The Vine

Design psychologist (and Vine speaker and adviser) Toby Israel shares a touching, personal account of how environments influence wellness and healing.

Diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, she began shaping her “treatment journey” by redesigning her surroundings. It started with a bedroom makeover, but also (and perhaps more significantly) included the choice of a luxurious, embroidered robe to wear during radiation treatments—an empowering alternative to the drab, impersonal hospital-issued gowns. (I can attest, vicariously, to the gown phenomenon.)

I won’t give away too much of her story, but those robes are now helping to form a community of support among breast cancer victims.

Congrats, Toby, on your full recovery. And thanks for sharing your inspiration with others.

With TED 2012 kicking off next week and awarding its annual TED Prize not to an individual, but rather to the idea of promoting “The City 2.0,” the video below seemed like a perfect tie-in.

Urbanized, the third installlment of Gary Hustwit’s design film trilogy, is a feature-length documentary about the design of cities, featuring commentary from some of the world’s foremost architects, planners and policymakers—Rem Koolhaas, Eduardo Paes, Norman Foster and Oscar Niemeyer, to name a few.

In the filmmakers’ own words:

Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain.

Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren’t created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live. By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.

The film is being screened at festivals and events in North America and Europe, with more dates to be announced. You can also stream it online for a fee, or rent it from Netflix or iTunes. And the trailer is below.

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Rick Mockler—an intriguing guy whose background includes creation of both social and physical communities—wrote to me a while back about Apple’s proposed new headquarters. In particular, he noted the contrast between Apple’s insular, auto-centric, fortress design and Facebook’s declared plans to knit its campus into the surrounding community.

Rick was ahead of that story (I was slow to post), and since then L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne has voiced a similar response.

“Though the planned building has a futuristic gleam,” Hawthorne writes, “in many ways it is a doggedly old-fashioned proposal, recalling the 1943 Pentagon building as well as much of the suburban corporate architecture of the 1960s and ’70s. And though Apple has touted the new campus as green, its sprawling form and dependence on the car make a different argument.”

The circular building, Hawthorne concludes, “is essentially one very long hallway connecting endlessly with itself.” He could just as well have been describing the prevailing approach—among many corporations; I’m not picking on Apple—to office parks everywhere.

Both projects are still in the design stage. Based on what we see so far, though, Facebook’s plan is the one that’s got me clicking “Like.”

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, speaking at The Vine in Napa, asked the audience to raise their hands if they considered themselves an artist. In a room of 200 people, maybe a dozen responded.

If you ask a class of kindergarteners the same question, he observed, every hand goes up. So where, along the path from childhood to adulthood, do we start believing the lie that we’re not artistic and creative?

It’s a false belief that’s instilled and reinforced by many different sources—our own selves among them. I’ll allow that most do so unwittingly and with the best of intentions, but it’s a lie nonetheless. And far too many of us buy into it.

It’s fitting (and no coincidence), then, that profound insights into creativity can be found in children’s literature, as I was recently reminded while reading with my daughter.

Ish is the wonderful story of Ramon, a young boy who loves to draw—until a critical remark by his older brother causes him to fixate on all the ways his pictures are not “right.”

Fortunately Ramon has someone who believes in him, a younger sister who helps him see the beauty and meaning in his “ish” drawings. His trees, while not perfect, are tree-ish. His silly feelings are expressed in images that are silly-ish. And when he begins to write, even though he’s not sure if he’s writing poems, he knows they’re poem-ish. And that’s enough.

As the author Peter Reynolds tells it, “Thinking ish-ly allowed his ideas to flow freely.”

Now, of course structure and order and precision matter. I don’t want my dentist coloring outside the lines while performing a root canal. But an over-emphasis on exactitude can be the very thing that bottlenecks our creativity.

Jim Collins has famously pointed out that “good is the enemy of great”—that our willingness to settle for good prevents us from achieving greatness. But so too is perfect the enemy of great.

The next time you find yourself hitting a creative wall, think of Ramon.

Think ish-ly.

We may find out.

Facebook is relocating its corporate headquarters from upscale Palo Alto to the decidedly more gritty, blue-collar community of Belle Haven in Menlo Park. And their design plan, from the sounds of it, involves knitting the campus (formerly a cloistered compound that housed Sun Microsystems) more closely into the surrounding community—physically and socially.

