As much as the boundaries between design and art fade away (at DesignMiami galleries sell design through an art market structure, such as a $50,000 limited edition of 3 “designer” chairs), yet we continue to need to categorize and make distinctions between the two. And when we can’t see the distinction, bewildered, we cry for an explanation.

A recent post here by Starre Vartan elaborated on one of the defining factors of that distinction: the relationship between the creative and the commercial and what it means to both. This was a great insight. Then my visit to Indianapolis and the new art hotel brought even more clarity to the topic, a case study for discussion.

The Alexander Hotel (a 209 room property, part of the CityWay redevelopment complex in downtown Indianapolis) is the result of an initiative by Indiana developer Brad Chambers, a long-time art philanthropist and collector. With the assistance of the curatorial team, lead by chief curator Dr. Lisa Freiman of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Chambers wanted to bring to the project the inspiration that art, his passion, gives him and, in the process, bring to Indianapolis something new and unique.

Beyond a comprehensive and thoughtful art collection put together exclusively for the hotel, 14 artists were commissioned to create site-specific pieces for the property. All pieces make relevant statements and combine successfully to bring the trendy art hotel category to America’s Midwest. Undeniably, the piece de resistance is Jorge Pardo’s “design” for the bar and lounge, Plat99.

Pardo was given one of the most prominent parts of the project to design. The bar and lounge area is a glass box slightly pulled off the main volume of the Gensler designed building, hovering on the second floor at the corner of the busy intersection where the hotel is located, its curtain walls serving as a teaser, inviting passersby for a closer look at what’s inside.

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The Tulip Collection bathtub, featured in Metropolis’ February 2013 issue “Productsphere”

All too often fragility is accepted as part of manufactured luxury goods; the product’s short lifespan considered as luxurious as its disposability. With the recent release of their WETMAR™ update, WETMAR BiO™, Wetstyle set out to combine the purity of environmentally-sound material with industrial durability into the foundation of their sumptuous product lines. And as with all their products, WETMAR BiO is produced in the Wetstyle factory in Montreal.

WETMAR BiO craftsmanship includes hand polishing

WETMAR BiO craftsmanship includes surface buffing

Wetstyle’s entire product line now incorporates the updated material including its five new collections, designed to work with the enhancements of WETMAR BiO. To see how, check out the Wetstyle featured storyboard on the Metropolis Pinterest page. Read more…

The international design competition, sponsored by HP and Microsoft, in partnership with the creative platform Talenthouse, was called the HP/Microsoft Smart Office Challenge. The challenge was nothing less than to design the ultimate office space of the future. No pressure. The only requirement was that the design had to feature existing HP technology.

Our team won both the judges’ and the people’s choice awards. We are MulvannyG2 Architecture and industrial design firm Zac & Co., formed as collaborators on a design called HP MIMIC, a movable workplace that can be customized by touching a screen. With this design, users will be able to transform their offices to match their individual work styles and requirements, in addition to incorporating their company’s culture. Made of rigid aluminum and fully wired, the “plug and play” design features a collapsible system of rotating electrochromatic glass modules, controlled via a HP tablet interface. Last month, a prototype, built by HP, was presented at the Alt Design Summit in Salt Lake City. This animated video, created by MulvannyG2, illustrates the concept.

Here Alan Feltoon and Zachary Feltoon – in real life they’re father and son – discuss their design process for the HP MIMIC, the rapidly expanding role of flexible technology in the workspace, and the importance of design competitions in pushing forward new ideas.

Alan Feltoon: Collaboration can be wonderfully messy, particularly when crossing disciplines, with the potential for creating big ideas and concepts. Our two firms had previously worked together on the Battery Park Conservancy Design Competition, “Draw Up a Chair.” Through that process we realized how well we work together and were eager to do it again. The HP/Microsoft Smart Office Challenge presented an ideal opportunity.

Zachary Feltoon: I found it fascinating how much the language surrounding various types of creative design can differ. At first, it was like having a multilingual charrette. We were using different terms, yet trying to get to the same place. But soon we progressed to conversations that would include all aspects of the user experience while also using other mediums to inform our own work. When you collaborate you open yourself up to new ideas, and in that regard you’re never working solely within your own medium.

