Apr 29
2012
The Glass House was a weekend retreat for Philip Johnson and a place where he explored themes of play through the design of buildings and landscapes. Johnson and guests could interact with the environment by walking, strolling and climbing, as well as enjoy the view.
Today many designers, architects and urban planners are working to create spaces that encourage play, health and well-being. From my experience, employing the practice of evidence-based design opens up a productive and informative interdisciplinary dialogue with professionals from across the fields of science, medicine, design and culture.
What does it take to create beautiful, comfortable spaces that encourage play, health and well-being?
Dr. Cecily Cannan gave the final word
I understand that there is no lack of good Design today, but that there is a shortage of Resources and Customers to bring them to life. To access resources and “customers,” a need for so many good causes, again and again I find myself saying that we must make the values and actions we seek “fashionable”—i.e. to become something that everyone decides they want to have, to make or do…
In science education, we are promoting scientific inquiry, its products, and technology design fashionable by engaging everyone in them. As a science educator, I try to illuminate how and why a useful understanding of how the world works, within and around us, can promote actions to help them work better—i.e.healthier. Following this Conversation, I will be including a useful understanding of the technologies of healthy and beautiful spaces within definitions of technological and environmental literacy. This is, at least, one way to advance support for improved human-made environments.
Sunday, May 13 at 8:15am
We need to educate the public to demand better design… I remember being in San Francisco and a friend of mine was working for the redevelopment authority and she was determined that affordable housing was not going to look like affordable housing, and It looked like housing for everybody else. It contributed to the streetscape, it was a good design and it didn’t cost more to design it in a better way.
Sunday, April 29 at 8:37pm
A pediatrician In our clinic the other day had an 18 year old who is 300 pounds, blood pressure and sugar are starting to go, and yet he’s there with his parents who are the same size as him, the grandparents are the same size, and they’re asking “what’s the problem? This is how we are, there’s nothing wrong.” and they just don’t take it seriously because this is what they live with and see every day. To give them something different, go and see it, try it, if they feel better, if they feel the difference, that is sort of motivating. That’s the point of preventive medicine, turning around something that’s entrenched.
Monday, April 30 at 10:39am
How do we build bridges with experts? The medical profession is well known for doing very vigorous studies, and the evidence coming back from these studies can inform the way we make decisions in the built environment, which all of us spend about 90% of our time in these days.
Looking at the example of tobacco use, the research and evidence came out more than half a century ago, but it’s not until after 2000 that the U.S. Green Building Council took a stand and made a prerequisite of a smoke-free building.
Later mayor Bloomberg banned smoking in New York City, and this leadership led to how many other cities copying New York City? These changes really came out of evidence in the health field, and slowly it filters down.
I think the reason why I got thinking about all of this is that when I saw the evidence with obesity and physical activity research there were some pretty stark statistics, and I thought, I hope we don’t take another 50 years to break this into the built environment, because we should know better by now, learning from what we learned with smoking.
Tuesday, May 1 at 2:04pm
I’m the Principal Urban Designer at New York City Parks Department. We are finishing a Master Plan for the Northern Manhattan parks, Preparing a plan to open the Pelham Bay Landfill, it’s 100 acres just east of Co-Op City. There’s garbage under there, and there’s methane, and there’s leachate – but it has been properly closed and has a nice soil cover, grasses that the birds like, and it has a gorgeous view of Eastchester Bay.
I have also served as Chief of Design at New York City Parks. One of my last projects was the High Performance Landscape Guidelines: 21st Century Parks for NYC, which we did in partnership with the Design Trust for Public Space.
The guidelines make it clear that you need to understand soil, water and vegetation at a scientific level– beyond the aesthetic level, particularly the soils, keeping the water on site, not putting the water into the sewer. How do you detain water in a way that really serves the plants, serves the water table, doesn’t stand? Designers lots of times try to do infiltration, but don’t understand enough about the filtration rate for example, so we tried to make the Guidelines like a car manual – when you’re ready to change your tire you don’t want to read the whole book, or research a bunch of books.
Wednesday, May 2 at 11:17am
What do I think of as my most memorable times of play, health and wellbeing? It’s being disconnected from any of my “screens.” Thinking about all these outdoor, disconnected, unplugged times…what sort of studies are being done about the impact of our screen time? How are we addressing reducing/limiting the screen time for children, or for all of us for that matter?
