Wearable technology is going to change everything. Yes, it will change when, where, and how we “connect.” But, even bigger than that, it will reshape the way we find happiness—no longer looking for it in self help books or friends’ advice. Instead, in our search for answers and fulfillment, we will dive into the data our bodies and actions create. This will be the ultimate disruptive technology. But this can only happen with the help of designers.

“Disruptive technology” is one of those over-used phrases, teetering towards meaninglessness. It’s not that it’s a bad term; some of the most interesting phrases are used until they have been stripped of all depth and are nothing but a way to demonstrate being on-trend. (I’m looking at you “curated.”) Recently, though I heard a definition that resonated with me. Instead of thinking of disruptive technology as any new app that pops up, we might try and approach it as anything that fundamentally changes our core behaviors. On a small scale, wearable technology is already doing this. In five years’ time its integration into society will be ubiquitous.

Despite Heidegger’s assurances that our own actions are technology, most of us understand technology as something separate from our bodies. It is something we make, control, hold, and are disconnected from. But, to feel fulfilled, the growing societal shift towards a culture of constant connectivity and data worshipping has made us increasingly reliant and emotionally dependent on technology.

As we’ve entered a co-dependency with technology, we’ve grown more open to applying it internally and externally to our own bodies. Responding to this new market, a growing crop of wearable technologies have popped up, each with its own compelling promise on how they can modify our lives positively.

There is the IntelligentM, a digital wristband that alerts medical employees if they haven’t washed their hands well enough. Though it’s currently only being used in the medical world, it’s easy to foresee how it could move like Purell out of the medical community to the general population. Then there is Muse, a headband that connects to your brain so that you can play thought-controlled games. Similarly, the new Prius Bike, PXP which comes with a helmet that uses your brain to let you shift gears just by thinking about it. There are all sorts of fitness related wearable technologies dedicated to tracking your health and wellbeing, including Nike’s FuelBand, FitBit, and Jawbone Up. Read more…

Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City has seen several major disasters in recent memory, a fact that was not lost on the presenters at Thursday’s topping-out ceremony of the area’s new SeaGlass carousel. “This community, you cannot bring us down,” said Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer, who spoke at the ceremony. “You can attack us, flood us… but we are about building and creating.”

Borough President Scott Stringer speaks at the SeaGlass topping-out ceremony.

The carousel, designed by New York firm WXY, will be the centerpiece of the newly redesigned Battery Park. Several speakers at the ceremony lauded it not just as a new neighborhood landmark and beautiful work of design, but as a symbol of the resilience and strength of a community that has endured both the 9/11 attacks and hurricane Sandy.

Attendees admired the completed exterior. Inside, banners were placed to indicate the scale of the carousel seats. Read more…

The world around us is rich in imagination, beauty, connections, emotions, and anything else you may think of when you think of the designed environment. Yet the language we use to describe this fascinating gift to us, a gift shaped by designers, lacks the complexity and richness of our environment, that small part of the world we come in contact with every day, at every scale, from the smallest object to the teeming streets of a metropolis. This was the message of AFTERTASTE 2013, “The Atmosphere of Objects,” held at New York’s Parsons the New School for Design earlier in the spring.

The provocation for the symposium was delivered by author Akiko Busch, the first managing editor of Metropolis magazine and our contributing writer for two decades. When she read some odes to the physical world by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, those of us gathered at the school’s auditorium were given a gift of language. Busch challenged us to write our own odes to the everyday objects we come in contact with. The hand-written odes poured in, proving the basic human need to connect, through language, with the things around us. Here are some of the odes we captured that day. What would your ode be about?

Two odes to the button

1.

Closes and envelopes, secure until not, and then again lost and re-found, re-adapted.
So simple and complex—I love the form, function, form.

2.

Like you washed up on the beach after years of tumbling with salt and sand. You hold me together. Keep me from falling apart.

Ode to a MetroCard

Swish, here to there and back again, the magic key that unlocks a space-time treasure. Without you I’m stuck in one place, for all time. You unlock me, my potential, my silent partner.

Ode to my pencil

My pencil (my sword?) has a core of LEAD that will last me years (or hours?) of words pouring out like magic.  But on its far end, the eraser top scolds.

