Everyday Objects with Jonathan Callan

In this installation at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory, Jonathan Callan uses books to replicate, what at first glance, looks like a cross-section of a felled tree. Viewers find Callan has erected his entire installation out of coverless books that are drilled together to create an organic structure which beings to approach a painting or drawing. There's talk of how the work encourages viewers to consider how we now address traditional modes of relaying knowledge such as through the use of textbooks, encyclopedias and atlases but I can't help think about the way he's taken the book off its pedestal and has us focus on its essential materiality. He moves us away from the cerebral to the sensual, from spirit to soul. He is literally shaping the way we define, use, and think about everyday objects. Tasty stuff.

Several Circles

"the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally...simultaneously stable and unstable...loud and soft...a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.” -Vasily Kandinsky, on the circle

Inforgraphics Resource

Good Magazine Fantastic resource for inspiration and information (visualization).

Service Design and End of Life Care

Given the fact that none of us wants to die alone, in pain, or be forced to accept whatever we can get, combined with the potential for healthcare reform to aid in new ways of thinking and delivering services, the topic of "end of life" care is both a critical and challenging project for designers who are committed to improving quality of life and the health of our society. This article, Forget the Euthanasia Talk -- End-of-Life Care is Needed, by Rafael Sciullo, president and CEO of Family Hospice and Palliative Care, which serves 11 counties in Western Pennsylvania, had me pausing to ask myself, "as a designer who is committed to clearing pathways and enabling access to resources, what can and am I doing to develop services that address this need?" In an age where business is focused on the next big thing, generically and eloquently termed "innovation", who says there isn't ample opportunity to address an essential social issue such as the end of our lives? On a cooler, more cerebral level, designers who are prone to finding the most difficult problem or tangle of concerns to tease apart, why wouldn't we take on this challenge of dealing with the delicate taboo of dying? Everyone goes through it. The stress and logistics of preparing for and moving through the process is enormous. By and large we have nothing in place to help us offset the concerns and help us make informed decisions. It is one of the ultimate problems to solve--a combination of emotional, economic, and logistical needs between an individual and all the people that surround and care for them. Why are we racing to to make a better dog food bag when the simple act of dying is so desperately in need of help? More importantly, what am I going to do about it?

How to write a design brief

Not sure anyone will find this helpful but this article was written by Peter L. Philips and submitted to the Design Council UK. Could be helpful if you're getting out of the gate.

Who doesn't love Man Ray?

Another example of Tejo Remy

After the rag chair, I sniffed a little further to find another piece by Tejo Remy. This time part of NYC's "Reclaiming Design" project from 2007. What I love about this is as much the playfulness as the provocation about fencing ourselves in or out. The tri-fecta of function, critique and pleasure.

Rag Chair by Tejo Remy

This chair is layered from the contents of 15 bags of rags. It arrives ready made but the user has the option to recycle its own discarded clothes to be included in the design. Found this on Droog's Site and it made me very happy. Now the question becomes, why?

Design Trust for Public Space

Design Trust projects bring together neighborhoods, public agencies, and design professionals to find innovative opportunities for change, making the city more beautiful, sustainable, functional, and available to all. Since their founding in 1995, the Design Trust has completed over 25 projects in all five boroughs, serving and engaging a diverse set of communities.

Their mission is committed to improving the design, utility, and understanding of New York City's parks, plazas, streets, and public buildings. They bring together neighborhoods, public agencies, and design professionals to find innovative opportunities for change, making the city more beautiful, sustainable, functional, and available to all.

The Design Trust is the only public space organization that gives city agencies and community groups the means to work collaboratively with private sector design and other professionals. They select projects from across the five boroughs and assemble top-notch cross-disciplinary teams to bring innovation to urban space challenges. These public/private partnerships generate powerful and unexpected working relationships, creating remarkable solutions to complicated public space issues.

Submit or Commit

Sometimes I wonder if you can have one without the other but recognize although they are similar they are two very different things. It seems that committing is about the bond or pledge that is made between things whereas the focus of submitting is in the giving over to something else--the releasing of one's sole authority.

Lunch in NYC and farms in Philadelphia

...a food blog by the architectural firm, Front Studio that tries to remind us to stop, chill, breathe the air, and among all things eat.

They're also working on an interesting farming project proposal called "Farmadelphia", in which Philadelphia's vacant and abandoned lots are turned into a thriving agricultural zone – complete with crops grown for local consumption and soil remediation, and with an eye toward future tourism, including surreal petting zoos, hay rides, and even corn mazes.