Thursday, May 3 at 8:23am
I think the first thing to acknowledge is that it very difficult or even impossible to create urban public spaces that will work for all peoples, in all situations and all of the time. When presenting a proposal the designer would not want to admit that there is any scope for antisocial behaviour within their design, and any group responsible for approving the design will not accept such an admission.
Paris’s Parc De La Villette, designed by Bernard Tschumi has been criticised for creating small secluded areas within the gardens and consequently ‘problem areas’. And it’s true that there are problems and it is easy to find evidence of drug use, graffiti and vandalism but it generally happens within these more secluded areas and not in the areas of greatest public access. I wouldn’t know if Tschumi created these areas knowing what might happen. But small areas like this are easier to police, if the authorities choose to, than large open spaces.
Another point that I would suggest, is that most older parks were seldom designed as a single project and they have been redeveloped as public use changes. I feel that this sort of evolution generally works well as it allows for a changing, varied and sometimes chaotic use.
It is difficult to answer such a complex question succinctly, I need maybe 2000 words, but briefly I’d say that the management and policing of public space is as important as the design itself.
Friday, May 4 at 8:10am
Johnson was always ahead of his time. He created with Frank Stella their walk-in, habitable sculpture building in New Canaan (http://philipjohnsonglasshouse.org/history/bios/damonsta/) before Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Similarly in 1949, Johnson’s Glass House had under floor radiant heating, a rather popular installation today. In the early 2000s, I nurtured the incorporation of displacement ventilation in the public spaces at the Whitehall and St. George ferry terminals (http://www.nycedc.com/project/st-george-ferry-terminal, http://www.nycedc.com/project/whitehall-ferry-terminal) The concept of providing comfort from the ground up has not always been conventional practice. Teaming up with appropriate professionals, it would be wonderful to explore the health dimensions of these designs in conjunction with maximizing energy efficiency. There are great opportunities to advance design practice in a holistic way.
Friday, May 4 at 9:34pm
I can’t really say that our bureaucrats are responsible for the state of our cities. After all most of our buildings are built privately. And I certainly have to support the various Design Excellence initiatives that we’ve seen over the past couple of decades. The problem, it seems to me, is in what we, as a society, consider to be the good life. We’ve tried to buy our way to happiness with consumption and convenience. We value commodification over experience. The moment we start to consider our buildings and cities for their potential to enhance human experience we will change things. I recently attended an architectural conference in Turkey where the charms of the traditional city and the inhumanity of the modern city are presented in stark relief. But the Turks have bought into the image of western success with the usual results.
Sunday, May 6 at 5:57pm
I’ve been living and working as an architect in Seoul, Korea since 1996 after moving from New York City. Over the years I have seen the most amazing transformation of a city and country that is now a major global player in many industries. One of the largest metropolian areas in the world with a population of over 20 million living around Seoul, the citizens are passionate about health and exercise whether jogging along the Han river, cycling on over 1,000km of dedicated bike trails, or hiking on mountain trails that cover 75% of the country. However, it is unfortunate to see buildings that have completely changed the city skyline, do not perform as passionately as its residents desire for health and well-being. With extremely high land prices, tall buildings need to re-examine its potential for these “healthy” spaces. With each project, my goal has been to design vertical streets to encourage physical movement and create spaces that are filled with natural light, maximizing possibilites of chance encounters, rest and reflection.
Monday, May 7 at 11:25am
I’m an internist and primary care doctor with an interest in health care policy. I’d like to respond to the point about educating the public, the bureaucrats, and the policy makers. I think the most important groups to educate are Business & Industry. When Business & Industry demand change, elected officials listen, as it’s Business & Industry that finance them. My admittedly cynical view is born of years of working under the shadow of the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industrial complex, where health is not the goal. Financial success is.
Fortunately Business & Industry’s goal, a healthy bottom line, is well aligned with ours, a healthy populace. It’s in their interest to encourage health behaviors, to offer lower insurance premiums for achieving health-promoting goals, and to ask for tax breaks for building environments that promote a healthy work force. Without enlisting Business & Industry’s voices, it will be very difficult to affect systemic change. With their influence, healthy buildings could become the new norm.
