serve the needs of a small group of people interested in creating artisan animal products instead of serving the low-income communities.” They’ve posted flyers around the city, playing up fears of stray chickens wandering the city and children witnessing grisly scenes of animal killing.
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tags: backyard_farming urban_farming chickens atlantic_cities

Q&A: Ben Keenan on how to be creative on demand | SmartPlanet

Good strategies from Ben Keenan for tapping into your creativity:
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SP: Do you have any strategies or tips on how we can be more creative?

BK: Sure, here are five:

1. Get the question right.

Before you consider the possibilities, you need to knuckle down and articulate the problem you are trying to solve in a single sentence. A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

2. Stop yourself from trying to solve things right away.

Years of rote education has drilled the question answer response into all of us.

You need to suppress that part of you that wants recognition and reward, and consider all the ways into the problem. Fill a page full of little boxes and try and put a thought in every box. Not an idea, but a thought, anything and everything that might solve the problem. Your goal is to fill the page, not answer the question.

3. Things won’t make sense after a while and that is normal.

We are not wired to consider possibilities when confronted with a problem, we are wired to jump out of harms way, that’s why the creative process makes you feel flustered, and like you aren’t getting anywhere. Understanding this helps you push through it and just keep going, it’s only after things stop making sense that the really interesting thoughts arrive.

4. Go do something else.

After you’ve a had a burst for an hour or two, go do an expense report, your time sheets, something that requires your full concentration. While you are applying conscious thought to this task, your subconscious will be sifting through all knowledge you’ve offloaded about the problem.

5. Keep a pen and paper handy.

Once your subconscious has done its job, the answers will come to you thick and fast. Usually, if we are not having any luck on a solution, I’ll just go at it for an hour or so at night, sleep on it, and an idea will come to me while I’m on my way into work the next morning. We all do this without realizing we do it, it’s why your best ideas often happen in the shower.

SP: Lastly, are there any resources / training links for people who are interested in exercising their creative muscle?

BK: There are many, I am a hoarder of them at my Thought Police site and I regularly tweet about them on @warmcola.
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tags: smartplanet ben_keenan creativity reference how_to

The buildings are alive: in biology, designers and architects seek answers | SmartPlanet

Biomimicry in architecture, from Norman Foster’s Gherkin (which mimics the Venus Flower Basket sea sponge structure to cool the building) to Rachel Armstrong and Neil Spiller (who are working on biomimetic materials, like CO2-eating paint for exterior application) to saving Venice from sinking into the Adriatic:
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Armstrong, who is a TED fellow, also proposes to use the protocell technology on an architectural scale to save centuries-old Venice, Italy, which is gradually being reclaimed by the sea. Armstrong believes the protocell droplets could be deployed beneath the crumbling city to act as a living limestone foundation.

“We did some experiments inside the Venice lagoon with architecture students and we know it works with the Venice water,” Armstrong said. “It’s not ready, but the principles are there. It just needs some more research and development.”

All of this work is evolving at a quick pace, pushing architects, designers, biologists and other scientists to rethink how are cities and buildings mesh with the natural world. Now, using technological innovation coupled with inspiration from the biological processes of nature, these dreams are becoming a reality.
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tags: architecture biomimicry building_materials buildinggreen

Should Cities of the Future Look More to the Past? – Design – The Atlantic Cities

Interesting juxtaposition to earlier bookmark on biomimetic architecture: Richard Driehaus seems unimpressed by newfangled tech advances?
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Q: Does this, by extension, mean there is not a place for modern and more experimental visions of cities and the built environment? How do you feel about contemporary, sustainable architecture?

A: When it comes to sustainability, I welcome solutions in any form, but many of the modern, technological methods, however promising, remain unproven. The environmental value of traditional architectural techniques has been established over centuries. And, regardless of their technological efficiencies, if new buildings are constructed in a way that makes them obsolete within decades, the burden on our resources to build and rebuild our cities will be too great.

Q: You see traditional architecture as part of the increasing interest in more traditional skills (farming, canning, cooking)–can you expand on that?

A: It’s about the satisfaction that comes from meaningful work. I’ve heard the term “slow architecture.” Like the “slow food” movement, it describes an architecture whose followers care passionately about the quality of ingredients, about techniques that require practice to master, about a connection to the past and a legacy for the future, about the value (in every sense of the term) of a local focus. And, when the work is done, the intricacies of traditional architecture, like a good meal, offers so much to savor.
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The connection between taste (what we like *to* taste) vs the leap into (bio-)mimicking forms that are essentially alien to us (say, sea sponges) strikes me as having deep evolutionary roots related to survival of the species (and therefore as something that a biomimetic approach can’t ignore – because if biomimicry isn’t about *our* survival, then what is it?).

tags: architecture tradition biomimicry atlantic_cities allison_arieff

The American Scholar: Solitude and Leadership – William Deresiewicz

Great essay/ speech: Heart of Darkness, excellent sheep, smiling sharks – and a take-down of multi-tasking.
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Now that’s the third time I’ve used that word, concentrating. Concentrating, focusing. You can just as easily consider this lecture to be about concentration as about solitude. Think about what the word means. It means gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input. It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube—and just so you don’t think this is a generational thing, TV and radio and magazines and even newspapers, too—are all ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that being human throws in your way. Am I doing the right thing with my life? Do I believe the things I was taught as a child? What do the words I live by—words like duty, honor, and country—really mean? Am I happy?
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tags: multitasking american_scholar william_deresiewicz leadership inspiration solitude

The American Scholar: Uncommon Sense – Paul Goldberger

Lovely essay from 2006, Paul Goldberger on Jane Jacobs:
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Jacobs was never as eager as Mumford for acolytes, though she ended up with plenty of them, and she saw right through many of the things that were presented as consistent with her views. She didn’t even have much patience with the New Urbanists, whose philosophy of returning to pedestrian-oriented cities would seem to owe a lot to Jacobs. But she found the New Urbanists hopelessly suburban, and once said to me, with a rhyming cadence worthy of Muhammad Ali, “They only create what they say they hate.”