Ode to my new bread knife

Hay bread knife, you are too good at your job. You ventilated my finger with a lot less effort than it takes to bisect a bagel.

Ode to a test tube

A world-class wine tester who never gets tired of trying drinks and never gets drunk.

Recently, when the giant retailer Walmart announced its commitment to source $50 billion worth of goods in the U.S. in the next 10 years, I was curious to find out what this initiative would mean to our economy, labor force, manufacturing capacity, and more. So I put some questions to Dr. Daniel Mahler, PhD in communications, partner and head of Americas for A. T. Kearney, a global management-consulting firm.  As the firm’s lead senior advisor to several large global U.S. corporations with revenues of up to $80 billion, and with a reputation for a commitment to sustainability, I thought Dr. Mahler’s reasoned voice would help us understand what changes may be brewing as more of our products will bear the once familiar and proud label, “Made in the USA.”  I tracked him down as he traveled between his New York office and Shanghai, to ask some questions about the economic shifts taking place today.

Susan S. Szenasy: With Walmart’s commitment to source $50 billion worth of goods in the U.S. in the next 10 years, and considering our crumbling industrial base, is there any low hanging fruit left in American manufacturing? Which industry is most likely to spring into action in wake of the Walmart challenge?

Dr. Daniel Mahler: My feeling is that if there’s any low hanging fruit to be found in U.S. manufacturing, little of it is going to be about further lowering the costs of manufacturing here.  If you think about the economic period from which we’re only just emerging, not only those moving their manufacturing to China, but those who remained here had to do as much as possible to make sure they were competitive.  Although there are always creative approaches to gaining new efficiencies, the most obvious efficiency plays have mostly run their course.

Therefore, this is probably more about Walmart sensing that when you do the math and look not just at the cost of manufacturing, but at the total cost, the equation starts to shift in favor of the U.S. There’s the cost of bringing manufactured product to the U.S., the risk-cost of a product not getting here on time, the cost of product adulteration when bad things happen in the supply chain, which is huge in terms of risk, liability and reputation  – these are all parts of the total cost picture. Read more…

Multipurpose spaces and structures are being designed to meet shifting needs of city spaces through the day.

To keep pace with the changing face of downtown areas as they transition from understated business and commerce centers by day into lively areas for social and cultural engagements by night, urban developers are designing infrastructure that can adapt to meet an evolving set of needs.

One example of this Elastic Environments trend is The Gourmet Tea in São Paulo, Brazil. The shop is hidden behind a multi-colored wall, but unfolds onto the street from a compact cube. During opening times, the wall transforms into a fully equipped shop, complete with a counter that slides forward from beneath a hatch, shelves that are wheeled out from behind a panel, and a cupboard that emerges from inside a large door.

The modular plywood box ‘pops out’ of a space to create a colorful, dynamic atmosphere that can be customized to suit a variety of retail needs. Contained entirely within a 2.5 x 4.5 x 6 meter shell, the pop-out store is a compact and clever use of space that easily converts from plan wall into a full-fledged store.

Read more…

We live in cities because of the buzz, energy, and excitement generated by so many bodies — not to mention the convenience of having everything we need at our fingertips. But if things are at our fingertips, they’re at everyone else’s, too, and we have to make our way without jamming those fingers. At any moment there are people to be passed, greeted, and at times jostled against.  As men and women wend through the congested byways and orthogonal corridors of the urban environment, we follow different rules of engagement.  We choose different strategies in the urban dance of collision-avoidance. I distinctly remember as an eighteen-year-old, the first time a male date held the door for me.  My reaction was one of confusion and unease.  I felt the act of holding the door signaled that I was weak, that I needed protection, that I couldn’t open the door for myself.

Since that time, I’ve adhered (at least in thought) to the classic feminist trope that men’s behavior towards women in public spaces — the opening of doors, the waiting to allow us to get on and off the elevator, the subway, and the stairway first; that these gestures embody unconscious male attempts at sexual domination. These small gestures encourage women to accept the beneficence of men and needlessly acknowledge women’s generally weaker physical power. As a woman accepts the male-opened-door she also tacitly accepts male superiority. I believed that men and women should open doors for themselves and they should walk up stairs as peers.

