Nov 6
2011
Today much thought is being dedicated to re-designing the urban environment
by both public and private agencies. The growth of design thinking in schools, consultancies and online, and the popularity of urban interventions, actions, workshops, charrettes and other short term think tanks, have led to much
blue-sky thinking.
How can we make sure that the wealth of ideas encouraged by the dialog amongst architects, designers and fans of urbanism ultimately motivates citizens to act, and create real implementable projects?
Inspired by desigNYC’s mission to use the power of design to improve local communities in New York City, this conversation aims to create a discussion and generate ideas as to how design can be implemented to improve our urban environment. Laetitia Wolff, Executive Director of desigNYC hosts the conversation.
How do we encourage design ACTION ("do tanks" vs. "think tanks") to improve our cities?
ayse gave the final word
Have you read The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson? It reads like a blueprint for how to encourage design action to improve our cities. It is the story of wanting to be the first city in the world in terms of architecture, design and engineering (and reclaim this title from Paris with its Eiffel Tower) and how a small group of thinkers were able to transform an idea to reality in the form of the Chicago World Fair in one short year through design and ingenuity, driven by pride and talent. Great model, minus the murder of course!
Monday, November 7 at 5:30pm
Before co-founding desigNYC, I had the pleasure of working with Kate Stohr and Cameron Sinclair as a consultant to Architecture for Humanity. Cameron’s mom had told him, “It’s terrible to be all mouth and no pants.” This silly, charming statement stuck with me. It was incredibly inspiring to see how small actions Cameron and Kate took at the beginning have transformed into an incredible global impact.
When we founded desigNYC in 2009 during the beginning of the Great Recession, we were standing on the shoulders of great pioneers like AFH, Public Architecture, Design Corps, Project H, Taproot — and were hoping to do something that would be hyper local, multidisciplinary, and community centric (collaborating with communities being served). We took a humble stance and confessed we didn’t have all the answers, but thought it was important to start DOING through experimentation, iteration, and collaboration.
Nearly three years and 20 projects later, we’ve seen the conversation expand exponentially, which is great, but what I feel the movement needs now is more communication, consolidation and collaboration between organizations. It feels like we could be making a stronger impact if we could find better ways of working together and leveraging each others expertise.
We would also love to find a way to build a stronger implementation network that we can all leverage. Designers see the benefit of working for the public good and are eager to contribute their talents and expertise. But what we need now is need stronger networks of project managers, cost estimators, manufacturers, printers, developers, funders and contractors to see many of these projects through. We’d love some entrepreneurial thinkers to join with us and explore how to make this happen. I’m eager to see how this conversation evolves!
Monday, November 7 at 7:46am
Reading this morning’s NY Times report on the hurricane relief effort in the Catskills, i was struck by the contrasts in urgency of the picture of a master planning meeting, were someone had a map taped to the floor and the picture of a 100 year old house pivoted off it’s foundation waiting months for relief!
Since we live in the infosphere where no one has the patience to plan anymore -where people demand quick solutions – the idea of “do tanks” is very seductive!
They are fast and leverage the strength of whole team working together (in the same place and time). They work even better when they prototype their “solutions” as part of their development.
Because the real measure of good design is how happy the residents, consumers and users are with the results!
Monday, November 7 at 11:23am
Thanks to all, early birds, for jumping in the conversation, which could go many different routes, indeed. I want to pick up on this idea of the happy residents. You’re exactly right Tucker, considering the social impact of these actions is at the crux of the question of those design actions. It’s typically easier to apply quantitative and qualitative measurements to new product launches than it is to appraise people’s lives “after design” and how they’ve changed for the better through design. “User-centered” is a fairly limited term when it comes to the population it generally concerns. How can we transfer the knowledge acquired in industrial design to other areas typically not benefitting from design? And it’s true disasters, natural and otherwise, have drawn attention to the transformative power of design, and been the very reason for the birth of organizations like Architecture for Humanity, but I think there is also a daily reality wherein design can still make a difference, in neighborhoods and communities where design has not been leveraged yet. Do we only need emergency and urgency for acting by design?