Koolhaas Houselife

Just because...
Ascension
Automata

The Sustainable Everyday Project

The Sustainable Everyday Project Sustainable Everyday (SEP) proposes an open web platform to stimulate social conversation on possible sustainable futures…
The SEP network is organized around 3 core activities.

The promotion of a Scenarios laboratory where new visions of sustainable everyday life are proposed and discussed.

The constitution of a Catalogue of cases showing examples of social innovation from all other the world developing original solutions promising in terms of sustainability.

The organization of a traveling exhibition to meet public events, confront with close scientific communities and give visibility to new visions of sustainable daily living.

Projects and case studies address such issues as housing, aging, food security, commuting and transportation, learning and socializing. One case study includes, Second Home which asks:

How do mental disabled people get a job where they feel needed?
Where do people with less financial means have the possibility to go out for dinner and music.
Where do lonesome people go to find a friend or just being together with other if they do not fell like they belong in this society?
If you do not have financial possibilities or facilities at home, where can you go to make clothes of your own, make pottery, draw after models, use wood shop facilities and so on?

Part II: Senior Healthcare | Southwark Circle

Participle is innovating new approaches to ageing. Since September 2007 they have been working in a unique public-private partnership with Southwark Council, Sky and the Department for Work & Pensions, to design new services that will improve the quality of life and well-being of older people. Working with over 150 older people, they have developed Southwark Circle, a membership organisation that helps people take care of household tasks, forge social connections and find new directions in life. Open to all, regardless of levels of need or income, Southwark Circle is a model of how future services might look across Britain.

This is a social reform challenge, not just a public service reform challenge. The question is not just “What can public services do to improve quality of life and well-being for older people?” but rather “How can a locality mobilize public, private, voluntary and community resources to help all older people define and create quality of life and well-being for themselves?”. This requires radical change in the way resources are defined (beyond the formal social care system) and the way services and systems are configured (away from a near exclusive focus on care and towards building relationships and participation).

Public funding is just one among several flows of resources that go into the support of older people from unpaid carers, voluntary groups, paid-for services, and peer-to-peer support. Public services and systems must be re-designed accordingly. An effective approach must mobilise resources and activity from all these sources, not just redesign the public component.

Participle has developed early answers to these challenges in this project. They have worked with over 150 older people and family members over the last nine months.

The project started with two months of user research with older people and their families, generating insights into their hopes, fears, needs and aspirations. Based on these insights, they generated over 50 ideas for new services. They decided to focus on a service that would create a rich third age, and have spent the last five months refining our proposition, developing prototypes of the service and co-designing with older people and their families. They have tested models of the service with users and recruited people to take part in a rough trial of the service. They have developed a business case, received initial investment and will start to build the actual service, continuing to test with users over the next few months. Responding to demand, we plan to launch the service as a social enterprise in Southwark in early 2009. They also plan to work with additional local authorities to develop a national model.

Part I: Senior Healthcare | Helping our elders live independently for longer in their home environment

With the US elderly population potentially doubling by 2030 from 36 million to 72 million; an estimated 45% drop in formal or professional caregivers over the next 30 years; and a national health expenditure projected to rise from $2T in 2005 to an estimated $4.1T by 2016, it's clearly become a necessity to think innovatively around services for our growing senior citizen population. Currently, 78% of all at-home, long-term care is provided by informal caregiving networks i.e. friends and family members. As seniors push to live independently for longer in their home environment, the effort on the part of these caregivers creates enormous responsibility and even burden, which in the end may not be sustainable. With a growing senior population living longer, the strain on dwindling financial and caregiving channels, we may find ourselves at a breaking point very soon.

Right now, there's considerable effort going into rethinking how services could and should be provided. We're starting to consider new distribution models for federal dollars as well as some intriguing ideas around co-operative services between seniors' social and local networks. Below is a summmary of a case study sponsored by Harvard's Kennedy School: Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The study looks at a new distribution of federal dollars in China.

The government created "Purchasing Services for Senior Citizens at Home," to ameliorate the difficulties of older persons living alone. Rather than involving itself in the details of providing services to the elderly, the government supported creation of this program to manage daily operations. It secured cooperation with local civil organizations and subsidized them for performing functions that were previously carried out by government. It has been successful since inception as it is grounded in extensive social participation.