And then I hit thirty-nine and upon entering The Kimmel Center, Philadelphia’s modern Orchestra building, I heard a feminine gasp behind me.  My life partner, who’d entered through adjacent doors notified me that - jeez - I’d just let the door slam in the face of the woman behind me!  If he hadn’t let me know what happened, I’m sure I’d have continued on obliviously. I felt like such a cad!

Epiphany:  Maybe the gallantry to women, that men regularly exhibit as we navigate cities and buildings together, isn’t just about oppression. Maybe it is also about consideration.  And instead of just being dominated as recipients - maybe women are also internalizing a message of privilege. Maybe the greater problem isn’t that men are following sexist social norms, but that women are rude. Male chivalry socializes women to be inconsiderate.

Over the last year I’ve taken greater notice of how men and women interact in the congested urban environment along with my own expectations and behaviors. Yeah, I know I’m not going to win the male-initiated waiting game to get on an elevator unless I break every social norm in the book. Yeah, this lack-of-equality ticks me off. However, I also notice that as I bicycle down the street and slow to approach an intersection, the car that plows through in front of me is usually driven by a woman; the cars driven by men, more often than not, wave me past. I notice a woman bicyclist making a fast left and cutting off a male pedestrian crossing the street with the right-of-way. He stops and kindly ushers her through as she blazes past without a backward look or courtesy wave. I notice that as I stand from my seat to enter the aisle and queue to get off the bus, I don’t know what to expect from a woman queuing adjacent me. She might push ahead or might wait; but I expect the man in the same situation to, at a minimum, acknowledge my presence and more likely let me get in line first.  And yes, I notice that if a door slams in my face, one of my gentler sex has most likely preceded me into the building.

While I don’t know from experience how men perceive the relative courtesy of women versus men, it does seem that men’s general concern with politeness norms towards women extends to a greater general awareness of all bodies as they navigate the built environment. Men seem more likely than women to push the door open behind them to allow a compatriot following behind to get through.

We can’t all squeeze through the tight thresholds—elevators, stairs, doors—of urban existence at once. We have to make room for one another. Crossing streets and turning corners invite opportunities for collision. We have to take our turn. Sexism and its legacy doubtless contribute to the small percentage of female architectural leaders. However sexism may have gotten something right. Gallantry may be a quality to be prized in men. And it may also be a characteristic to strive for as women. Entitlement isn’t a pretty thing.  As urban dwellers we need to open our eyes and extend a hand to one another.I’d like to bellow a feminist call to consideration.

Juliet Whelan owns Jibe Design, an award-winning firm creating architecture that weds profound design with environmentally responsible solutions.

Last week community planner Ron Shiffman received the 2012 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership, presented by the Rockefeller Foundation and administered by the Municipal Art Society. Ron’s acceptance speech, read parts of it below, evokes the “pivotal role” Jacobs played for Ron and urbanists everywhere, “in forging the way we think about people, cities, and the economy.”—SSS

The position I filled at Pratt fifty years ago was ironically created because of Jane’s advocacy against a Pratt planning proposal for an area of Brooklyn now known as Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill—an action I will forever be grateful for. Brooklyn benefitted because a well intentioned, but misguided, plan was defeated and I benefitted because I got the job opportunity of a lifetime.

I had the honor to meet Jane a few times, almost always with my good friend Roberta Gratz. In the early 70’s, Roberta and I took Jane on a tour of the South Bronx where my colleagues and I were working with residents committed to rebuilding their communities [the Peoples Development Corporation and Banana Kelly among them]. Jane immediately sensed that this, not planned shrinkage as proposed by some, was the way to rebuild our vulnerable communities.

One of Jane’s greatest attributes was to give voice to those who struggled to preserve and revitalize their community, an effort [that] many others were engaged in [including] Elsie Richardson, Don Benjamin in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Jane understood the struggle of groups like Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn whose opposition to the misuse of eminent domain and the abuse of power by some pitted them against the some of the city’s most powerful entities. She inspired journalists like Norm Oder to put voice to their struggles. Read more…

Photo: Lisa Anderson

Last month, Public Interest Design named me as one of the top 100 people re-imagining the world. As honored as I am – and please do put me on all your lists! - I couldn’t help but think that “top” lists are exactly the opposite of innovation. Herewith, the top 11 reasons to ignore all those lists that you’re not on.