So then, the next question is who are we serving through these actions: are we having fun and taking the walls of NY to express our angst and desire to influence our environments purely as new canvases, or are we raising awareness of what’s there and shouldn’t be? Is the city the next frontier for collective expression? Or are we actually building something a bit more in/tangible, hard to trigger, such as change behavior, awareness and consciousness ? Are we taking these actions as good pretexts to engage communities, because we don’t know how to do it otherwise and successfully or just pretexts? Are designers and architects doing things a bit too short-sightedly for the sake of communities? True, sometimes a splash of color on the walls, a gigantic mural à la blublu can make you smile and totally change your perception of your place, your city, your home and these are cool and should remain. But what are the necessary ingredients needed to motivate the citizen to intervene, a term I see everywhere these days, overused and abused, even to describe the public architectural and urban work of a city. Intervention I think should still remain a positive, hopefully constructive, but critical re-action to an urban situation, a commentary. How can it grow from a simple reaction to an action?
Monday, November 7 at 11:18pm
Following up on the idea of consumers or happy residents: In conceptualizing improvements to our built environment designers are often speaking to other designers. If we could excite and engage the non-interested, perhaps we could generate a greater demand for progress that would expose more opportunities for change. Designers and planners need to acknowledge what motivates development in our cities. The “products” that many developers in NY are producing serve a very small portion of the population perceived to provide the best return on investment. Williamsburg is a perfect example of a huge urban transformation serving a narrow group. Are there other motivators for building? We speak of engaging the community but in essence the community has become a set of consumer groups or at least treated that way by development. Can we inspire all citizens to expect more public benefit from all development in the city?
Tuesday, November 8 at 2:02pm
Thanks Matt for opening the conversation to the real estate business, which has been driving urban development and, by default, urban design forever in this city. I just came back from a presentation I gave at your alma mater’s NY campus tonight and met a wonderful woman architect who is now in charge of Capital Projects at MTA and has worked for a long time for the city and indeed that whole conversation was about the real estate power historically driving architecture and urban development in NYC. But I was recently told about brand new developments in the Bronx that apparently include spaces specifically allotted to house nonprofit and community organizations in their basements (a nice basement I guess), so hopefully a greater social mix is being nurtured but I think what you’re hinting at is again the need to diversify good design’s recipients and put more emphasis on building and celebrating a more empathic process of engagement, while at the same time educating those who have the power to make these design + architecture decisions. I think that organizations such as Hester Street Collaborative and CUP I both admire are exemplary in imagining creative, engaging outreach methods to empower communities to decide what kind of built environments they want. They are definitely leading the do tank mantra, well I think, I’ll ask them…
Wednesday, November 9 at 12:40am
I don’t want to be cynical (especially not knowing about the developments you mentioned) but often the inclusion of community spaces in developments is a concession for a developer to get more of what they want. What I hope for as a result of greater public awareness of design issues is pressure on development to produce a better product overall- one that acknowledges that a building exists within the larger urban context. I have sat on the development side of the table at a community meeting and saw how the community’s interests were seen as issues to overcome not as concerns from potential buyers. If we can elevate the public’s expectations for their urban environment, then private development will have to address these concerns as pivotal to the success of their projects and not as nuisances to placate.
I imagine it requires a combination of talking – getting good ideas in front of non design folks, and a combination of doing – producing case studies that both satisfy the goals of development and the community -what social entrepreneurship is trying to do in other fields.
Thursday, November 10 at 1:28pm
Working in the public interest, it’s naturally tempting to start by developing great citizen-serving design concepts — figuring that the real-world implementation plan can be worked out in the second phase! But I’d encourage do-tankers to take the city’s complex legal, budgetary, and political environment as a starting inspiration, or a dare: what can we design that delights citizens while also serving the requirements of regulatory agencies and institutions?