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Any environment that encourages walking is a place that works. We may be walking up or down stairs or to and from meeting rooms. It doesn’t matter why we’re walking, as long as we do. Interiors designed to encourage getting up and moving around may have open, central staircases that link floors together or cafeterias that are located within walking distance from workspaces.

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We know, both intuitively and practically, that socially interactive spaces, furnished with warm materials and rich textures, are beneficial and useful to the people who occupy them. But how do you convince the data-driven person who pays the bills? Buildings cost money. Owners want their dollars to go far. That’s reasonable. It’s because of this that architects are asked to prove that their designs marry performance and efficiency with inspiration and user comfort.

Federal Center South

Our practice is focused on designing amenity-rich architecture, from spaces where interaction can take place in laboratories to art rooms and family lounges in hospitals. Atriums are utilized in all kinds of building typologies to bring daylight deep into a floor plate, create a natural gathering spot for users, and aid in wayfinding. Our recently completed U.S. General Services Administration, Federal Center South Building 1202 in Seattle, illustrates this approach. The building uses an oxbow-shaped atrium to connect conference rooms, amenities, and offices. Here the atrium is particularly successful because it utilizes biophilic strategies that connect employees to living systems through the use of daylight, views, fresh air, vegetation, and natural finishes. All of these strategies, together, enhance the user experience. But such amenities add to the building’s square footage and often the construction cost – thereby reducing the efficiency of the cost per square foot. Measuring their appeal to the users’ humanity can be proven by the employees’ enhanced performance and satisfaction.  Still, making the case for this can be challenging from a purely quantitative standpoint.

We were recently challenged to design a new office building for a technology firm that wanted to measure the efficiencies and performance of the new project. I was part of the team asked that our decision-making process be based on empirical data rather than qualitative emotion.  The company had a strong desire to have a healthy, inspiring workplace for its employees, but required all qualitative design decisions to be based on evidence. They weren’t going to be sold on pretty renderings alone.

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I often find myself in scenarios that go something like this: After walking through a space, the client describes the architectural elements and tells me what’s important to see, as well as how the space will be used. “Yes,” I respond, “you can light it to perform any of the tasks you want to perform, and I can make it look the way you want it to look. But how do you want it to feel?”  In my view, that’s a critical question when it comes to lighting up a room.

Case in point: During a recent charrette to redesign a multipurpose art center, the architects were keen to have the lighting signal that each room, from gallery to classroom, has a unique function. They offered up inventive ideas on ways to design the architectural details and lighting fixtures to do just that. But my job is to shape the light itself. I want people to feel different in each room where they’ll be performing different kinds of tasks.

This affect is not as simple as emphasizing what you see directly in front of you. It can come from the periphery of your vision—the “fringe of your focus”—and it determines how you feel in a particular space. You absorb much of the affect without being acutely aware that you’re doing it through what we variously call the co-conscious, unconscious, or just the “noise around us”.  Some of this is sensed through the body—it’s everything we see out of the corners of our eyes.  Once I meet the clients’ goals of function and look, I work at the peripheral layer to establish both a sense of wellbeing and a desired emotional tone.

What, then, does it mean to talk about how a space feels? People usually respond in one of two ways.

For residential clients, the question of “how the lighting should feel” may ignite strong emotional responses, such as, “I hate fluorescent lights. I hate track. I love incandescent. I love candle light.” “My mother (or father) always went around turning off lights, and I can’t bear the feeling of not seeing.” “I hate it when it’s too bright; I feel ill.” “I’m afraid of the dark.”  “My partner and I totally disagree about the reading light in the bedroom and how bright the bathroom should be. We always fight about it.”

These intense emotional reactions—fear, hate, love, and anger are hard-wired biological functions of our nervous system—make sense to me. We grew up, as did our parents, in a world of plentiful artificial light. It is inextricably fused with our memories of home, whether gloomy or bright, candlelit or washed by a single circular fluorescent in the center of the kitchen. We remember the (now unimaginably) high levels of illumination above our desks in elementary school, and the acutely bright light at the hospital where we were rushed with broken bones, or visited relatives.

