Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
Janine M. Benyus
Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises
Architecture for Humanity
Design with the Other 90%: Cities
Cynthia E. Smith
Design for the Other 90%
Cynthia E. Smith
http://shop.mmparis.com/categories/kanye-west-scarves/
These amazing silk scarves were made by MM Paris (2011) when they were commissioned by West to design his new album “My Beautiful Dark and Twisted Fantasy”. The artist George Condo contributed paintings of chararcters that populate the songs
Here’s the pdf of the article: groupthink_lehrer
Groupthink, by Jonah Lehrer, Article in the New Yorker, Jan 30, 2012 pp. 22 — 27
“The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks.” (27)
Article in this week’s New Yorker discusses ways of encouraging creativity in the workplace. Citing scientific studies, Lehrer argues that brainstorming does not work because its cardinal “rule” of reserving criticism is prescribed, and therefore unrealistic. Creativity is messy, he says, and it thrives in the tense reality of human relations. Data has shown that brainstorming sessions are not nearly as productive as we have come to think. People are more effective, in fact, when they work alone as well as together, but mostly if they cross paths with other creatives in unexpected ways.
Brainstorming was invented by Alex Osborn, an ad exec. Osborn defined it in Chapter 33 of his book “Your Creative Power,” published in 1948, as “using the brain to storm a creative problem—and doing so in commando fashion, with each stormer attacking the same objective.” It presupposed an absence of criticism and negative feedback. This, Lehrer says, doesn’t always work, as group dynamics cannot be prescribed. Instead, “…when the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself.” (27)
Further, Lehrer writes about the importance of the “place” of creativity. The cubicle paradigm has led to isolation, depriving people of productive, cross-disciplinary encounters. He writes about how when Steve Jobs was building Pixar’s headquarters, he purposefully placed office space around a central atrium where people would be forced to walk to to get to their mailboxes, conferences and bathrooms. He did this to encourage chance meetings in corridors.
His biggest point is the importance of flexible workspace that, through its very architecture, encourages a meeting of the minds. A prime example is “Building 20” on the MIT campus, built as a temporary structure for WWII radar research. Meant to be demolished at the end of the war, through a set of circumstances the building was left standing and over the years housed a hodge-podge of departments. Since it wasn’t pristine, its tenants were free to tear down and build walls, and even floors. They could customize their spaces as they saw fit. Over the years the building has given seen some the most creative output this country has produced — Noam Chomsky’s linguistics, the Bose speaker company founded by grad student Amar Bose, and a slew of engineering discoveries.
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This is right up our alley for the SPACE chapter. It’s great to read scientific confirmation that schools need to have flexible spaces and that departments should be housed in such a way to encourage cross-disciplinary chance encounters. It also makes me wonder how to make such “chance encounters” happen within the structure of a class.
Here’s a tedx video of Andrew Byrom, who makes awesome interdisciplinary typography:
http://tedxucla.org/2011/05/12/andrew-byrom-if-h-is-a-chair-mapping-new-forms-in-typography-through-experimentation-collaboration-and-a-shifting-view-point/ accessed January 31, 2012.
Notes while watching the video:
Face recognition
Color blind test
Typeface recognition — type made of drinking straws
seeing letters everywhere — in bandaids, searching out typographic forms, then digitizing them; finding something in 3d and bringing it back into flatness.
“if h is a chair, what do the other letters look like?”
His thinking process leads him to collaborations. He envisions physical form for his letters, such as metal furniture, neon, kites, rails, blinds…and seeks out the craftsmen/factories to make his visions come alive. Sometimes he has a 3d idea, such as flipping blinds, and then envisions the typographic form to go with it.
What’s neat here is the back and forth he has with the manufacturer — an old school relationship to make new form. Breaking into other disciplines and bending them to suit his needs — persisting until the neon guy is hooked and wants to make his complicated forms.
INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD
We live in a compartmentalized mind frame. Home is different from office, fun is separated from work, science lives apart from art. We’ve been trained to specialize in one thing and call that our profession, pushing our other interests down to lesser importance. Many of us, however, have several seemingly unrelated passions simmering within us, waiting to be manifested with the right method.
Interdisciplinary thinking turns compartmentalization on its head encouraging the coming together of disparate interests. In her map painting series, designer Paula Scher, partner in the eminent studio, Pentagram, combined her passion for lettering, maps and painting to create a series cross-disciplinary works. Similarly, designer Andrew Byrom merged his love of typography and furniture to create typographic furniture, while the ceramicist Stephanie Dearmond cast letterforms in porcelain to make new and unexpected form. These are but a few examples of what can happen when we choose to combine our interests instead of segregating them.