A truly integrated design team helps: one that includes not only designers and engaged citizens, but also the public servants or community leaders that will fund and oversee implementation and the front-line providers who will be there every day, dealing with whatever gets implemented. These ‘implementers’ should join the team not as clients, but as full participants in the ideation and revision process.
The Design Trust for Public Space has had an impact on the public realm by developing these kinds of public/private partnerships, and it’s a model we’ve put in place at the Public Policy Lab, focusing on the design of public services. The benefit of inviting the implementers to the table early is two-fold: the design-of-the-moment has a better chance of seeing life, and it builds capacity for future design-based work by agencies, creating the possibility of systemic change.
Monday, November 7 at 3:02pm
Your models are pertinent Chelsea and thanks for returning the question of what needs to be designed. I hear the term integration, and i see through the lines the word mediator, facilitator, orchestrator, but how can we make sure that these roles are integral part of a design action, so that they can really “sink in” and impact fully? What are the ingredients needed to train, identify and recognize the importance of those go-between, the implementers, those who make vision a reality. I met a fantastic woman today who is an architecture+engineering cost estimator. She said she wished architects would bring her to the table at the very beginning of the design process, not at the end, once their vision is drawn. So how do we encourage the participation of people like that, and what are we looking for? who and what are those ingredients needed for a happy/delicious recipe of implementable design actions ?
Monday, November 7 at 11:26pm
ayse gave the Final Word
Have you read The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson? It reads like a blueprint for how to encourage design action to improve our cities. It is the story of wanting to be the first city in the world in terms of architecture, design and engineering (and reclaim this title from Paris with its Eiffel Tower) and how a small group of thinkers were able to transform an idea to reality in the form of the Chicago World Fair in one short year through design and ingenuity, driven by pride and talent. Great model, minus the murder of course!
Monday, November 7 at 5:30pm
Perhaps the do-tanks need to strengthen their role as facilitators of the decision making process – a more difficult position but probably one that can actually achieve results. Engaging the community is key in giving a sense of responsibility, ownership and empowerment. We can still see the amazing success of the community gardens of the East Village and LES – very localized efforts that are a reminder of a depressed city and its citizens’ will to improve their surroundings by taking action.
Monday, November 7 at 7:19pm
In my summer workshops I noticed far greater passion for actual urban interventions than for theoretical design activism. And now Occupy Wall Street, has nearly 300 million results in Google which is also a sign that patience for “think-talks” (forget think tanks) has run out and led to a craving for action. Yesterday I passed by the increasingly well organized Occupy San Francisco, and saw it as a sign that action must be framed by design.
Any creation that refreshes the old city is seen as positive change, and any form of planning and structure means increased chances to survive the assaults of politics and greed. But I do agree with earlier posts, that there is still a huge need for more public engagement so there can be a meaningful culture of interventionism. There should be a concerted effort to promote inspirational and informative communications. Yarn bombing and Local Previews are two of many models. I am only concerned that good design may be collateral damage until it can be fully set in intervention strategies and process. Too often in the non-profit realm, non designers consider design to be in their core competencies and will promote quick but ill-informed decisions.
Following on Steven’s comment I see social sustainability as a main concern. Especially when Winter is around the corner. But perhaps we can then resume our “think-talks” by the fire…
Tuesday, November 8 at 7:23pm
Effective re-design of the urban environment typically requires both broad social consensus as to what should be done and effective, solvent authority structures of some kind to carry it out. In the absence of either, which is the actual situation in many American urban environments at present, perhaps built interventions to improve the urban environment should not be the first priority. Instead, long standing issues of access to good education, health care, and basic social services should be addressed first, probably led by those who have a direct financial and personal stake in the future of a particular place. By setting out a simple and widely agreed upon set of actions to address what are generally agreed to be social problems, much could be accomplished. This would require a different sort of politics than what we currently have, which tend to be based on the fantasy that either no government will bring us a better future, or that we still have the industrial labor base that was so effective in producing urban and social change in the past.