What Jane Jacobs really taught wasn’t that every place should look like Greenwich Village, but instead that we should look at places and figure out their essences, that we should try to understand what makes cities work organically and to think of them as natural systems that should be nurtured, not stymied. I think of her less as showing us a physical model for cities that we need to copy and more as providing a model for skepticism.
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tags: paul_goldberger jjacobs urbanism american_scholar

Say What? | Metropolis Magazine

Interesting piece by Karrie Jacobs on the word urban’s changing meaning(s) …in Austin, Texas.
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Up until recently, I hadn’t taken “lifestyle centers” seriously as places or as proto-cities. But on this trip to outermost Austin, my attitude changed. I’m not sure whether it was the perceptual magic worked by Dresher, Benedikt, and Rotondi, who literally turned my point of view around, or the shock of returning to the Aloft late on a sunny Saturday afternoon and encountering Dogtoberfest, a full-scale street fair for dogs with booths selling artisanal biscuits and doggie portraits, and a costume parade. I showed up just as hoards of people were leaving with their tutu-wearing pets. Suddenly, I understood what I was seeing. While The Domain and its ilk are not replacements for real cities, they are genuine urban places. They’re a conscious remix of the twentieth-century mall and the postwar subdivision, for a generation that wants absolutely nothing to do with either.
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tags: metropolis_magazine karrie_jacobs urbanism austin_tx

Q&A: John Maeda, president, Rhode Island School of Design | SmartPlanet

John Maeda on Twitter.
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Q: You’re very active on Twitter. In fact, you’ve said that your new book, Redesigning Leadership, is based on some of the “micro-posts” you’ve Tweeted about leadership and innovation. Why did you decide to start using Twitter?

A: First and foremost, I think of myself as an artist and designer, and I’m also the president of a college. Being the president of a college, your role is to be the authoritative leader. I own that and I embrace that fully, but at the same time, as an artist, I want to express my creativity in some shape or form. I can have a show once a year somewhere in the world and that’s okay, but every day I have to make art somehow, and making art is about taking emotion and making it into something. I found that using Twitter gives me the chance to have a gallery online where I can share different thoughts that I’m forming and thinking and struggling with. Also, I have very little time, so I use little micro-minutes to just summarize something and put it out there.
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tags: john_maeda risd creativity smartplanet interview

General Discussion – VibrantVictoria.ca Discussion Forum

Portland grows into a capital of conscience

Interesting Jan.2012 op-ed by Jeff Jahn in the Portland Tribune. Jahn is an independent curator and critic.
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Since the mid-’90s, artists and designers have emigrated to or stayed in Portland for very specific and often moral reasons. In a nutshell, it is because Portland is the first U.S. city to grow out of the adolescent attitudes of America in the second half of the 20th century. The laundry list: non-car-reliant transportation, green thinking, proximity to nature, a very non-1 percent-centric civic attitude, high-tech savvy and a permissive attitude that was essentially humanistic rather than purely capitalistic.

In other words, the original Occupy Portland started around the mid-’90s by artists and has only gathered steam since. Think of artists as canaries in the coal mine of civilization — it is a tough job, but it’s very important to watch what they do. Artists bring immense cultural cache, even jobs. Ultimately, they redirect our attention, giving us a new aesthetic and conceptual compass. Then they export those ideas in distilled, compact creative endeavors.

No city owns its artists, but a city can choose to (either) support or take its artists for granted.

To be overly simplistic, Portland became a 21st-century leader because it rejected both of the 20th century’s main models: Manhattan’s top-down corporate verticality and LA’s car-driven suburban sprawl. Instead, as a more 19th century-style city of shopkeepers and artists (defined by our citizens more than institutions), we should own the title and take care to not become complacent.
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tags: portland jeff_jahn artculture socialcritique

Human Transit: human transit (the book): introduction

Introduction to Jarrett Walker’s book, Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives. Excellent points. Eg.:
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Transit debates also suffer from the fact that today, in most of our cities, most of our decision makers are motorists. No matter how much you support transit, driving a car every day can shape your thinking in powerful subconscious ways. For example, in most debates about proposed rapid transit lines, the speed of the proposed service gets more political attention than how frequently it runs, even though frequency, which determines waiting time, often matters more than vehicle speed in determining the total time a transit trip will require. Your commuter train system will advertise that it can whisk you into the city in thirty-nine minutes, but if the train comes only once every two hours and you’ve just missed one, your travel time will be two hours and thirty-nine minutes, so it may be faster to drive or even walk.
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tags: human_transit jarrett_walker transportation planning portland