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.