For designers, their urban work in this new context might the involve effective reuse and retrofitting of existing structures and environments for the public good, rather than once again attempting to completely remake cities as has so often been proposed in the past. It might best to done by those familiar with particular environments, and could be done incrementally as resources, both in terms of labor and financial capital, are made available. Quite possibly new zones of economic growth could be produced in this way, whose built outcomes would resemble neither the Corbusian boom cities of contemporary east Asia nor the New Urbanist suburbanism that has been the norm in many recent American urban interventions. At the same time, design work done in this context would respond to popular demands for urban housing and commercial and public space in a realistic way. The results would be modest and incremental, but arguably more sustainable that more the ambitious American urban agendas of the past fifty years.
Wednesday, November 9 at 8:10am
As the dialog around design–and the number of people participating in that dialog–grows, we risk having a glut of thinking without any plans for doing. Your question hints at this phenomenon, and highlights the need for action to penetrate the complexity of making real change in our cities. The answer lies at least partially in partnerships and the realization that designers, as ambitious and idealistic as we may be, can’t do everything ourselves; we need business, strategic, legal, political and technical allies who share our passion and can guide us through the challenges that undoubtedly arise when trying to implement design solutions.
Since Laetitia mentioned the MTA, it made me think of a talk I recently heard by Sandra Bloodworth, who is Director of the MTA Arts efforts. I was struck by her passion, and I realized that although she is not a designer or artist, a person in her position is critical to the process of moving projects forward and navigating a behemoth of a system like the MTA. The fact that she was sharing the stage with designers and artists in conversation was a good step in the right direction.
Wednesday, November 9 at 6:09pm
“The very first version of the Lab in Europe will have a particular focus on the importance of practical doing and making, empowering urban dwellers with tools and ideas to actively engage in city change,” said Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator, Architecture, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and curator of the Berlin Lab,” announced the BMW Guggenheim Lab today about their second home in Berlin next spring. Wondering how much of the smart ideas and public debates (public as in designers and architects mostly) generated by the NY lab will get concretized into actual propositions, and to whom? The question of the audience, who benefits from these think tanks is blurry? Who do they really involve (what East Village community exactly, as quoted by Guggenheim’s director in his conclusion remarks?). Wondering also, to take your point literally Carla and loop back to Michelle’s earlier point about sharing information and knowledge, if this conversation would be a starting point to create a typology of existing methods, how-tos, models and best practices and not so much a wish list of what we’d like to change but rather of how to work, do and make together.
Thursday, November 10 at 12:33am
In the mid 20th century the term think tank originated as a secured space for war consultants to strategize and advise America’s military. The power of such closed door conversation was that the group could quickly solidify shared values without outside knowledge or critique. Participants could openly speak about agendas without public appraisal or reprisal. Creatively brainstorming and planing without external oversight or constraint, they would map out goals and action plans in complete secrecy. When Einstein (the pacifist) came to president Roosevelt to share his findings, the Manhattan Project was born. It was a seemingly impossible task which the participants entered into with tremendous resolve.
Happily today’s Manhattan Project is of a different nature. Optimistic it centers around the possibility of robust transformation and positive growth through design action. Following some of Laetitia’s design labs, one may be reminded of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings and later Activities. Like Occupy Wall Street, we are in a state of awaking and beginning to taste agency. I look towards Ayse’s point that coalition around a central passionate issue can help realize extraordinary outcomes. This positions goal in front of action. Perhaps a do tank is as much a provocation as a solution. Is do tank not an oxymoron? An open silo? In an open society, is tank the word we aspire to? Conceivably this very blog, the Glasshouse Conversation is a sophisticated and inclusive forum for exchange. While I was sent a formal invitation to participate, the conversation is in fact open to the general public at large. Those of us initially included act as a primer – a call to get things moving. How could this conversation be even richer, and perhaps be a call to action? I strongly agree with Carla and others around the notion that we designers need a fuller team to co-create and realize work. I’m curious in the invitations list that went out for this discussion, how many of us come from fields outside design.