Monday, May 7 at 11:21pm
I am reading this with some interest as a long time (30 year!) administrator of cultural institutions in New York, including some of the most beautiful designed landscapes, Wave Hill and the NY Botanical Garden. I am currently at the NY Hall of Science, where we do try to create spaces that encourage p, h, and w-b. And I have the distinction of having worked for 30 years in NYC museums and not once in have I worked in Manhattan!
I am struck by a few things in the conversation. First of all, in many important ways, most of the spaces that we all live in are not designed by a person, but by a community and a process. New York, Queens, the neighborhood I work in, Flushing Meadows Corona Park seem to me to be the result of a complicated play of history, individuals, politics, community needs, etc. And some of the worst urban design we have seen in history has been the result of the imposition of top-down design principles and processes based upon the idea that the community must be educated about what makes good design.
So I think we should be careful about assuming the challenge is to educate bureaucrats, policy makers, designers, or the public about what makes good design. I am too much of a layperson in this field to know whether this group of 8 posters here can agree on what makes good design, but if this field is like my work, 8 people have 9 opinions about what makes good design.
I always found that the urban neighborhoods in which I felt most alive and healthy were the ones in which design was least conspicuous, that the design emerges from the life of the community. Queens is a fascinating example. On one level it is about as bad an urban design as could be imagined. History, Robert Moses (the *other* Moses!), and the transportation infrastructure have made this a confusing and disjointed borough. On a more granular level, communities like Astoria, LIC, Sunnyside, not to mention more established areas like St Albans, Forest Hills, and Flushing, are as alive, busy, and thriving as anywhere in NYC. These neighborhoods are flourishing despite the lack of obvious design.
THat said, there is a lot of design thinking even where it is not obvious, in zoning, in transport, in schools, and in parks. So the fact is that these energetic communities can only thrive in the context of a set of subtler and more pervasive design strategies. And as this group knows far better than I, these less conspicuous designs are the product of complicated social interactions and political forces.
I know that Charles and Susan in particular have left a strong and benevolent mark on NYC life during their long and fruitful careers. And when I have had the opportunity to work with them, I have been struck by their capacity to listen and massage complicated situations into cohesive approaches. So maybe the point of this post is that good design comes as much from listening and being educated as it does from educating others.
Tuesday, May 8 at 9:35am
I am an interior designer based in New York working on projects in Korea as well. It was interesting, to say the least, to see how much certain rules and guidelines can influence how design professionals and public approach design. LEED has changed the industry faster and more dramatic than anything we have seen.
Global economy changed the design landscape entirely as we all know. What was intriguing was to see how LEED and Economy worked together to force Green, Health, and Playful design in commercial spaces.
The economic climate forced everyone to be more productive with limited resources, whether it being real estate, materials or labor, every design trade was challenged to do more with less. Green design, which was considered almost as noble and luxurious cause only for certain crowd, suddenly came to play as the resolution for this new design challenge.
Using glass interior partitions or coming out of the private offices to an open desk environment, became explosively popular for their merit of being able to provide more with less; same for the solar roof or increased natural ventilation. This is a trend not just in New York but I see in Korea and other Asian countries as well.
Philip Johnson perhaps knew all this without having to go through what we all went through past a few years. We admire and aspire his glass house design and creativity, but with out recent awakening, we can appreciate the true beauty even more…..
Tuesday, May 8 at 10:48am
Director, KIDS'FANS Wellness Program | Medical Director, Medical Home Initiative, SW CT | Chair, Obesity Task Force Stamford Hospital
Physical spaces:
What will it take to get children and families to use parks and open spaces? I’m a pediatrician in Stamford working on childhood obesity, and I know that providing healthy nutrition is half the battle. The other half is getting children physically active. Our parks are beautiful but empty – why are so many children indoors? The rate of crimes against children has remained about the same for the past 44 years, yet the culture where children went out to play and returned when it got dark, has mostly disappeared. Has the news media done such a good job of scaring us? Is the time spent online and on Television to blame?