11. Lists are issued by the kind of people who are always talking. Innovation comes from those at the fringes who don’t have time to write lists. Do you think Alexander Graham Bell was worrying about other scientists’ ideas when he invented the telephone—or was he following his hunch that one might be able to hear sound over a wire?

10. Lists describe the world in generalities. Innovation comes from attending to detail. Apple engineers optically scanned people’s ear cavities, built 100 mockups of the Apple EarPod, and then asked more than 600 people to jump up and down, run, shake their heads—all with the intention to create the recently introduced earplug that stays in the ear in all in extreme heat and extreme cold. Can you put that process in a list item?

9. Lists are limited. The best idea is sometimes number 1,203. In 1946, frustrated with leaky cloth diapers, Marion O’Brien Donovan—in a desperate last resort—cut up the shower curtain in her bathroom and sewed a diaper to prevent leaks. Many iterations later, she patented the first reusable diaper cover made from nylon parachute cloth. The “boater,” as she called it, was the precursor to today’s disposable diaper. What if Donovan had stopped at iteration ten? Would we still be leaking?

8. Lists confirm what we already know. Innovation thrives on examining what we think we know in a new way. DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar, a fiber used in bullet-resistant vests, when experimenting with polymers to develop lightweight, heat-resistant fibers. In 1965, while she was trying to dissolve one of the polymers, her solution had a consistency like water rather than the typical consistency of molasses. Where her colleagues saw a failure, Kwolek saw an opportunity—and spent several days trying to convince her colleagues that the “failed” solution could be spun into a fiber that was strong, stiff, and yet lightweight. What if Kwolek dismissed her hunch on the first day? Read more…

In our last post, you met the finalists of the 2013 Rudy Bruner Award, a biennial program that recognizes excellence in urban placemaking. This is the first of our dispatches from the field, as the Bruner Foundation team travels the country to examine the five selected projects. During our intensive, two-to-three-day visits to each site, we’re conducting interviews, taking photographs, and gathering information for our selection committee’s meeting in Oklahoma City this coming May, during which they will select the Gold Medal winner.

Congo Street, Dallas, TX

For our first trip, we headed south late last month, trading cold and snowy Boston for the relative warmth of North Texas to visit Congo Street Initiative in Dallas.

The project is among the smallest of this year’s five finalists. Located along a reconstructed block-long street in the East Dallas community of Jubilee Park, it involved the construction of a new “Holding House” and the reconstruction of five existing houses in collaboration with the street’s residents.

Congo Street Site Plan

The idea for the project emerged from a desire to stabilize home ownership for the families who live on Congo Street, many having occupied their homes for generations. The modest 640 square-foot houses, built in the 1920s, were in various states of disrepair, targeted for demolition and redevelopment.

Working with the residents, city, corporate, and nonprofit partners in the Dallas community, buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a local nonprofit community design center that submitted the project, crafted an alternative strategy for redevelopment. It focused on rebuilding the existing homes and street infrastructure over the next five years without displacing a single inhabitant. Staff from bcWORKSHOP and architecture students from the University of Texas at Arlington began working with Congo Street residents in 2008, exploring approaches that would enable them to remain in place without undue financial burden. Read more…

Photo by Toto Ong, Courtesy Urban Omnibus.

How do you measure life in a city? For its second annual essay competition, Urban Omnibus, the Architectural League’s online publication, is seeking nonfiction writing to explore the intersection of math, behavior, and urban life. Whether evident or not, mental calculations and measurements are a constant feature of urban living. Entries might explore how we quantify our actions in environmental, economic, or social terms, the costs and benefits of city living, or another subject that fits the topic.

Last year’s essay competition brought in over 80 submissions, each providing a unique perspective on Manhattan’s grid. The top selection this year will receive a $500 award, with two second place awards of $250 each. Submissions should be between 800 and 2000 words, and are due Friday, March 22 at 5 pm E.S.T. If the math seems worth it to you, send in your essay. You can find more details on the competition here