As NYC prepares for a world class engineering school to enter it’s arena, tremendous possibilities lay ahead. Physical laboratories will shortly be in close proximity to forward thinking educational spaces and renown practitioners in the arts, design, social sciences and business. While the intention of bringing world-class engineering to NYC is to pair science and wall-street, this newly formed constellation could also tackle topics brought forth by occupy wall street. The nationwide movement of disenchanted and leaderless citizens asking for accountability and equity serve as evidence that we have many issues and opportunities ahead. Critical Mass cycling events which started in 1992 worldwide now have 300 participating cities. Who would have imagined bike lanes in Manhattan and traffic-less corridors in Times Square. Small action based movements with a clear set of goals do grow exponentially. Ultimately improving our cities will be a decision, not a thought, a conversation, or a plan. Perhaps Tucker is right, let’s just do this and, “(b)e the change…(we)…want to see in the world.” Gandhi
Sunday, November 13 at 6:36pm
I love the “Manhattan Project” reference, Rama, so (un)perfectly fitting. We do not need a design bomb in NYC indeed, but this notion of a do-tank– the term has now been deconstructed in a couple of remarks here, may have lost its fun, but presents nonetheless the valid idea that any open source still needs leading examples and models of action. And not to belabor this conversation as a political debate–it was certainly not my intent, and however timely and relevant the notion of activism might be these days, with the latest and saddest news about the horrific treatment of protestors of Occupy UC Berkely–I think the comparison or reference with Occupy Wall Street is too quickly drawn, that design activism should not be taken for political activism and design action is not necessarily design activism. Practicing our agency still requires leading by example (where is the leader of Occupy WS? BTW). I believe there is still room to foster better structures for call to design action, not just call to ideas. The preface to this question was clearly a call to action, an action that would make use of all these great ideas that the citizen-designers and especially architects and urban designers tend to throw and are called to generate without the necessary structure behind to follow-up and implement. That’s what I call the do-tank. So the call to action here would be: what kind of structure should be we build to follow-up on design ideas, who should sit at that table? What kind of expertise, powers, entities, skills and minds should come and “seriously play” and participate in a collaborative implementation plan. Long-term action.
Monday, November 14 at 1:08am
Hi Laetitia – agreed, the world doesn’t need more bombs. Certainly the right people need to be at the table, and coalitions need to be made. Friends of the High Line is a prime example of smartly opening up a vision while tactfully being cognizant of real-estate development and other vested stakeholders. The work of what was begun by two individuals continues to grow and expand – and serves as a vibrant living case study. Best of all, its a fun place to go for a walk. The “follow-up” here is that enough people were invested in the vision that they simply had to follow-through. The project made sense from a multitude of perspectives. I’m reminded of the famous venn diagram sketch by Charles Eames that shows how many participants can have a moment of shared interest (the darkest area of overlap). For design to be implemented it must recognize and incorporate the necessary structures for it’s own growth. If politics are the hurtle, incorporate politicians, if finance is the obstacle – financiers need a stake etc. Whatever the blockage, bring it to the table in real time. Perhaps the key to this equation is the prospect of the “serious play” you suggest. Rather than dealing with practicality as an afterthought, I suggest we invite all participants to share in the aspirations, enjoyment and muse of their respective areas of interest. That amorphous blob Charles sketched in 1969 for me maps our elusive “do tank”, the “… area of overlapping interest and concern that the designer can work with emotion and enthusiasm.”
Tuesday, November 15 at 12:04am
I think the essential problem here is that such initiatives are heavy on the concepts and light on real world value which leads to oh so much blue sky intellectual fun-time. Too-Smart folks sitting around tables and giving lectures about design … or fabricating objects intended to provoke.
For these programs to work, the designer should not start by posing a solution to a static problem, but by decentering the dialog, recognizing its dynamic qualities, and positioning themselves as listener not moderator.