In Stamford we have a program called KIDS’FANS (Kids Fitness and Nutrition Services) http://www.stamfordhospital.org/kidsfans that teaches children about nutrition and physical activity. We serve many children and have good results. The program provides the tools to make lifestyle modifications. The challenge is how to incorporate physical activity into lifestyles after the twelve week program is over.
I’m hoping this question can be solved by the 34 agency coalition in Stamford. They have created community gardens in all the schools and in the community. Restaurants offer healthy kids’ menus during restaurant week and some restaurants do it all year round. Childcare learning centers serve healthier menus. And yet, we still do not use the parks.
We do come together for our children. For example, we have neighborhood watches and carpools, can we not then watch over each other’s children to give them a carefree childhood? Somehow we need to use the parks and entice the children outside for their current and future health and wellbeing.
Wednesday, May 9 at 4:21pm
Designing places – schools, public parks, worksites, our homes – that foster health and a sense of well-being requires the combined input of many different fields. Learning to apply pooled insight and evidence from public health, architecture, engineering, etc while retaining a sense of play and surprise in our environments is a very worthwhile challenge (Example: the 8 house project by BIG architects: http://www.big.dk/projects/8/) It’s exciting to see this kind of collaboration growing.
Thursday, May 10 at 12:00am
A Holistic ergonomic approach can lead to health AND productive work.
Traditional office ergonomics focuses on the interaction between the individual worker, and their desk and technology. The emphasis of this approach is to reduce the risk of injury due to improper positioning or design of the physical features.
This approach grew out from the massive introduction of computers into offices in the 1980s. The primary work style was individual, heads down,static postures in which workers were seated for long periods in front of the computer. This work style was required because the computer and telephone were fixed elements in the office.
Fast forward a few decades and we see that the typical work style has evolved from primarily “heads down,” to a more collaborative,casual mode of work that occurs in a wide variety of locations and types of work settings. We call this “distributed work.” (see http://www.knoll.com/research/downloads/WP_DistributedWork.pdf)
New portable technologies have freed people from long stints alone at their workstation.
The practice of traditional office ergonomics has lagged behind this reality, assuming most work still occurs by individuals seated alone at their desk. Office ergonomics has to evolve into a more holistic approach that broadens from a focus on the individual at the desk, to a more collaborative work model in which people are interacting in a wide variety of locations and types of work spaces.
While holistic ergonomics is concerned with maintaining a healthy, safe workplace, it recognizes the collaborative, social, distributed nature of work and the need to optimize planning approaches, and work spaces, to help people and groups be more productive.
For more information see http://www.knoll.com/research/downloads/wp_HolisticErgonomics.pdf
Friday, May 11 at 5:17pm
US Green Building Council just released their LEED 2012 for final comments today. While no rating system is perfect, I am encouraged by the topics being addressed in human health, including:
Prerequisites of minimum air quality performance, environmental tobacco smoke control, minimum acoustic performance, separate credits for daylight and for quality views, credits for avoidance and disclosure of chemicals of concern, PBT source reduction, low emitting interiors, and acoustic performance.
The synergy between green and health is becoming ever more evident in a green building rating system intending to mainstream practice. Hope everyone takes a look at what is installed for the industry in the near future.
Closer to home, I hope you will continue to find the book I coauthored useful, Active Design Guidelines (www.nyc.gov/adg). In addition to the NYC Department of Parks’ High Performance Landscape Guidelines mentioned earlier, the Department of Transportation has the Street Design Manual (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/streetdesignmanual.shtml) and the Department of City Planning published the NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/cwp/vision2020_nyc_cwp.pdf). They are all great read. If design excellence is the underlying tenor of these publications, we hope that more mental health professionals could study how design could improve the life, health and well-being of citizens in the future.
…
With this mind stretching conversation, I come away with new insights that we all have critical roles to play (no pun intended) for our next generation to enjoy this healthy environment where well-being is a priority. A few guests have missed the Conversation deadline but their work is of note: The Transparency Website http://transparency.perkinswill.com/default.cshtml?url=/ and the World Design Capital this year in Helsinki has several newly drawn projects with themes in health and well-being http://www.worlddesigncapital.com/world-design-capitals/current-capital-helsinki/
Friday, May 11 at 11:00pm
Displacement ventilation and radiant heating and cooling are proving to be sustainable by using less energy, in addition to better comfort and indoor air quality. Slightly different form of displacment ventilation is the Under Floor Air Distribution (UFAD), which is seem to be the approach in new commercial office buildings. The last three major buildings in NY totaling close to 4M sf, has gone UFAD.