Despite these common memories, when I ask, “How do you want the lighting to feel?” I’m met with blank stares. With our focus on function and look, describing “feeling” — some neuropsychologists distinguish feeling from emotion by its subtlety, complexity, and the way it mixes intelligence, judgment, and experience — is particularly difficult.

To break through this barrier, I might ask, “Do you want it to feel comforting, calm and orderly; cozy and intimate, enchanting or glamorous, mysterious,  friendly,  playful,  surprising?” Some of our feelings are unique to us, some we share with others. For homeowners whose spaces are deeply personal, I help identify the distinct feeling they want to have in each room. For public spaces with their diversity of users, I work from a more generalized idea of what the feeling should be, based on the desired activities and psychological states.

Here’s where the peripheral layer comes in. Once we establish the emotional tone for the environment, I think about shape, movement, and light-to-shadow relationships and wavelengths. This is what the eye and brain register outside the narrow cone of focus that takes in detail and exact color.

Dining room, Colorado, by Maya Lin.  Photo by Paul Warchol

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Hildebrand’s research he applies to architecture the familiar landscape concepts of “refuge and prospect”; it spells out how our search for both is a response to shifting intensity among contending predilections. The basic impulse is evident early in the hide-a-ways and forts built throughout childhood. And gender, age, resources, time-of-day or season, strength or vulnerability, or urgent motivations of a “personal project” clearly can have widely differing influences on the way each of us will seek out a secure place. But he backs up a convincing case that designers can produce more welcoming, satisfying, human environments by recognizing that their publics will in fact experience them in these deep-seated, survival-based terms.

Sanctuary

Hildebrand takes the next step, too, defining and illustrating the architectural qualities that underlie protection and a release from fear or out-of-control nature in a “refuge”.  Most important is the low height and enfolding form of a “ceiling” plane or overhanging trees.  Light levels lower than in surrounding spaces, protected openings plus mostly solid-seeming walls – often the reality of, or echoes of earth forms, color, and materials – all naturally reinforce the feeling. Then horizontal dimensions significantly smaller than those of surrounding spaces – the “cozy” inglenook, “den,” or walled gardens – and an entrance that is a succession of vestibules or buffers, elevate the retreat into a “sanctuary”.  As a prime example of combined refuge and prospect he again uses the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright with their focus on cave-like hearths and long, sheltering overhangs, combined with broad windows and projecting decks – warmth, protection, and openings out to freedom.

“Hearth and ‘prospect’ at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water”

He could have cited, too, the secure “shells” of more popular, conventional houses with their courtyard or backyards and outlooks into the neighborhood. And there are other dimensions of “refuge” as well.

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Interior lighting has a profound influence on our psychological and physiological processes, so say researchers. Light affects our hormonal and chemical balance, sleep patterns, productivity, and mood. With the incandescent bulb on the verge of extinction and the global push for energy efficiency, we continue to seek environmentally friendly lighting alternatives. But some new lighting technologies, such as the CFL bulb, contain mercury and other hazardous chemicals while they emit UV radiation, which could pose long-term health risks including cancer, depression, diabetes, and fatigue. As we spend some 90 percent of our time indoors, we need to find other design alternatives that promote a healthy interior and protect the environment.

Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art and science, can help. The practice suggests that the strategic placement of light sources in a room can improve our health and wellbeing. The proper distribution of electromagnetic radiation transmitted by light is fundamental and Feng Shui strives to enhance quality of life by channeling positive (Qi) energy to create a perfectly balanced environment. In addition, the shape, material, and color temperature of a lighting fixture should be carefully considered in order to promote wellness. I designed the fixtures in this blog, following by Feng Shui principles, to counteract some of the most common illnesses that affect millions each year.

