Core77

Valerie Casey reminded me to reread Paul Hawken's commencement address given at the University of Portland on May 3rd. It is impossible to pick the best sections here; the speech builds upon itself in the most beautiful way, and seems blasphemous to pick out any one or two paragraphs to paste right here.

Get inspired. Read the speech now.

Design education is not keeping pace with the growing demand for new design professionals able to operate in a range of service-based environments.

The paper, Social Animals: tomorrow's designers in today's world by Sophia Parker, published by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), argues that design education is still largely hinged on industrial principles.

Students need to be equipped with a broader range of research and communication skills, alongside their more traditional design skills, and encouraged to think more laterally about the sites and spaces where these could be used.

The report outlines six challenges for design educators.

via Dexigner

Why is it important to bring students of different expertise and from different disciplines together for creating 'good ideas'? This is the fundamental question that Professor Jayanta Chatterjee from the Indian Institute of Technology (ITT) has tackled at the Design Factory of Helsinki's new Aalto University since March '09.

During his sabbatical year, Professor Chatterjee's aim is to develop a manifesto for problem-based learning. Chatterjee has previous experience of project-based and problem-based learning, as well as student-centric learning from various courses in India.

The Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur recently designated an area at the campus for the creation of a Design Village where students may interact with local people, respond creatively to societal needs and ground their solutions in local realities while thinking globally.

>> Read article

Becky Bermont, Vice President, Media + Partners at the Rhode Island School of Design, explores in her latest column for the Harvard Business Publishing blog the foundational tools that designers employ to do their work and wonders what kind of applicability those have to business.

"I see now that designers are people who can make information emotional and visceral, who can make a bigger impact by thoughtfully marrying form and content. They are "experience perfectionists," the ones who always ask about the space a meeting will occur in so they can arrange the room and have music or images playing when people walk in. They are obsessed with materials; they can have a completely literate and thoughtful conversation about the width of a rubber band being used as a book binding, and how it will change the way the book is perceived."

>> Read article

@designersaccord is a great source of information and provocation on all things (and practice) sustainable. Won't overwhelm your client, and will give you some great links, inside info on upcoming events, and new content on the site. Adopters and lurkers all welcome!

Seymour Chwast will be in conversation with Steve Heller tomorrow night to launch a new Chronicle book, "Seymour". There are still tix available, so if you're in town you won't want to miss this.

URL: http://www.aigany.org/events/details/09SC/
Tuesday 16 June 2009
6:30–8:30PM
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St.
New York, NY 10011

If you like strategic design thinking with a healthy dose of green, check out the new CATALYST Strategic Design Review, produced by the graduate Design Management Program at Pratt Institute (chaired by the amazing Mary McBride) and edited by Erin Weber. Here's the pitch:

CATALYST is designed to spark conversation about the role of strategic design in shaping successful business. Its intent is to provide an opportunity for design leaders and innovators to share theory and best practices for a future that's economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

The inaugural issue explores New York City "as an incubator for strategic design," and takes on issues of redesigning urban school systems, green architecture, and the High Line (opened yesterday!). Core77's Allan Chochinov has a (reprinted) piece in it as well, and don't miss the "9 Things to Know About Pro Bono."

Check out the publication here (online only), and explore additional topics on the CATALYST blog.

Looking for some summertime reading? Ditch the Jackie Collins and be the design geek at the beach with one of Design Sojourn's "30 Essential Books for Industrial Designers," which avoid the usual coffee-table claptrap in favor of meatier fare authored by the likes of Kenya Hara, Don Norman, Bill Moggridge, and other heavyweights.

The books are divided into three sections: Thinking, Process, and Designer Skills, with Amazon links provided. Just be sure to keep the sand out of your Kindle.

"You have pushed yourself through a system that wasn't designed to help you." Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson addresses the graduating class at RISD.

Via Joanne Kaliontzis and Design Observer

In an incredibly affectionate and useful advice piece for design students, Jessica Helfand gets her maternal on (in a good way) with An Open Letter to Design Students Everywhere. Here's something for the tattoo parlor:

If you don't already do it, start keeping a notebook. Travel everywhere with it, as you do with things like your camera and your cell phone: consider the notebook an extension of your mind and of your studio. Do not wait to get back to your desk to write things down or, better yet, to draw them. If you draw something every day, you will find, over time, that your facility with the pencil is a huge boon to thinking visually. If the notebook is with you all the time, you can afford to be a little unfocused. Later on, you'll look at what you wrote and saved and drew and you will realize that without even trying, you created a time-capsule that is, itself, a manifestation of what mattered. Instant, retroactive focus.

For all you quintessentialists out there--and you know who you are ("Oh, this is the BEST espresso maker;" "oh, the BEST bluetooth headset is...")--here's your antidote: The Worst Magazine.

Now you can brag from the other side.

Sir Ken Robinson at Creative Company Conference in Amsterdam. In this presentation he talks about his view on creativity, the educational system and his new book "The Element". The video is sometimes a little bit shaky because it was done with a flip HD.

In Business Design: The curriculum of 2012, Ryan Jacoby offers some informed fantasy in developing a complete concept for an educational program, with credits, practica, course codes, titles, and of course, nicknames.