Saturday, May 12 at 8:40am
Dr. Cecily Cannan gave the Final Word
Yesterday, thanks to Peter Daniel and Christa Carr, a friend and I enjoyed a beautiful afternoon at the Glass House: aesthetically and spiritually, engaged by Johnson’s architecture and the scenery it honors. There, I found some answers to this Conversation’s question, “ What does it take to create…” the kind of spaces this Conversation, through Joyce Lee, promotes. From my layman’s point of view, I could see 3 key factors that enabled Johnson to create his spaces: Design, Resources and Customers. Clearly he had Design—in his head and on his drawing board. He had Resources—education, travel, talent and the private money needed to provide them. And he had Customers—whom he attracted to build what he designed.
I understand that there is no lack of good Design today, but that there is a shortage of Resources and Customers to bring them to life. To access resources and “customers,” a need for so many good causes, again and again I find myself saying that we must make the values and actions we seek “fashionable”—i.e. to become something that everyone decides they want to have, to make or do…
In science education, we are promoting scientific inquiry, its products, and technology design fashionable by engaging everyone in them. As a science educator, I try to illuminate how and why a useful understanding of how the world works, within and around us, can promote actions to help them work better—i.e.healthier. Following this Conversation, I will be including a useful understanding of the technologies of healthy and beautiful spaces within definitions of technological and environmental literacy. This is, at least, one way to advance support for improved human-made environments.
At the New York Hall of Science we promote a science and technology literacy that includes healthful living as our building and playground are within a space that is beautiful , comfortable and encourages play. Clearly, such educational, media and public relations strategies must be employed throughout all our communities, as publications referred to by Joyce Lee suggest, to achieve the “fashion” for healthy, beautiful human-made spaces so badly needed by academic, industrial, governmental and residential communities.
Sunday, May 13 at 8:15am
Chair of UCLA’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences + Host of the Designing Healthy Communities series designinghealthycommunities.org
UCLA doctor focuses on children’s health In new PBS series:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/community/article/ucla_doctor_focuses_on_childrens_health_in_new_pbs_series_20120502/
Link submitted on behalf of Dr. Richard Jackson by Dale Bell, Executive Producer/Director Designing Healthy Communities http://designinghealthycommunities.org
Sunday, May 13 at 3:44pm
I want to introduce a land mark building in Seoul. It’s name is “Dongdaemun Design Plaza”(DDP).
“Dongdaemun” means a “Big easten gate”. The gate was established in east side of Hanyang(ancient name of Seoul) fortress in 1396. There held the most popular market. When market opened, people were gathered, buying fresh food, watching performances and playing. It had been a exciting place for 530 years.
In 1926, During japanese colonical period, fotress walls were destroyed by city planning. On the place where fortress and places of historic interest were demolished, the Dongdaemun Stadiums were built for the celebration of Japanese prince’s wedding.
In December 2007, Stadiums were demolished and DDP construction was started. It has a beautiful shapes, comfortable spaces and creative contents. DDP is expected to recall nostalgic memories of old exciting market and playing and to maintain welfare value as a leading service design district of the city.
I suggest that you visit DDP(http://ddp.seoul.go.kr/eng/) to know a attempt of creating beautiful,comfortable spaces that encourage play, health and well-being to our citizen. Seoul metropolitan government will open DDP in 2014.
Sunday, May 13 at 7:19pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Joyce S. Lee
FAIA, LEED AP
0
I have been inspired by the High Line in New York http://www.thehighline.org/galleries/images/high-line-park-photos, the Packard Children’s Hospital in California, Google and Pixar offices, as well as schools being part of Let’s Move. Through doctors, scientists and health professionals, some critical studies are shedding light on the health impact of our design of the environment.
http://www.thecommunityguide.org/pa/pa-ajpm-evrev.pdf
https://members.weforum.org/pdf/wellness/WHOWEF_report.pdf
Sunday, April 29 at 8:05pm