When the symposium “The Sound of Architecture” kicks off this evening at the Yale School of Architecture, designers in skinny jeans and square black glasses may well be outnumbered by a cast of artists, musicologists, engineers, and even an archeoacoustician for good measure. Though Friday’s keynote will be delivered by architectural luminary Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the weekend’s program will be populated by some decidedly un-architectural figures.
The lineup of speakers and performers, drawing upon a broad array of disciplines, is designed to take the aural dimension of architecture beyond the exclusive domain of the acoustic technicians who meticulously tune the contours of concert halls and theaters.
“Acoustics have been important to designers since the days of Vitruvius,” says co-organizer and Yale PhD candidate Joseph Clarke. “But architects often tend to think and design visually, with sound relegated to a secondary role. By bringing together a range of speakers across so many different disciplines, this symposium seeks to breathe new life into study of the sonic dimensions of architecture.”
Some of the highlights include:
A talk titled “The Ear, the Eye, and the Space,” by Craig Hodgetts, architect of the Hollywood Bowl’s newest incarnation.
A performance of composer Ingram Marshall’s work “Alcatraz,” blending images, music and “found audio” of buoys, birds, and cell doors.
John D. Peters of the University of Iowa taking a close look at Mormons’ role as acousticians.
Sound studies star Jonathan Sterne, author of “MP3: The Meaning of a Format” discussing “A Simple Theory of Convolution Reverb.”
From giant redwoods to adaptive reuse, San Francisco is chock full of memorable sights – green buildings and beyond. At USGBC’s annual Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, held in San Francisco this November, you can sample from two dozen tours of buildings (and much more), specially curated by San Fran insiders.
Every year, the Greenbuild “host committee” of volunteers from USGBC’s regional chapters organizes a series of tours to help visitors learn more about the community and the buildings and the culture of each host locale. This year’s lineup is really impressive. The tour committee, led by Lindsay Baker (Green Team Consultant at Mary Davidge Associates) and Mark Palmer (Green Building Coordinator at City and County of San Francisco), has handpicked 12 half-day tours on Friday and Saturday, plus 12 full-day tours on Saturday.
How did they do it? The criteria for setting up the tours included a focus on educational content, the operational issues, showcasing the Bay Area, showing off unique approaches to green buildings, and making sure that the tours would be fun and interactive. The 25-person committee received a whopping 170 submissions and then scored and grouped them.
My wife, Sarah Bongiorno, and I have been talking about the idea of a Columbus inaugural Design Week for several years in parallel with our desire to pursue a UNESCO City of Design designation for Columbus, Ohio. The idea of Design Week is not new, just new to Columbus. A “perfect storm” of sorts enabled us to align our vision for a Columbus Design Week with the vision of idUS, and the 200Columbus initiatives focused on the future of the city. We wanted to raise local awareness of the power of design thinking and the importance of designers to our local economy.
500 Idea Books were distirbuted around Columbus, Ohio in anticipaton of the Columbus Design Week. An Idea Book’s 20 blank pages of 4.25”x5.5” is meant to be filled with visions of a future Columbus. An exhibition of the returned booklets will open on September 29th. After the exhibition, the booklets will be given to the Columbus Historical Society. All images courtesy of Michael Bongiorno
In the inaugural post of our series on social sustainability, we featured John Peterson of Public Architecture, who had participated in a panel discussion titled “Sustainability Without Borders” at this year’s NeoCon. In this follow-up, we’ll focus on the two other participants in that panel.
Rose Tourje is the founder and president of the non-profit ANEW Foundation, whose catchphrase “doing what’s right with what’s left” sums up the organization’s sustainable mission: ANEW helps streamline the process of finding homes for used or surplus furniture, building materials, and office miscellany. By taking the cast-offs from office remodels or manufacturers’ discontinued product lines and placing them with organizations—mostly other non-profits or public agencies—that need the materials but don’t have the budget to buy everything brand-new, ANEW helps reduce landfill waste and extends the life cycle of systems furniture that many companies treat as disposable.
Rose Tourje, in a screenshot from the short documentary “ANEW: doing what’s right with what’s left.”
ANEW and Change For Balance Productions have produced a succinct documentary about the challenges of demolition waste and their efforts to stem the tide. It includes the voices of clients who have benefited from the organization’s services, but, perhaps more tellingly, we also hear from leaders in the furniture industry who see ANEW as a new model for large-scale repurposing.
What is good design? It achieves function in an efficient and inspired way. While this formula usually makes for some unique creations it can also reduce design to something that’s “cool”. But fulfilling a function also implies that design is a service. Designers meet the needs that feed the demands of the market (or the client); a new building, a teapot, a raincoat are just some examples of market-driven design.
This month in Sao Paulo, Brazil BoomSPdesign will focus on the issues of good design, including its often ignored and less glamorous sides. The global forum opens on August 22nd and runs through the 24th. Perhaps the conference’s theme is best illustrated by the story of “Pipoca do Valdir” (Valdir’s Popcorn).
Valdir’s push cart, photo courtesy of BoomSPdesign.
Valdir Novaki was a Brazilian redneck from rural Parana who dreamed of going to the big city and making a name for himself. After years of waiting for a license to operate a popcorn pushcart in Curitiba, he got his wish. He quickly realized the need to differentiate himself from the other street vendors. From the immaculately clean cart, to a variety of flavors and original spices, nothing was ordinary in Valdir’s new business.
There were too many things vying for the audience’s attention at the “Why Design Now?” conference hosted in New York City on October 1st by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and GE. It was hard enough staying focused on the speakers, when you could see the dramatic vista of Columbus Circle behind the stage. But my attention also kept wandering to the live twitter feed projected on the wall to the left of the stage. And apparently I wasn’t the only one. Two hours into the event, @DesignObserver’s tweet showed up on the wall: “More people watching the twitter feed wall than the speakers at Why Design Now?”
An IV drip of espresso would have stimulated the brain less than an afternoon at CUSP, the two-day innovation conference—created and hosted by design firm smbolic—that flipped Chicago’s lid last week.
Swampman kicked it off. Covered in head-to-foot, craft-store moss, former priest Mike Ivers took the stage, complaining of deadlines: “I’m swamped!” he shouted, shedding peat.
Ivers, now President of Goodcity, a capacity-building organization for NPOs, proposed his perspective on swamps—or the social, economic and personal problems we’re trying to design ourselves out of. To find our way out of the bog, we have to get lost in it first. “Let us shift the paradigm of life’s swamps, and see them as adventures—frightening and scary, but always exhilarating!”
Halleluiah. Conferrers then dove into the “gumbo mud” and morass of Broken Systems like health care, food distribution, manufacturing and education. Read more…
In Portland, Oregon last week the IDSA International Conference asked: DIY Design Threat or Opportunity? Why, you may wonder, would a community of makers, independent thinkers, and entrepreneurs be so apprehensive? To explore this uneasy relationship between the Do It Yourself community and industrial designers,Grace Bonney, the editor of Design*Sponge, kicked off the proceedings; she asked design professionals to be kind to DIYers, many of whom are young and not academically trained. She implored the gathered to teach this growing group of makers, to understand their weaknesses, to recognize their need for design expertise and to learn business. Her words and her tone seemed apologetic and I feared the conference would turn into an “us versus them” diatribe. Read more…
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