Max Zahniser doesn’t usually make house calls. As a leader in sustainability and integrative, systems thinking he lends his expertise to wide ranging building projects and organizations. He promotes green practices on a national level and has been at the inception of advanced thinking in that arena.

Zahniser doesn’t just paint with a broad brush. Son of two psychologists, he knows more than most that “relationships matter.” When it comes to collaborations, he wisely encourages “enlightened self-interest rather than right or wrong.”

To give you a better idea of his philosophy Zahniser will tell you that systems thinking is his foundation for understanding the world. He rejects a fragmented, specialized worldview and ascribes to the dawning “Age of Integration,” anticipated decades ago by Buckminster Fuller and Lewis Mumford. In contrast to healthy interdependence, Zahniser sees Philadelphia as an example of “dispersed environmental initiatives.” His new Sustainability Nexus enterprise aims to pull that all together.

PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE

I asked Zahniser to pack up the best of his design insights and conceptual diagrams into a tool kit he could take to any neighborhood to foster grass roots green initiatives, so to speak. As with the famed “Powers of Ten” illumination of scale by Charles and Ray Eames, presumably, what can heal a neighborhood, can heal a city and so on. Read more…

What if you herded a bunch of architects into one neighborhood and let them loose to design…

It’s been done before. Columbus, Indiana, comes to mind with more than 60 public buildings by signature architects. Ok, it’s a city not a neighborhood, but you get the idea.

Northern Liberties, a late 18^th century Philadelphia neighborhood exhibits a high concentration of architect- designed structures blossoming along its comfortably scaled streets. You can’t help noticing, pondering what it means to have so many new, well intentioned buildings jostling each other in one place.

By mid 19^th century, Philadelphia had banned certain noxious industries from downtown, relegating them instead to Northern Liberties. Immigrant workers and artisans ensconced themselves and their homes amidst the din and dust of their own livelihood. Remnants of abandoned mills, tanneries, and breweries are now interspersed with old brick row homes standing inhabited and intact.

New residences and commercial properties designed by contemporary architects bring vitality and economic promise to an area of the city that, for many years, was stuck in neutral. The neighborhood has become more intensely gentrified with many cafes, bars, microbreweries, restaurants, outdoor dining, festivals in summer and a retro 1950’s looking bowling alley. A big community garden on grassy, sloping land is a great playground for kids. In short, Northern Liberties is a magnet for resident artists, architects, designers, and other professionals who, in a sense, represent a tie to those workers and artisans of the past.

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In preparation for a panel I’ll be moderating on February 26, at the Digital Signage Expo (February 26-28) coming to the Las Vegas Convention Center, I decided to learn more about my panelists, their subjects, and the potential breakthroughs in media technologies. “New Design Directions: Dynamic Digital Environments,” organized by the irrepressible Leslie Gallery-Dilworth, FAIA, will conclude with a conversation between the day’s presenters and me. Here I start on the large scale, the city, and how the urban environment can benefit from the newest technologies, be it through offering new experiences or new development opportunities, all of which respect the glorious building stock that distinguishes many of our cities.  Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy certainly fits into our list of treasured cities. So I start my Q&A series by asking Paul R. Levy, the president and CEO of the Center City District to talk about a recent kinetic light installation in that historic area, and his hopes for what it will bring to his city.

Paul Levy, President and CEO of the Center City District

Susan S. Szenasy: I understand that Philadelphia’s Center City District (Market Street East at the Gallery), which you oversee, has been designated as a large scale digital signage area. What will this initiative do for the area (talk about your expectations here)? And why, in the first place, has it been decided to establish digital sign guidelines?

Paul R. Levy: Market Street East is a 7 blocks shopping and hotel district that is just one portion of a 120 block business improvement district that covers the entire central business district of Philadelphia. In the 19th and early 20th century it was the city’s primary department store shopping district, but it declined for much of the latter half of 20th century. Now, it is the link between a large convention center and the Independence National Historical Park and is being repositioned a hospitality, destination retail, and entertainment district. Digital designs were approved to achieve two objectives: animation of the exterior of several large buildings and the generation of new revenues that can be captured by developers who are seeking to transform obsolete buildings and vacant sites. The guidelines were established to limit signs to only those properties that have a minimum of $10 million capital investment in their building for general renovation purposes, to limit the locations that can have signs and set size and other design parameters.

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Three years ago, faculty and students from three schools came together to form the Empowerhouse Collaborative. The participants—Parsons The New School for Design; the Milano School for International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy at The New School; and Stevens Institute of Technology—joined forces to compete in the US Department of Energy 2011 Solar Decathlon. We wanted to change the way affordable housing is designed and developed.