Questions should be posed to the community, invite everyone impacted by and directly involved with a local issue to react, respond and contribute. Designer not as deity, but as conversational facilitator.
This way, that “real-world” value is woven into the assessment and design process from the beginning. It’s not one person or one studio’s idea, but a plan that derives from the local community.
Often, average joe’s lack the jargon and time to think on these issues, so these tanks of whatever type should focus on opening up the dialog and making it easier for people to participate so the designer’s solutions are more responsive and an amalgam of creative community collaboration.
Design as dialog, designer as conduit … design not to spur action, but based on what a community deems a necessary, valued or vital action.
Tying the initial point of a design process to locals and residents will make sure they act, they engage, the remain involved.
All of this said, I don’t have many answers when it comes to incentivizing the superbusy NYC passerby to contribute, but I know that when people see and feel their stamp on something, when they feel even a tiny bit of ownership over an idea … it’s no longer a foreign object that someone made, but part of them and therefore part of their community.
Tuesday, November 15 at 4:02pm
That serious play can happen indeed when the right parties are around the table in that dark overlap area – the question remains, how’s design can learn to lead the conversation to avoid self-referentiality of the urban elite as Shai pointed – but the examples are still scarce. As also brilliantly deconstructed in Stephen Zacks’s recent essay for AN which i encourage you all to read: “Engaged Urbanism, Museums, German Luxury cars” (http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5743)…
Wednesday, November 16 at 12:53pm
I too like Rama’s reference to the Manhattan Project – a funny coincidence as I was just today reading about it in the wonderful Richard Feynman biographical graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani. And Ayse’s reference to the Chicago World Fair triggered a memory of a much smaller fair I saw grow from individual catalytic acts.
A few years ago I launched a programme of “guerrilla urbanism” asking my students to each interfere directly in public space with the aim of creating maximum positive impact through minimal intervention. Students engaged with their local environments with mind-blowing results, small projects catalysing sustained attention from the community and local authorities. In a spectacular example at a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, one lone student designed and self-funded the transformation of an unsafe concrete stairwell used by children as a climbing wall, into a metal-clad slide. During the week it took him to build it himself, the adults in the tightly-knit community poured scorn and skepticism on the 20 year old fellow bringing them foreign design instead of political hogwash. The children loved it. They invented new games on and around it, their neighbourhood became the talk of the camp, the sense of identity and pride of place shot up. It could’ve ended there, but a few weeks later, we discovered the community had built around the slide a whole ad-hoc children’s playground complete with DIY merry-go-rounds and a giant swinging pirate ship made up of scrapyard junk. This has since become a recurring yearly event.
Thursday, November 17 at 9:21am
Laetitia: amen to the concept of “citizen-designers” (a key concept of Quantum Urbanism btw), let’s complement it with the notion of “designing-citizens”.
Let’s get to them before they’re “architects or designers or urban planners”, before they become Thinkers and not Doers – get to them in schools – in Design Schools in particular.
While education provides thinking tools – it is still so entrenched in the culture of the ego, that it produces mostly introverted (self-sufficient?) artists, or uncritical professionals, or blue-sky idealists who think they can save the world – they, and no one else. No wonder that once confronted to the real world, all these protected species often get paralysed with fear of action.
They think of themselves as “architects”, or “urban planners” or “designers”, or whatever their education has tagged them as. They forget they were and ultimately remain “citizens” themselves, and that thinking and being an active citizen are not mutually exclusive.
One way of counter-acting the effect of this culture is to imbue, very early on in the educational arc, not just a sense of responsibility, but also a good sense of empowerment. Give pre-architects, pre-designers, pre-professionals the experience of real-life, rewarding action. A sustained effort in that direction will produce professionals willing and able to do change.
In cultures that still regard The Professional in high esteem, such individuals can become excellent role models for entire communities, or at the very least, inspire them to act in the common realm.