That process began this past Saturday with an “urban planning hack-a-thon.” Ryan White of Fast Company’s Co.Design participated, and he writes of the experience:

“Some 150 architects, designers, and students forfeited their Saturday and wired in for a 12-hour draft-a-thon that produced a bevy of ideas for connecting the isolated Facebook campus with the surrounding community and adjacent wetlands, as well as suggestions for redeveloping the area with better transit, denser mixed-use housing, and lively retail and business districts. …

“Facebook says it wants to change the fortress vibe and embrace the community. So to kick things off on Saturday, designers took morning bus tours of the adjacent Belle Haven neighborhood — several dozen local residents came along to lend their thoughts — and then broke into Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green teams. Teams of 20 to 40 each rolled up their T-shirts and began cranking out as many hand sketches and digital models as they could before an after-dinner deadline: a show-your-work presentation before a packed assembly of fellow architects, Facebook reps, Menlo Park city officials, and a sprinkling of nearby residents. The day’s mission, as Norman tells it: ‘creating a sense of community’ — or perhaps, more to the point, to create a larger sense of community, one that very conspicuously features Facebook. …

“Designers repeatedly sought ways to transform the area immediately adjoining the Facebook campus into a dynamic ‘hub’ of restaurants, retail and transit, a kind of physical manifestation of the company’s reputation for knitting people together.”

Readers of this blog will have already noted the myriad political, zoning and funding obstacles that stand in Facebook’s way—welcome to our world—and indeed Menlo Park’s mayor is anticipating loud, contentious opposition when the design concepts are presented at the next City Council meeting.

Undoubtedly it will be years before the fullness of the plan is realized, and many of the project’s rough edges (rough in a good sense, as in creating traction, not splinters) will be sanded down along the way. Such is the reality of urban redevelopment.

But when the world’s largest cultivator of digital community turns its attention to the physical realm, we should all be watching their progress with great interest.

And rooting for them to succeed.

[ NB: the rendering above is one of multiple concepts generated at the charrette, not the actual plan. ]

Much has been written of Las Vegas’s CityCenter, ranging from rapturous to scathing.

Reality lies somewhere in between, and I think Paul Goldberger may have nailed it best here.

For all of its modern architectural splendor and LEED credentials, from a planning standpoint CityCenter is no more urban—in the Holly Whyte walkable, accessible, inviting sense—than its kitschy neighbors up and down the Strip.

Or as Goldberger so eloquently puts it: “CityCenter is the Las Vegas you already know, but in modernist drag.”

Don’t get me wrong, the place is spectacular. It’s well worth visiting. I’m just not sure it’s worth emulating.

Photo credit: Trey Campbell

Hat tip to Amie MacPhee for calling our attention to Coolhaus, a mobile purveyor of architecturally inspired ice cream sandwiches.

Coolhaus is the brainchild of food architects (“farchitects”) Natasha Case and Freya Estreller, who bought and renovated an old mail truck found on Craigslist. Decked out in chrome rims (or Rem’s, ha ha), a pink top, and a fold-down bar and table, the truck regularly appears at Los Angeles area events and festivals, drawing crowds by tweeting its locations to followers (a la the famous Kogi BBQ truck).

Their menu is an homage to modern architects, featuring selections like the Frank Behry, Mies Vanilla Rohe, Richard Meyer Lemon, and Oatmeal Cinnamoneo.

The marketing and merchandising are extremely clever, to be sure. But underneath it all, what appeals most to me is the simple pleasure of people flocking to the ice cream truck — a grownup reincarnation of one of childhood’s most enduring memories.

This is no accident; Coolhaus is a product with social engagement baked in. When describing the company’s core characteristics, the website declares Coolhaus to be “a thinker about reclaiming public and urban space for eating and gathering.”

And when the eating and gathering involves something as decadent as what you see here, we say all the better.

NB: There’s a great firsthand account of the Coolhaus dining experience here. And more photos here.

The Vine held its second salon at IDEO earlier this week. In a previous post I described the collaborative process that our workshop was built upon. This time I’ll keep it topical, and I want to highlight one theme in particular that I found most resonant:

The notion of culture as community.

IDEO’s general manager Tom Kelley spoke about the significance of an organization’s verbal language vs. body language. (And it holds just as true for communities.) Your verbal language is what’s on your website, how you describe your company, and what you say you value. Your body language is how you behave, and it shows up in the way you treat customers, employees, partners and the community around you. When your verbal and body language are incongruous, people will notice—and the body language is what they’ll interpret as the “real” you.

John Foster, head of talent and organization for IDEO, paraphrased Marshall McLuhan in reminding us, “You are the message.” All of us, as individuals and as organizations, can be incubators (or inhibitors) of community through behavior. If you are the message, what message are you sending?

Systems designer Patrice Martin then observed that great organizations (or brands, or causes) attract personality with personality. This starts with being distinct and genuine, to be sure, but it goes beyond that. It also requires the willingness to polarize and the guts to declare, “We’re not scared to lose you.”

The common thread running through these messages would appear to be authenticity…and that’s certainly at the heart of it. But underlying authenticity, I believe, is alignment. It’s being clear in the what, and grounded in the why, of all that you’re trying to accomplish. Everything else flows from that.

Thank you, IDEO, for two stimulating and mind-expanding salons. Thank you James Hardie and Target for sponsoring them. And thank you to everyone who participated and brought them to life.