Putative students will select courses from Prototyping, Piloting and Living in Beta (Mo Beta, 4 credits), Design for Emotional Connection (Not Ads, 3 credits), and Organizational Design and Culture (Charts & Farts, 3 credits) among many others. For the practica, in Entrepreneurial & Intrapraneurial Finance students would be required to raise money for (or bootstrap) a $25,000 venture, while in Creating Options, students will act as a Business Unit president in a dynamic simulation and create and decide amongst many options as the context and competition changes all around them..

Ryan's detailed out the whole program, so check it out. And someone fund it!

You know Project M from their latest Buy a Meter project and John Bielenberg's "thinking wrong" mantra (amongst many others - projects and matras!) This summer, they're bringing the show to Falls Village, CT, home and office of Winterhouse, where twelve (lucky) participants will have the opportunity to work on a unique design project. Here's the pitch:

We are pleased to announce that Project M is coming to Winterhouse from August 15-30, 2009. Twelve select individuals will get to participate in a unique collaborative enterprise to create a single design project of lasting value in a rural community. This project is sponsored by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand of Winterhouse, with the active participation of John Bielenberg, the founder of Project M. Design Observer will provide an interesting array of visiting critics and will publish the project. Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation will provide input and serve as an advisor. Application deadline is June 15 with notification of selected participants by June 30. Cost is $1500 plus travel and expenses.

Critics will be Michael Bierut, Julie Lasky, Alice Twemlow, Lorraine Wild, and Core77's Allan Chochinov. Get more info and application guidelines at the site.

Also from the NYU's Interactive Technology Program spring show, a remarkable take on the venerable drum machine. Steven Litt has gone extra analog with his CrudBox, which drives hacked doorbell solenoids to bang on pieces of scrap material, creating a more organic sound than what usually emerges from a digital sequencer. The sounds produced can then be processed through all manner of effects pedals, which are also contained in the rather mysterious looking hard case body.

Definitely a different experience from the typical electro-beat sound, and you've got to love the dramatic red lighting.

The end-of-year show at NYU's Interactive Technology Program (ITP) is generally a mixed bag of art, design, and technological innovation, saturated with a sense of geeky wonder reminiscent of the coolest science fair ever. This years' was no exception.

Core77's survey of the 40+ student projects filling the Manhattan gallery was overwhelming, charming, and occasionally thrilling -- a good example being Christian Cerrito's Cobots, collaborative robots that require human interaction to properly function.

I recall a quote from John Thackara that pointedly articulates one of contemporary design's biggest opportunities (and challenges). He said, in essence: "Whatever you decide to do, don't do it alone.... We're all designers now." The idea of collaboration is nothing new, but truly productive collaborative design for sustainability's sake is easier said than done. British designer and thinker Alastair Fuad-Luke believes "co-designing," designing together, makes good sense not just for design's sake, but as a generative process with the potential to improve markets, economies, societies, and our environments. Fuad-Luke is the author of multiple books on the subject of sustainable design and design activism, and leads workshops on co-designing to teach a process in which each participant is both teacher and student.

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Famous for its public education system and a culture of risk aversion, the small Nordic state of Finland is recasting three major universities in Helsinki as a global hot spot for innovation.

This year, the Finnish government will merge three top universities in three diverse fields: Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics, and the University of Arts and Design in Helsinki. At first called Innovation University--sparking some debate about its relationship to the industrial sector--the new institution has been named Aalto University, after the legendary Finnish architect and designer, Alvar Aalto.

>> Read article (Seed Magazine)

(Associated Aalto "factories": Design Factory, Media Factory and Service Factory)

Material Intersections latest podcast is all about blending digital media (video that responds to stimuli like human interaction, light and sound) with physical forms, such as the interior of a car or a wall.

"In the architectural world, a structure is traditionally created to remain static and unchanged for years," said Hess. "In this podcast, we use 3D technology to explore the idea of an adaptive environment and how a form that interacts with something external, such as light or human touch, continuously changes rather than remaining stagnant."

You can watch or download the podcasts here at Art Center's CMTEL website.

Upcoming podcast topics include Sustainability, Slow Tech, Lightweight, and Durable - so stay tuned!

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Project Masiluleke, or Project M for short, has been a cause celebre in several design subfields since its primary announcement last October. The project, which centers on text messaging to distribute information about HIV/AIDS treatment in deeply afflicted parts of South Africa, has been warmly praised by interaction designers, proponents of socially conscious design, advocates of technological leapfrogging in the developing world, and much of the design and innovation press as well (like Fast Company...and us).

If there were any concerns that this was a well-meaning but impractical solution that succeeded better in the minds of designers than the hands of users, though, they can be confidently put to rest, as this special report on health care and technology in April 16th's Economist points out.

The article, aimed at as pragmatic an audience as any publication on earth, introduces the project with a touch of skepticism, observing that "modern wizardry like molecular diagnostics and digital medical records seem irrelevant" in much of the developing world, and describing initial doubts about the effectiveness of high-tech to improve lives in the poor places of the world, by none other than Bill Gates.