Both the power of the individual and that of the community as a group should be recognised as agent for change, we need a both/and value system that entertains the ego of one and the critical mass of the many.
Thursday, November 17 at 9:21am
I have found that teaching people a process of design that includes the various levels of engagement (costing, manufacturing and other related elements) changes their view on how to move from a thinking phase to a doing stage. The teams I’ve worked with are not all designers so the variety of skills that get melded together help to see the issues from different vantage points. Obviously, a class is a shorter amount of time to work with a project on a part-time capacity but it has opened up students (of diverse ages and disciplines) to the idea of engaging as citizens and figuring out how to use design to respond. A small step but one that I believe can have a ripple effect. The shared process enabled them to think about how they would move from a place of ideas to a place of delivery/action/implementation.
Love this conversation!
Friday, November 18 at 12:51pm
As per Laetitia’s suggestion I just perused . Thank you – it was well worth reading! Our co-branded society makes for some odd bedfellows. Brands do often overshadow community, and cultural initiatives can be supported for the wrong reasons. Looking at a company like Altria (Philip Morris) it’s easy to interrogate intentions and their promotion of the arts. Indeed with whom and how we partner is critical. Many companies rival GDP’s, so it’s not a surprise social and environmental agendas have emerged as rhetoric. We expect this. However, visions of the future are being entertained to not only draw attention to a brand, but to draw attention away from a brand. Corporate practice can be hard to pin-down. While many consider Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) window dressing, it at-least presents (possibly skewed) quantified data and accountability. Certainly with a company like BP, we’re more interested in their response, restoration programs, and standards than we are in their vision for the future. One may recall, before the deepwater horizon, this was not the case. Ayssar’s idea of the pre-designer is palpable. It’s why I came to design, and why I also teach. How can our work both lead and serve – keep it’s humanity? Each of us must look towards our own intentions, then reach out to see who else shares those values. The self-funded student project in Palestine which although critiqued was able to sustain through self-respect and integrity was inspirational. The great image at the top of this blog, of the pop-up farm is also exciting.
Friday, November 18 at 5:10pm
If I might play devil’s advocate for a moment, designers should be weary of the pursuit of ‘consensus’. A great deal of the criticism of architects’ way of working is that we have a tendency to wait for a client or to wait for a project to emerge. Waiting for consensus, or even actively attempting to muster a coalition expends a great deal of energy that might ultimately defer the ‘do’ part of ‘do-tank’ indefinitely. This is not to say that we shouldn’t seek partnerships (we should), but that we need to do two things simultaneously: go forward with a project (solicited or not) and work to shape the environment in our favor. I’m not entirely convinced that we should appeal to our ‘pre-designer’, ‘pre-architect’, ‘pre-planner’ selves. Citizenship is a vague term. We engage as citizens not by imagining there to be a primordial pond in which there are people with wants and desires untarnished by their environments, their disciplines, etc, (a la Rawls) but rather we need to engage from our positions within our disciplines – leveraging the strength of our expertise and accumulated bodies of knowledge. I would like to think that the above is not an expression of hubris, but, perhaps something more akin to realpolitik. The other fields with which we need to partner (developers, financiers, nonprofits, etc) are all well-versed in the art of compromise, yet they also do not lose sight of their respective missions (a cause or a profit). It’s difficult to avoid generalizing, but I worry that architects have a tendency to erode their strengths in the face of negotiation. A ‘do-tank’ should be our Trojan Horse, allowing us at some times to circumvent certain difficulties by appealing directly to the public, and at others, allowing us to circumvent the public and appeal directly to those (brands, governments, etc) who can utilize design to accomplish certain things politically that they would otherwise be unable to enact. Architecture and design are in a beautifully ambivalent position in relation to power and to the public. There is a strength and an agility here that we should not be afraid to embrace.
