Favorite Architecture and Urbanism Posts for Week of Nov. 5, 2012

Preserving and maintaining Wright. An app for ecological urbanism. Soaking it up in Philly. Balancing design and value.

Frank Lloyd Wright conservancy. Build was invited by Larry Woodin, president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Tracy House in Normandy Park near Seattle. Build also talked to Woodin about how he got interested in architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright, and how he leads the charge on saving Wright houses from demolition.

Woodin discusses preservation and maintenance. “Maintenance is the priority. We must first ensure stability of the structure and provide the necessary upgrades. If the house is properly cared for, it’ll last a long time. Preservation and refinishing come after basic maintenance, and this includes adding elements that were in the original drawings but not built at the time (likely for reasons of cost). It’s important to draw that line and not do anything that we merely think Wright would have wanted but didn’t document.” – Larry Woodin

Via Build LLC Blog

App for sustainable urban design. Ryan Cunningham blogs about a new app called Ecological Urbanism created by Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, which is the start of a deep dive into innovation research with real prospects for finding urban sustainability treasure.

“The app is well mixed with information; with staple projects like the High Line and Masdar, and exotic new discoveries like “Effectual Decentralization,” a project in Argentina that plans urban subdivision by watersheds. The information has a Wikipedia like feel, but the target of innovative hits a well curated mark; nothing less then what you’d expect from Harvard.” – Ryan Cunningham

Via Metropolis POV

Competition to soak up water. The design competition, Infill Philadelphia: Soak it Up!, sponsored by the Philadelphia Water Department, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Community Design Collaborative seeks to inspire teams of landscape architects, architects, and engineers to offer up sustainable, low-cost ”green stormwater infrastructure.”

The competition is part of a broader initiative in Philadelphia to use green infrastructure to revitalize communities. Bold, new ideas that come out of the programs will also be critical to “the implementation of Green City, Clean Waters, the city’s innovative, sustainable 25-year plan,” according to competition organizers.

Via The Dirt

More than a little paint. Nick Konen, marketing manager at HDR, blogs on his experience and lessons learned from flipping houses, and how those lessons can be applied to HDR clients.

“Our philosophy was to fix each house to a standard that we would feel comfortable living in. But design decisions become a bit more complex when you know how it affects potential profit. We spent time looking for the best value. At the check-out line, we would think twice before spending “a little extra” on kitchen tile. You can’t underestimate the importance of design. But at the same time, you can’t lose focus on the goal…to make money. It’s a delicate balance that requires both left and right brains.” – Nick Konen

Via Blink Perspectives on Design

Gangnam Style and Neighborhood Identity

Most people have seen the mega-hit video “Gangnam Style” by South Korean rapper Psy. The K-pop video, which was released on July 15, 2012 on YouTube, climbed to 100 million views in 51 days, beating Justin Bieber's "Baby" and Rebecca Black's "Friday," and prompted an overwhelming number of response videos. The lyrics are catchy, the dance moves quirky, making it addictive to watch over and over.  The video mocks the Gangnam district of Seoul, an affluent and hip neighborhood where young people go to party. In the song, Psy describes the kind of guy he is and the kind of girl he wants, illustrating the pretentious culture of people who hang out in Gangnam. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0?rel=0&w=560&h=315] The music video is a sensation gone viral. Currently, the music video has been viewed over 530 million times on YouTube and is the site's second most watched video. It has broken the Guinness World Record for the most likes on YouTube and has 2 million likes on Facebook. Katy Perry and Britney Spears are tweeting about it.

Politicians and business leaders such as British Prime Minister David Cameron and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt have learned the dance moves. New parodies of the video are popping up daily – from wedding parties to Philippine prison inmates. U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-Moon has praised the video as a "force for world peace" and South Korea’s top economic official Bahk Jae Wan pointed to the video as an example of creativity and international competition that the nation needs. Millions around the world are obsessed with his moves, style and music.

Seoul’s Gangnam neighborhood has also been in the spotlight. The video was filmed throughout the Gangnam area in the tour buses, spas, shopping areas and even atop one of the World Trade Center Seoul buildings. As a result of “Gangnam Style’s” success, the neighborhood itself is now known world-wide alongside Beverly Hills, and Roppongi as ultra-affluent and trendy hotbeds. Gangnam has been featured major news outlets in the US and around the world and South Korea tourism organizations are hopeful that the video drives more visitors and consumers to the shops, services and businesses in the district.