It then proceeds to note that "the response has been spectacular," and outlines numerous related health care projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere that are succeeding in providing services to populations that had formerly been written off as unreachable:

The most promising applications of mHealth for now are public-health messaging, stitching together smart medical grids, extending the reach of scarce health workers and establishing surveillance networks for infectious diseases. The use of the technology is spreading: a recent report funded by the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation, two charities, documented more than four dozen projects across the developing world.

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"Life expectancy growing longer, need to maintain the coherence of crumbling social ties, emergency situations - disasters, poverty - arising all over the world : many great challenges are looming over our modern-day societies.
Design must strive to provide collectively thought-up responsible answers to these emerging issues by making use of its global and systemic vision of the world."

The Master's Program in Ethically Responsible Innovation at the L'Ecole de Design in Nantes France "trains designers to find their voice in a context of ever-changing habits".

This unusual design school also offers degrees in Cross Cultural Design, New Eating Habits, Mutations of the Built Environment, Tangible Interfaces, and New Mobility.

The Financial Times has published a feature story on the brand new Singularity University.

"In a spare one-room office at Nasa's Silicon Valley campus, a small band of futurists is plotting to save the world. The means are not a revolutionary technology or a new world order (though both may be byproducts). Rather, a new, pseudo-academic institution called Singularity University is going to solve our grand challenges: poverty, hunger, energy scarcity and climate change. Among others. Through a combination of techno-optimism, wide-eyed idealism and belief in the perfectibility of human beings, these well-connected geeks are creating an institution meant to legitimise their most extreme thinking."

>> Read article

Aart van Bezooyen's site, Material Stories, has just published its first newsletter (as a PDF). The theme is "growth," and it's filled with great links and info. Here's the pitch:

Welcome to the first issue of Material Stories quarterly newsletter! This first edition is all about Growth. Growth in nature has always been a great source of inspiration for the design of the human environment. Not only for its precious resources such as its water, oil, woods, etc. - nature also shows us how diverse worlds of flora and fauna can be in balance with itself, something which inspires many sustainability thinkers.

Read the whole thing here.

Thonet-stoel repaired by Harco Rutgers. Photograph by Leo Veger

You've seen Platform 21's Repair Manifesto before. If you will be in Milan this month don't miss the Premsela Design Forum, a discussion on the value of repairing things in a throwaway society:

At the Design Forum in Milan on Wednesday 22 April, Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion, will focus on an all-but-forgotten alternative to recycling: repairing broken and damaged items.

Speakers Piet Hein Eek (designer), Corinne Poux-Bernard (Director of Innovations, Hermes), Satyendra Pakhale (cultural nomad) and Joanna van der Zanden (Artistic Director, Platform21), led by moderator Marco Bevolo (independent author), will share their views on the value of repair in the context of the global economic crisis.

>>View all Core77 Milan Design Week 09 Coverage

Click below to read more about the manifesto.

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"Tapping the world's innovation hot spots" is the title of a recent article in Harvard Business Review just sent to me from Finland. The article looks at different national models of innovation currently in play around the world and evaluates them, ranks them and shares the lessons for business. But that's not the point of this post however, since the reason it was sent to me from the Helsinki School of Economics was in order to point out my own continent hopping tour of the highlighted locations - San Francisco and Silicon Valley from 2005 to 2007, Singapore since 2007 and when tonight's flight takes off, Helsinki, Finland from 2009 to ?

We've already covered the emergence of Helsinki's innovative Aalto University this summer before as well had a tour of the multidisciplinary creative space at the Design Factory on Core77. Now we get a chance to be a fly on the wall in this exciting space at such a transformational time. The Financial Times writes on 29th March,

"There are certain fields of technology, design and business where we cannot live without each other and this has been true for the last 15 years or so," says Kalevi Ekman, vice-rector of Helsinki University of Technology. "And the merger is based on the good experiences we have already had through co-operation." [...] For Prof Ekman, overseeing progress in the laid-back, cross-fertilising, experimental space of the design factory, the small size of Finnish society and a lack of hierarchical thinking are aids to business innovation.

"We are so small, so far away; we have a bad climate and no treasures in the earth. We don't have anything except intellectual capital and good education.

"It is often said that Finland is not really a country, it is a club," he says. "Here, if a student is working on a project for Nokia, they can pick up their mobile phone and have a chat with the CEO."
[...]
But the team is convinced that, alongside their mainstream activities, most disciplines can benefit from the happy accidents that result from random, circumstantial encounters with different worlds.

For the students, says Prof Ekman, there will be a real world pay-off in learning through project-based, problem-solving study to respect and communicate and co-operate with professionals who have different mindsets.

"We can't really explain what will happen at Aalto because we don't know," admits Prof Ekman, with frank laughter. "But we are trying to build something unique here."

Similarly, I don't know what will happen, what I'll learn and see when I start sitting at my desk at the Design Factory on Monday or working on a research project with the professors at the HSE for Tekes, but it seems like its going to be a great adventure!

Wish we had trips like this back in school! Core77 just hung with the 12 industrial design students from Georgia Tech as part of their ATLtoNYC non-stop tour of New York design studios. Check out where they've been and where they're going here. Thanks for coming by!