This December 4th we realized our goal, joining Habitat for Humanity of Washington, D.C. (DC Habitat) and the D.C. government to celebrate the dedication of Empowerhouse, a new home for two local families in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington. This was also a celebration of a series of firsts in the district: the first net-zero-site, the first Passive House, and one of the first low-impact residential developments.

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Children are destined to inherit the planet – but they already inhabit our cities. So how can we nurture and protect a child’s infinite capacity for play in the big city?

“Grasshopper Green”
Stick-let

In Philadelphia, Stick-lets industrial designer Christina Kazakia has discovered a way to “reconnect urban children to nature with play” combining a transportable, minimalist design with limitless configurations. Her new color silicone kit is currently on display at the Art Alliance on 18th St. in Philadelphia as part of the 2012 Philly Works exhibition.

“What was your favorite childhood memory?” she had initially asked some childhood friends at dinner. Most memories centered around the outdoors where risk taking, mischief, and pent up energy found release. “Nature is nurture,” believes Kazakia who grew up wandering the woods out back from her childhood home in New Jersey. As a professional designer in the making, she wondered how kids today could unplug and engage in the un-tethered play of imagination in nature that she was so fortunate to have experienced.

At The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Kazakia was asked by her thesis advisors how she could narrow her design focus. “I want to build a tool to build forts,” she quickly responded, launching into eight months of research, prototyping, and documentation that illuminated the “natural imagination” of children. Kazakia says designers too often skip the research, what the user is telling you. She credits critical fieldwork and her supportive classmates of diverse backgrounds for having spurred her pathway to a solution.

Kazakia observed kids at play in the city as they invented elaborate games with simple sticks. If only they had some kind of simple, versatile connector they could build something with those sticks—something that would spark a kind of wonder, a primal satisfaction, and sense of accomplishment.

Stick-let starter kit

At the Art Alliance show I couldn’t help noticing that Stick-lets bore an uncanny resemblance to bicycle chain components. When I asked it evoked laughter of recognition as Kazakia added, “Maybe I came up with this shape after exploring the release lock system on bikes as a potential mechanism for a stick connector (early prototyping phase).”

Bicycle chain diagram
Attribution: Marcus Roeder

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Frank Furness, Architect
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), 1876
Photo: Gutekunst

Descendents of Frank Furness, the great 19th century Philadelphia architect, were emphatic. It’s not pronounced Fur-Ness, it’s Furness as in “furnace”. No matter how you say it Furness sometimes “can’t get no respect.” During his lifetime he completed some 1,000 projects yet too many of those distinctive works were callously demolished by his own hometown. The glorious Victorian interiors of the PAFA building were once covered in sheet-rock during the 20th century.

A glimpse of PAFA’s hand crafted Victorian interior
Photo: Joseph G. Brin © 2012

Is anyone stoking the furnace of his reputation in the 21st century?

George E. Thomas, cultural historian and author, met with Harry Philbrick, director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA), an unabashed enthusiast of architecture. They conspired to pull off Thomas’ idea of a citywide celebration this year – “Furness 2012 Inventing Modern” — with exhibits and events fanned out to Philadelphia cultural venues and onto the web. You now have a rare, multifaceted view of an architect who embodied the essence of 19th century Philadelphia, and is considered a linchpin in the evolution of American modernism.

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Hilary Jay is a dynamo. She presides over DesignPhiladelphia at the University of the Arts,  an impressively democratic array of design events, exhibitions, lectures, open studios, demonstrations, and street happenings, reached by some 200,000 people each fall. Jay thus proudly stakes her claim on “design as destination.”

DesignPhiladelphia follows Philadelphia’s great tradition of free access to many important cultural institutions. Jay notes, “Most of our programs are free and open to the public. I work hard to remove barriers to entry. DesignPhiladelphia is a great equalizer.”

PlayPhilly Big Chalkers, four-foot adult sized ‘sidewalk chalk’ crayons.
Project: Giacomo Ciminello and Kristin Freese   Photo: Jackie Starker

AIGA Pressed: A Hands-on Letterpress Workshop held at Two Paper Dolls (using antique Vandercook press)
Photo: Johanna Austin

Jay, as executive director and one of the founders of DesignPhiladelphia, has seen exponential growth in programming as well as attendance since its 2005 debut. Her goal is to harness the energy of this growing economic engine by facilitating designers’ connections. “We need to get people out of their silos to broaden their experience and increase their income,” she says.

DesignPhiladelphia event (handmade signage)
Photo: Louis Cook

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