A strong identity for a neighborhood or region is something that city officials, planners and designers strive to create. These reputations attract new residents, consumers and eventually grow local economies. What would be your neighborhood's equivalent of “Gangnam Style”?

Favorite Design and Urbanism Blog Posts for the Week of Oct. 8

Landscape Urbanism explains what's in a name. Cannon Design on rebranding public transit. Johnston Architects weighs the worth of a highly designed (and priced) water bottle. The bellwether of a city's cycling infrastructure: women cyclists.

What’s in a name? Sarah Peck, founder of the site Landscape Urbanism, blogs about how the term “landscape urbanism” does matter as the journal ‘Scape 2012 features Landscape Urbanism and reviews the blog beyond its name.

“While the dialogue about terminology is important, we also should pause that dialogue for a minute and consider that the larger effort to ‘engage landscape ideas, and landscape thinking, … in broad discourse,’ is what our larger disciplines of landscape, urbanism, planning and architecture need.” – Sarah Peck

Via Landscape Urbanism

Rebranding buses and public transit. Chris Whitcomb of Cannon Design blogs about rebranding public transportation after reading an article on the commute of the future in the Wall Street Journal.

“I grew up in a small town where there only real forms of public transportation were riding your bike, walking or catching the school bus. It’s only in the past five years that I’ve really come to see the benefits of utilizing trains, taxis and the occasional bus. In a world that needs to urbanize and focus on sustainability, efficient public transportation is a must.” – Chris Whitcomb

Via Cannon Design Blog

Related: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578016191463503384.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_careerjournal

World’s best water bottle. Riley MacPhee blogs on his conflicted emotions on a $40 water bottle that is attractive and unique yet has gone too far with its 16 different components and assembled using 65 different steps.

“This very well might be the world’s best water bottle, from a user standpoint, but is that something we should care about? Is it worth $40? … When it comes down to it, it’s a pretty benign product. But the whole goal of the designer is to raise the stakes, to redefine what it means to be, and to own a water bottle. Is that a good thing?” –  Riley MacPhee

Via Johnston Architects Blogs

Bike stores for women. SpokesWomen, an organization that aims to create a national web of knowledge and resources for women in the bike industry, believes that female-specific stores and gear can also help women bikers feel more safe and comfortable when they start riding.

According to a 2009 study, just 24 percent of bicycle trips in America are made by women. But as it stands, cycling is overwhelmingly male-dominated. A Scientific American article cites that “women are considered an ‘indicator species’ for bike-friendly cities for several reasons. First, studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child­rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding.”

Via The Atlantic Cities

Written by: Genevieve Walker

Related: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-more-bicyclists-on-the-road

Childrens books for future designers and planners

I have two kids, ages almost 6 and 3, and while they love reading books, I enjoy reading their books as much if not more than they do.  I love the nostalgia and silliness of Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl and the clever stories and terms that Mo Willems churns. The way my kids respond to books has shown me the power within their pages. One book can spark a new interest that lasts days, months – even years. One book can lead to the insistence that we read tens more on the same topic.

So naturally, I try to select books on topics that are also interesting to me (after all, I’m equally invested in reading these). This prompted an unofficial research project on children’s books about the built environment. With the exception of the immense stock of books about construction, trucks, trains and planes, there are relatively few stories about the professions and interests of the designers and planners or about the shape and functions of cities, buildings, communities, neighborhoods and parks themselves.

However disappointed I was by the brevity of my list, books like Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty and The Little House by Virginia Burton have been inducted into our nightly favorites. (You can find my assuredly incomplete list of children’s books on landscape, architecture, planning and otherwise urban-related topics at the end of this post.)

What is curious about this short list is that designers and planners love to publish books – but often these books are more effective as marketing tools for their services than as revenue generators from their royalties. Michael Crosbie, FAIA, who is currently the associate dean, architecture department chair, and associate professor at the University of Hartford and also edits Faith & Form magazine, has written more than 20 books on architecture. Five of these are specifically for children. Michael wrote a series of children’s book published by Wiley in 1993: Architecture Counts, Architecture Colors, Architecture Shapes, and Architecture Animals; in 2000 he wrote Arches to Zigzags which was published by Abrams. “The Wiley books have sold more than 120,000 copies, and continue to sell well nearly 20 years after publication, so they have by far been the most popular books I've ever written,” Michael says.