Services are now "purchased" by either individuals or enterprises. Many elderly do not pay at all; the services are "purchased" for them. The word "purchase" is used uniquely, as purchasing is often entirely subsidized by the government. Any qualified senior can receive one hour of services at government expense. Seniors who do not meet the requirements for services can still participate as many services are offered by volunteers. Those who can afford to purchase services may choose to buy additional services on their own. Additionally, an emergency telephone number "81890" is available for older people who live alone.

experimenta

Experimenta is a knowledge production unit operating in design, architecture and design culture focusing on inclusive, collaborative works that support the advancement of contemporary culture. They're doing some beautiful and thoughtful work in the urban realm and advancing the conversation and examples of placemaking.

Their field of action is contemporary cultural production, observed from an inclusive, multidisciplinary and transversal perspective. Experimenta’s activity combines critical thinking, concept development and creative up-to-dateness, resulting in a consistent and incisive intervention in the social, cultural and economic contexts it engages.

Public Services by Design | by the Design Council UK

The UK Design Council's Chairman, Sir Michael Bichard, is championing a new program called Public Services by Design. He believes there are three key ways in which design can make public services better.

1. It can redesign the way we deliver our services allowing us to “build or reshape our services around citizens, around clients, around customers.”
2. It can help the development of better policy “ensuring that ideas are tested before having scarce resources invested in them on a national basis.”
3. “Design can help us in the public services to be more innovative. We need to be conscious that today’s problems are just not going to be addressed by yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s solutions...we need a whole new approach to policy over the 10 years.”

Service Thinking at live|work

I've started receiving a newsletter from the London-based service design consultancy, live|work. Outlined here is a way of reframing the design process to move past a mass production model towards a post-industrial service model. Their three main points:
1. Put people at the heart of services
2. Create networks that enable services
3. Establish sustainability as the bottom line

thinkpublic

What's not going right in London nowadays in design. Here's another example at thinkpublic of great work being done in the public sector.

Inflatable Street Art

This work by Joshua Allen Harris uses trashed materials that have been sown together and placed strategically over subway grates to create some amazing creatures which come to life as the wind fills their bodies. They're more than clever concoctions. If you watch them for awhile you start to get a feel for the struggle they're enduring to stay alive. I can relate pretty easily to this.

Fish in the Sky by Nothing Design

This work by Nothing Design was part of Droog Design's Urban Play event in Amsterdam. As always, I was about two months late in finding out about the event, but I think something like this could have application in Pittburgh when it comes to generating ideas for community-based projects. Then again it could just provide some inspiration for some good ole-fashioned disruptive behavior.

Delicious Information is up and running

I left my position as a Human Factors Specialist in IDEO's Boston office last week. The economy is weak with everyone scrambling for work; it's the middle of winter; and I don't know if my skills and talent add up to more than two nickels. But as a friend of mine told me last year when he decided to pursue a career in print design after finding a sweet niche in the digital world, "I guess I'm looking for a reverse commute."

Regardless of everything IDEO had to offer from its staggering brain power to the breadth of projects, I never quite got into the groove of the private sector. It made the continuously long hours of discussing brand strategy and ROI hard to feel passionate about. With a heavy heart we all took the plunge and decided to break-up. When friends ask me how I feel, I say, "I feel everything." I feel sad and disappointed that I don't get more time learning from the best. I feel relieved and liberated from the stress of needing to give myself over to products and strategies I couldn't fully commit to. I feel hopeful that I will return to my path in the public sector designing products, services and environments that enable people to connect to the worlds around them. I feel like myself again.

With that, Delicious Information has been resurrected. It will be my own little private/public Think Tank. Going into the mix–any and all ideas that I'm stewing about that relate to me re-claiming my sanity or losing it; to creativity at large; to smart, critical design; to improving the health of our urban environments; to paving the way for shared services; to remembering it's relationships that matter above all else; to my quest for crazy delightful imaginative "what I wouldn't do to be in a space like that" places; to continuing the conversation on what makes a place a place; to disruptive behavior that doesn't shy aware from conflict; to examples of quiet thoughtful resolution. In other words, I'm looking for some inspiration to keep me from slipping so quickly down that black hole I seem to be so fond of. Ideas welcome.

project mlab

My friend and co-worker at IDEO, David Stychno, turned me onto mlab
when I laid on him that I was leaving IDEO to change the world in other ways.