Aspen Report: The TED-Types Roll Up Their Sleeves for Social Design

Michael Cannell — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:11:49 -0500

Two years ago, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York displayed 30 humanitarian design and engineering projects, including a biodegradable shelter, a low-tech food cooler, and a straw that helps prevent the spread of cholera and typhoid. They were exhibited, incongruously enough, on the back lawn of the museum's headquarters, the former Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue.

Can Design Thinking Solve Your Problems and Make You Happier?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:14:57 -0500

Imagine for a moment that a business needs a radically innovative approach to a vexing problem. Designers and managers start with an intense focus on the human aspect--the real problems their customers face in daily life. Somebody gives the obligatory talk about out-of-the-box thinking. Then they step back--way back--and let creativity, not the cold exigencies of logic, reframe the problem. When it works, this process can lead to startling new solutions. In the parlance of the moment, this is called "design thinking."

The Post-Big Era: Will Small-Scale Ingenuity Replace Large-Scale Architecture?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:30:31 -0500

The extra-large architectural complex--art museums, libraries, office complexes--built so prolifically over the past decade are commonly described as expressions of civic pride. They might just as easily be called grandiose expressions of runaway prosperity and municipal vanity. Whatever you call them, shrinking government revenue and newly parsimonious corporate donors have combined to bring the curtain down on mega-projects. Welcome to the post-big epoch.

Blu Dot Drops Chairs on NYC Streets; Tracks Movements, Cool, but is it Marketing?

Michael Cannell — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:32:58 -0500

At 9:40 a.m. on Thursday, a white van pulled over near the corner of 68th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. A cameraman armed with a telephoto lens watched from the corner. A video crew snooped from a rooftop. Half a dozen operatives on the street murmured discretely into walkie-talkies, calling each other "Hound Dog," "Crow's Nest," and other code names. Within minutes Andrew Haarsager, an interaction designer with the technology firm Tellart, removed a white steel chair from the van and placed it on the sidewalk.

Curbside Marketing: Blu Dot to Drop Free Chairs on Sidewalk and Track the Takers

Michael Cannell — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:18:42 -0400

Here's one for the annals of experimental marketing: On Wednesday and Thursday a white van carrying a stack of powder-coated Real Good chairs by Blu Dot, a Minneapolis design firm started by three college friends, will patrol Manhattan neighborhoods dropping the chairs one-by-one on the street. No promotional material or sales pitch will accompany the drop-offs. The chairs will be free for the taking.

From Overwrought to Overly Simple: Is Green Design Anti-Style?

Michael Cannell — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:57:05 -0400

Like everyone else, the design field braced for the fallout from the financial meltdown. At the time, some of us argued that good things could come from a period of constraint and reexamination. The consumer culture of design had become overwrought, with limited edition candleholders that sell for $2,700.

Return of La Buena Vida: Conran Poised for Cuban Invasion

Michael Cannell — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:25:57 -0400

Sir Terence Conran, the designer and founder of the Conran Shop, has made preparations to design a dozen hotels and resorts in Cuba.

5 Ways Design Thinking Can Raise the Collective IQ of Your Business

Michael Cannell — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:25:26 -0400

Business executives love stability and the cold imperatives of logic. Ambiguity gives them fits. Designers, by contrast, can't abide the status quo.

Does Architecture Have a Foot Fetish?

Michael Cannell — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:19:27 -0400

Romancing Ruin: Four Radical Rehabs

Michael Cannell — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:22:44 -0400

Thirty years ago, in the badass seventies, the warehouse loft was cutting-edge real estate. The loft was then the height of bohemian cool; now it seems tame and utterly conventional. The conversion of offbeat industrial spaces--designers call it ‘adaptive reuse’--has moved on to more adventurous ground as architects and developers try to preserve the past and keep building materials out of landfills. As these five projects illustrate, the art lies not in what’s removed but in what industrial memory is preserved, and how it’s woven among new materials.