Watching my kids get excited by their books reminds me that I “discovered” the design and planning professions well after I established my career. Perhaps if I had read The Curious Garden by Peter Brown when I was five years old, I may have studied landscape architecture instead. From loosely polling my landscape, architecture, planner, urban designer friends, I’ve noticed that most of them chose their profession because they had a parent, uncle, aunt or family friend that was in a related profession. If this is how young people are still being recruited into studying design and planning, it’s no wonder why these fields suffer from a lack of diversity.

This is a missed opportunity! A children’s book that can be found in a public library can transcend races, genders, economic classes and cultures. What’s the literary legacy you’d prefer, a silly picture book about a personal learning experience that inspired a little girl to pursue your vocation or the coffee table monograph that you’ll give to your clients?

Children’s Books Relating to Design or Planning of the Built Environment

(Did I leave one of your favorites off? Please comment with title and author and I’ll add it.)

Blog Post Favorites for Week of September 24

Smoking and public space. Lessons from a pilot park(let) project . Business from beetle blight. Consequences of turning on a light.

Cigarettes and public space. If the world was divided into smokers and non-smokers, the public spaces of the world would be their battleground. But it's less of a war than a contentious relationship as it mostly has to do with smell.

In a paper published recently in Urban Studies, Qian Hui Tan observes that smokers are "purveyors of sensory pollution" – creating a scent that, like all odors, can invade and take over. When that space is public, the impact can be immense, segregating and stratifying public spaces.

Written by Nate Berg

Via Atlantic Cities

Great civic space. Howard Blackson blogs about the lessons learned when San Diego Urbanist participates in the annual PARK(ing) Day by creating a temporary civic space on a local Main Street.

“Place matters. I say this because our Parklet was visited by an interested Parking Enforcement Officer who sat with us and discussed the conundrum of city design — something ideally in pursuit of our highest public aspirations — playing out in response to fear of the midnight drunk.” – Howard Blackson

Via PlaceShakers and Newsmakers

Salvaging dead trees. The University of Utah has teamed up with Euclid Timber to salvage trees from forests across the American West that have been devastated by a voracious mountain pine beetle.

The insects have cut a rapacious swath through the Utah corridor of Idaho, Utah and Arizona.  A large majority of trees in Colorado are also dead, negatively impacting the state’s tourism industry. The university and Euclid Timber are salvaging dead trees left in the wake of the beetles, whose reproductive cycle evidently has been doubled by warming trends across North America in recent years.

Written by J. Michael Welton

Via Architects and Artisans

Potency of scale. Peter Syrett of Perkins + Will blogs about the documentary ‘Powers of Ten’ by Ray and Charles Eames which examines how perceptions of our surroundings change at different scales.

Syrett uses the film to illustrate how a simple act like turning on a light has a multitude of environmental impacts at an exponential range of scales.

Via Perkins + Will Blog

Celebrating a Retiring Hero (or even just an executive)

Earlier this week, I responded to a new discussion question by Kristin Kautz on the SMPS LinkedIn Group about how to structure a communications campaign around a retiring executive. I offered five tips to Kristen based on the communications campaigns I’ve led for mergers and acquisitions with the final tip being “Keep it positive!” After all, retirement is the rite of passage that we all strive for and it should be a celebration of this person’s accomplishments and contributions to the company and their profession.

A day or so later, Jason Mlicki offered an example of exactly this sort of celebration. As a marketing consultant to environmental services firm Verantis, Mlicki built a microsite to celebrate the career of Woody Wilson West, one of Verantis’ retiring engineers. The Wonderful World of Woody site features a fun and only partially-fictional list of Woody’s super hero-like accomplishments and the ability for anyone to add their memories and congratulations. Perhaps the most effective part of this is that the message focuses on Woody’s specialization – FRP Fans.

Not that I have any idea what an FRP Fan is, but I assume that most of the site’s visitors do and that this topic is something that Verantis proudly pioneers. Mlicki and Verantis show that Woody and his subject-specific expertise has been an asset to the firm AND that he has built the firm’s body of FRP Fan knowledge – a subtle assurance to Verantis clients that Woody’s know-how is ingrained in the firm’s systems and minds of its remaining consultants. Nice work Jason and thank you for sharing the link.