Passions are fluid. They change shape and intensity. Introduce yourself to a new subject matter. Prod into a new discipline in order to give yourself a new perspective. Conversations fuel passions and can lead to new ways of thinking. This is precisely why designer James Victore holds The Dinner Series, an annual week-long workshop where each day culminates in a lavish dinner party, meant to stimulate creative conversation. (Get Victore quote here). Give another example of stimulating conversation here.
Conversations can lead to striking collaborations between experts from disparate fields. Longtime collaborators ______ of MM/Paris and photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have produced hybrid photo/text works. (Show alphabet here). Likewise, designer Stephen Farrell has worked closely with writer Steve Tomasula to publish novels that bestow equal value on the design and the text. (Need example of designer working with a no-artistic collaborator).
How does this work get done? In this chapter, we give you some leads. We attempt here to break down the method of interdsiciplinary design into useful tools—charts and diagrams, tips on inter-personal relations, and rules for testing the work as you go along.
Scher combined her love of painting, lettering and maps in these interdisciplinary works that reflect on our information-centered society.
From the Pentagram website:
“In her paintings, Scher renders information and data culled from headlines, maps and diagrams in madcap fields of hand-drawn typography. Obsessive, opinionated and more than a little personal, the maps provide an exuberant portrait of contemporary information in all its complexity and subjectivity. Scher’s new book of her paintings, MAPS, was published last fall and recently went into its second printing.”
http://pentagram.com/en/new/2012/01/paula-schers-maps-exhibition-o.php
Antartctica, 2011
This article describes the process of working with a diverse team, where not everyone at the table is a designer.
http://www.good.is/post/the-design-difference-using-design-to-conduct-a-problem-solving-workshop/
Relevant to us? outlines a method of working with diverse people
“The timeframes gave great guidance for narrowing lofty ideas into what would be possible to achieve. Each group was given about 30 minutes in which to tackle a specific combination, then we’d be asked to switch to another assigned category and timeframe. This prevented potential burnout from banging our heads against the same problem all day.
The format of the brainstorming, or ideation, exercises moved from an unedited, uncensored burst of ideas (divergent thinking), into more actionable, physically-oriented solutions (convergent thinking). Each group began the brainstorming period by layering a page with quick ideas—or pieces of ideas—jotted on Post-its. Over time, common themes or similar trains of thought were grouped together and built upon, and the best three to five ideas were drafted into more specific concepts.”
“What Gutenberg did for writing online, video can now do for face to face communication.” Chris Anderson
Streaming video online has changed the way we work together and exchange ideas. Chris Anderson of TED speaks about how a crowd can accelerate improvement, the bigger the crowd the greater the innovation. Global recognition is initiating huge amounts of effort. It works by people sharing their biggest secret (radical openness), their greatest talent- they make a video of it and post it to the web. People across the entire planet see that video, get inspired, learn that skill, improve upon it, and then post their innovation. Video offers something the printed word and photographs cannot. It is an exchange beyond words, and talents such as dancing can thrive. Video offers new ways to learn and respond, building ideas in a participation age.
How does this relate to Interdisciplinary design projects? We don’t have to be in the same room to work together. Streaming video online has opened doors to new ways of collaborating and gaining knowledge.
“One would think that having no design education to speak of, having never learned the proper way to do, well, anything, would tend to be a major handicap. Instead, it allows me to forgo the formalities and head right to the good stuff.” (James Victore, Victore, or, Who Died and Made You Boss, New York: Abrams, 2010. project 40, no page number)
He writes compassionately about teaching, how students come to him “standardized,” and he has to break their molds, as it were, to allow them to believe that they can really make a difference and that “love always wins.”
He got together with a bartender/actor friend to create a non-profit called the Shakespeare Project that staged plays for diverse audiences. (Example of interdisciplinary work!)
It’s important to be steeped in culture!
the pivot, interesting term for switching directions.
Article that highlights companies that change their tactics quickly and stresses the importance of failing.
“To pivot is, essentially, to fail gracefully. While the term has been in the start-up lexicon for decades, it is coming up more often in the current Internet boom, as entrepreneurs find that many investors are willing to keep the money flowing even if a start-up takes a hard left turn.” – Jenna Wortham
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/business/for-some-internet-start-ups-a-failure-is-just-the-beginning.html?_r=2&hp, Accessed Jan 19, 2012)