A new series of salons is in the works. More to come.

Michael Cannell has an entertaining piece in Fast Company about the (not incidental) connection between architectural and footwear design.

As he points out, “What are shoes, after all, but mini buildings for your feet?”

To offer one illustration: the Eamz shoe, inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’ iconic chair.

What’s even more interesting, to me anyway, is the shoe’s backstory. (It has a ring of mythology to it, but, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.)

As the story goes, designer Rem D. Koolhaas—nephew of the Rem Koolhaas—had a broken heart.

In his attempt to win the girl back, he downsized architecture “to its smallest and most vulnerable scale, that of a woman’s foot.” The girl, alas, was gone. But a shoe company was born.

Following up on this previous post, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve arranged a private event at the Data + Art exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.

On Thursday, April 9, from 4:30–6:00pm, Dan Goods will lead a discussion and Q&A session about the ideas behind this extraordinary project.

You’re invited to attend, and you’re encouraged to bring colleagues as well.

If you ever feel overwhelmed by the volume and velocity of Too Much Information (and who doesn’t?), you’ll find this to be a profound and eye-opening experience. The artists describe it as a “curiosity shop” encompassing weird science, animation, images and music.

Three things to note:

1. There will be a $7 fee, which is payable at the door.
2. Here’s where you’ll find info about directions and parking.
3. Advance sign-ups are not required, but if you’re going, drop me an email indicating who and how many. It’s helpful to know.

We hope to see you there.

Allison Arieff has sparked considerable discussion and debate with her two latest blog posts—What Will Save the Suburbs? and a part-two follow up piece in response to the comments generated.

At issue is what to do with swaths of suburban/exurban land cleared for development during the housing boom, now sitting empty or only partially built. Proposed solutions range from bulldozing the sites and allowing nature to take over, to repurposing structures for alternate uses (schools or low-income housing, for example), to doing nothing at all and simply letting the market return (eventually) on its own.

Wherever you fall on the spectrum, two things strike me as particularly noteworthy.

1. The issue is generating a lot of discussion—Allison tells me these posts elicited three times the usual volume of response.

2. The tone of the discussion is frequently—and distressingly, although not altogether surprisingly—acrimonious. There is more than a geographical divide between urban and suburban dwellers, and the snarkiness flows in both directions. (Full disclosure: some of the sniping comes from within my own organization, where one colleague dismissed Allison’s posts as examples of elitist condescension.)

If you tune out the rancor, however, moderate voices offer some genuinely helpful (and hopeful) solutions. Many of the comments, for example, focused on zoning changes that would allow for a mix of uses—making it possible to establish home-based businesses in a residential area.

One reader writes: “Allowing suburban homeowners to add certain business uses to their property would change the suburbs profoundly. Suddenly, your subdivision might have a coffee shop or a day care in what was formerly a McMansion, which the subdivision residents could walk to.”

On a larger scale, others advocate the need for long-term, integrated solutions that will help connect urban cores with “edge” development, making the edges less of a bedroom community and more of an organic extension by incorporating public transportation and mixed-use planning and design.

Granted, these are complex and thorny issues, and it will take a lot more than blog chatter to solve them.

But as we grapple with the housing meltdown and attempt to engineer a wiser, saner model, the discussion is being held.

And that’s a very good thing.

Photo by Schafphoto

From Andrea Learned:

Mama Shelter, a new hotel in Paris, was just mentioned in a well-regarded consumer trendspotting publication:

http://springwise.com/weekly/2008-11-20.htm#mamashelter

Here’s a clip:

Created by the Trigano family—founders of Club Med—along with Parisian philosopher Cyril Aouizerate and designer Philippe Starck, Mama Shelter combines modern, technology-enabled accommodation with a friendly, communal vibe. Each morning a board lists local cultural events, and a variety of live performances take place in the hotel as well. Dining options range from a communal table to cold cabinets stocked with meals available for in-room candlelight dining 24/7. Mama Shelter’s rooms vary from 15 square meters to 35 square meters, priced starting at EUR 79 per night—very affordable by Parisian standards.

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The key trend-worthy and gender aware points: a team of thought leaders (in a variety of disciplines – and including a philosopher) developed/designed it, and they focused on creating a local/communal – as well as high design experience. These things speak to the feminine brain traits of potential guests who are looking ever more carefully at their travel decisions from a sustainable/value/cozy perspective. It goes beyond the linear points like: “what hotel have we always used” on the corporate account, or which one screams luxury/status. Mama Shelter speaks to the new “conspicuous consumption” (as defined by Nate Garvis in October).

I believe there is huge power in developing such cross-industry/discipline thought leader teams (with The Vine being a larger scale model) for every development/project. It will be interesting to watch and see if Mama Shelter succeeds (and I think it will). Just imagine if their team had also included at least one very recognized female philosopher/design expert etc…!

…worth considering for any built environment project.