Saturday, November 19 at 10:45am
I’ve been making tools that people adapt locally to draw attention to sustainability assets and challenges in their community. Not only have hundreds of Green Map been published and disseminated, but the skills, networks and knowledge they have amassed have leveraged many other initiatives. Now, as we are about to start expanding the iconography shared by all Green Maps, collaboration is a key theme, as are local food, energy and climate. How can design action be promoted via these icons which are now used in 60 countries as inventory tool and then to identify and link green living, social innovation, culture and environment.
Your thoughts are welcome – you can find the current globally-designed set at http://GreenMap.org/icons or let me know you want to be looped in as the conversation gets underway.
While we still have the creative freedom and the resources needed to manifest our greatest contributions, I’d also love to co-create a ‘legacy lab’… perhaps a lighter way to frame this is as a green culture center, a co-working space for our common future.
Saturday, November 19 at 7:41pm
First of all, a big THANK YOU to the latest “conversationists” who entered this argument, with fantastic, smart and personally engaged contributions, and thank you to all of you who jumped into this conversation.
I’m not sure, at the end of it all, whether we came up with any specific plans of action, as requested by those who pointed at the absurdity of a conversation online claiming action vs. thinking (some of whom decided not to enter the public conversation in fact), nor did we outline a clear direction but I am intrigued and inspired to think further about a few points you made individually and/or as a group:
• Changing hats: from designers to citizens, and vice versa, as Ayssar and Justin mentioned yesterday and knowing how to shift one’s perspective in different situations, and which to call on as the most effective and relevant role, however blurry these distinctions appear. After all, the power we appeal to in the case of a desired change –be it about our urban environment or our communities’ improvements–also should consider themselves citizens. It’s all relative.
• Connecting platform: behind the notion of design action, there is the lingering question; how do we push/nurture design to a position of leadership in playing more of a mediator role, an initiator of platforms and partnerships wherein other interests (real estate, politics, the scientific community as Rama underlined it) and creative disciplines (architecture AND design, with their own idiosyncrasies) can mingle, butt and disagree and merge around a shared concern, a central passionate issue as Ayse hinted at in her literary reference. How do we empower design while pulling it down from its ivory tower, and teach designers to think ahead of and around the implementation hurdles, learn from them, start thinking from them, as Chelsea and Carla suggested both. How can design help empower communities to not be afraid of using design and not just direct them to be what their designer visions wish it to be.
• Independent action: I can respect the desire of self-expression of designers and architects to take action on the urban environment as a political act, but then we should not call it always action. Think of the model of 72hour-Urban Action in the suburbs of Tel Aviv or even Ayssar’s class in Beyrouth, there are seeds planted for greater transformations. In the most politically sensitive contexts, they demonstrate the power of an action that left behind a door open to interpretation and appropriation by the communities in which they were “planted.” Again, as mentioned earlier in the conversation, the current US political landscape tends to blur the definitions between activism and action. I am more concerned about nurturing the notion of design action or action by design, as I think it’s a healthier one, it implies a positive outlook towards change, maybe more modest, punctual, often humbler but with potentially huge and longer-term impact. It definitely implies new and complex collaborations to manage and that job of building collaborations between parties that never talk to each others (we’re doing our best at desigNYC to nurture this tactic) is perhaps the job of tomorrow’s designer. What I hear is that we need to design more action-oriented systems.
Thank you all again for your contributions.
Laetitia
Sunday, November 20 at 8:17pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
steven heller
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I helped found, with Mark Randall as director, the School of Visual Arts IMPACT FOR SOCIAL CHANGE summer residency. The goal is to engage participants by integrating their talents with the needs of a variety of organizations and businesses in the city. By taking an active role the think tank naturally becomes a do tank. And hopefully the quality of work will engender “tanks” all around.
But on a serious note, the key here is teaching potential non-profiteers, how not to go broke or burn-out doing socially relevant and valuable work.
To often the doing is so draining that the doers do not return. They’ve done their bit, and now their karma points are secure. IMPACT teaches the concept that everything has value – and there is no such thing as “free.” Pro bono is for the public good, not sacrifice at all costs.
Monday, November 7 at 7:12am