Depression Lamp Sketch and Photo

With an estimated 19 million Americans diagnosed with depression, an accent lamp may be ideal to counteract this psychological disorder as it focuses energy in a specific area of the room. The lamp would feature two nodes of linen burlap fabric encased in glass and connected by a stainless steel frame, in order to boost self-confidence and mental strength. According to Feng Shui, glass exhibits properties of slow, sinking “water” energy, also seen in those who are depressed. When glass is used in conjunction with linen fabric and a 4,000K LED lamp, the glass functions to cool down anger and stress. The north side of the living room and the southeast corner of the bedroom are optimal locations to achieve balance and reduce exposure to electromagnetic energy. Read more…

We work hard to advance the interior design profession, as well as the success of our members, at the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). To this end, we provide professional development and educational resources, as well as leadership opportunities. For many of our members, building networks is key. And as the design industry evolves, so does our commitment to meet the changing needs and values of our professional members.

During my first year at ASID, while conversing with our members and industry leaders, I heard a recurring theme—the beneficial role of interior design in our living and working environments. These discussions ranged from the work being done to design livable homes for veterans, to creating warm environments in children’s hospitals, and using design to aid an aging population and those with learning disabilities. As I hear more and more about the many inspiring projects our members are working on, it’s becoming clear that we, at ASID, need to create ways to recognize, foster, and communicate these myriad ways that design is improving lives and communities.

We’re starting to do this by adopting the goal of “advancing and communicating the impact of interior design in enhancing the human experience; ” as one of the pillars of our strategic plan — the roadmap that steers our mission. From this, several exciting programs have developed, such as our partnership with The 1% program, an effort that connects design firms with nonprofit organizations in need of design assistance and asks designers to commit one percent of their time to pro bono service.

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Alternative Workplace Strategies, Collaborative Environments, Co-working, Mobile Working, Virtual Officing or Flex Work space. I thought I was up-to-date on all my industry buzzwords until recently when a designer asked me if I had any information or studies on Agile Facility Management. Caught a little off guard, I told her I would check with my team and see what I could find.

I ended up turning to the Internet for more information, and learned it is not a new phrase as it relates to computer programmers and writing code. The primary struggle with their environment is the ability to bring groups of people together quickly for problem solving. These teams may be brought together for a day or more then a month, and require huge expanses of whiteboards, flip charts and other accessories, but the environment must also provide space for programmers to do heads down work. The methodology associated with these teams and management style is being adapted as a means to the general work environment.

Today, a company’s ability to react to social and economic shifts means that the traditional work environment must make adjustments. In recent years, with the growth of more sustainable environments, panel heights are being reduced or eliminated, which can take away the traditional storage an overhead provides. Office footprints and the reshaping and agility of the office environment are also changing rapidly with the acceptance of work-from-home and telecommuting policies.

I’m working with a client who is looking at a 60/20/20 split in office personnel: 60 percent work in a dedicated space within the office, 20 percent work entirely off site and the remaining 20 percent work in and out of the office. It’s a cultural shift in the way people work and it allows employees to have a better work life balance. Additionally, it enables an organization to capitalize on the strengths of their employees while allowing flexibility.

A common solution for this type of environment is benching, which can help organizations save on real estate costs and accommodate more people into a space. Be aware, these are fixed elements that don’t allow the facility to adapt to an individual or group of individuals that may need additional surface space to enable them to work more effectively. Some organizations or designers may suggest assigning mobile pedestals to each worker that could be housed in a central “parking” area, which sounds like an easy solution until you do the math. If a typical floor plan allows for a density of 150 people and 60 percent of them work in the office full time, than 90 of those spaces are occupied on a regular basis. Plus, if an average of 20 percent visit the office two to three days per week, than the space would need to constantly house 120 mobile pedestals somewhere on the floor. If each pedestal took up 15” x 24” of floor space the space would be using 312 square feet of dedicated floor space only to accommodate pedestals. This is not an efficient use of space.

In Europe, some companies provide employees with a personal, lockable storage space to keep office essentials; however, given the same scenario above, if we used the designated floor space per storage unit but stacked the lockers four units high, the useable floor space would decrease 78 square feet. Read more…