In case you are interested, here are my five tips: 1. Consider your audiences. I'd suggest running through your list of audiences and considering what their concerns would be -- e.g. Clients: Will my project be affected? Do I have someone else at the firm who I trust and want to continue to work with? Will this affect the firm's ability to maintain overall quality or business acumen? Staff: Who will fill the void? What upward mobility opportunities does this create in the firm? ...

2. Consider your messages to each audience. The more concerns a group has, the more personal you'll want the communications to be. - With staff, consider a company- or office-wide meeting to announce it. - With clients, perhaps phone calls by the partner him/herself on the projects they lead directly, otherwise the clients' primary contact at the firm. My hunch is that having a trusted person in place is going to be one of the most important messages to clients, so a series of in-person client meetings with the replacement leader or new contact would be necessary. - With vendors, perhaps a letter is sufficient - With the industry/press/public, press releases are standard, but perhaps they could be accompanied by a video highlighting this person's contributions to clients and the industry. Meet w/ select industry journalists to see if there may interest in a profile story.

3. Consider all your existing communications vehicles and who they reach and include these channels as a part of the announcement -- e.g. newsletter, e-blasts, website, blog, Facebook/LI/Twitter.

4. Consider the sequence and timing of communications: e.g. 1. Tell partners. 2. Tell staff. 3. Tell clients and vendors. 4. Tell the public.

If this is a high profile firm/individual, time your communications closely together so the rumor mill doesn't scoop you.

5. Keep it positive. Make this a celebration of a full career and new opportunities for the next tier of leadership at the firm

Publishing Strategy: Traditional and New Media

The publishing industry is changing. Today every company and individual has free access to the tools they need to be a publisher, but the resulting deluge of content makes the role of "gatekeepers" more essential than ever. I gave this presentation on the merits of traditional publishing, self-publishing and new media at a San Francisco SMPS event to help landscape, architecture, engineering, planning and construction firms create publishing strategies that work for their firms.

Publishing Strategy: Traditional and New Media[slideshare id=13395259&w=425&h=355&sc=no]

What has been your experience with publishing -- old or new?

Designing Your Stories

ImageAs designers, there are many tools to help you explain your ideas, but even with all the cool technologies and 3-D capabilities of this visual profession your ability to verbally tell your story is still essential. This was the underlying message of a panel discussion I moderated for Presenting Architecture at the AIA in San Francisco. In fact, most of the panelists presented their advice in parables. Architects frequently tell their design stories to journalists, clients and cities; so we assembled a panel that reflects this: John King, the urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle; George Calys, the architecture critic for the San Francisco Examiner; Frank Doyle, a Tiburon Town Council member; Phil Woods, AIA AICP, the director of physical & environmental planning, physical planning design & construction at University of California, Merced; and Jonathan Stern, director of the development group at the Port of San Francisco.

At the end of the session, two morals emerged from their accounts.

  1. Context is king.
  2. Good story tellers will tell the same tale in very different ways depending on who is in the audience.

Jonathan Stern narrated the tale of the 8 Washington building designs. He must have flipped through 30 slides of the planned changes to city from the perspective of the average pedestrian and nearby resident before he revealed how these studies and urban designs naturally informed the architecture of the site. The right context puts the obstructers’ minds at ease and sells the design.

Similarly in Tiburon, some projects have lingered for as many as seven years, while others sailed through the City' approval process after one presentation. The design of the house itself is less important to an audience of laypeople than the preservation of neighbor’s views or the intrusion of the natural aesthetic of the hillsides. The architects, who anticipate the concerns of the audience, illustrate their story with visuals that address these and articulate these points clearly in their presentation – instead of waiting for someone to challenge their design.

In the world of higher education, architects don’t always see that the university planners are your allies. Instead of going on and on about your very polished architecture designs, consider the bigger picture – the planning, how the architecture is incorporated into the neighborhood. Or better yet, give the university the opportunity to put their fingerprint on the project and they will help sell how wonderful it is for the city.

However, the audience is not always so obvious when you are dealing with the press. While you may want to impress the reporter with the features of your project that you feel are the strongest. The stories that will be successful in capturing journalists’ attention are the ones that appeal to their audience.

Ultimately, telling good stories requires preparation. George Calys’ words seem to be an appropriate summary of the lessons, “Have a message and be clear about it.” “Don’t make the audience read between the lines.” And finally, “The more you say, the less they hear.”