Michael Luck Schneider

At the upcoming Digital Signage Expo (February 26-28) in Las Vegas, there will be a lot of talk about integrating electronic media into the designed environment. On the 26th, at a full-day session called “New Design Directions: Dynamic Digital Environments,” Michael Luck Schneider, senior designer at ESI in New York will discuss, in some detail, the collaborative effort it took to create the Dream Cube in Shanghai. I asked him about how his global team worked together as they communicated between Cologne to Sydney to Beijing and points between; and the ways and means of systems design. In my previous interviews on the topic of media-rich environments, panelist Paul R. Levy, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Center City, talked about the use of digital media in the large-scale urban environment; Jeff Kovel, AIA, principal at Skylab Architecture in Portland, Oregon, discussed his firm’s experience in building Camp Victory for Nike. Here we dig down into ESI’s interactive spectacular, designed, as Schneider says, to “demonstrate the power of collaboration in shaping a more sustainable future.”

Susan S. Szenasy: Let’s use your project, the Dream Cube in Shanghai, to discuss how media rich environments come together, and how this project relates to other, previous work at ESI. Firstly, the global communication part. How did that work? Describe the expertise on the team in NYC and Shanghai, and another location, if any. Then talk about how the team came together.

Michael Luck Schneider: At ESI we always start the design process by imagining a project from the audience’s perspective and thinking about what their experience should be. Once we defined the vision for the Dream Cube—to create an interactive spectacular that would demonstrate the power of collaboration in shaping a more sustainable future—the next step was to find the partners that help us produce it. Through an open bid process we ended up with a pretty incredible international team based in in New York, Cologne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Los Angeles.

The first partner to come onboard was the lighting design group Full Flood, based in Los Angeles. As the visual content of the Dream Cube really came to life through projections, LED and LCD displays, light was a key medium to create a unified experience, and Full Flood was instrumental in the process from an early stage.

Spinifex Group from Sydney then came on to translate our design into animations and develop the majority of the audio-visual content. They’re unique in having a deep understanding of the technology that drives media experiences, which enables their team to build amazing stories for unique canvases like the Dream Cube. They also worked with a team in Hong Kong to produce local Shanghai video shoots and compose the experience’s musical themes.

PRG Germany joined as the systems integrator, and they oversaw the design and implementation of what was a highly complex and groundbreaking technological system. Pico in Shanghai supported our designs and mockups. They also did the final exhibit fabrication and installation.

With this international group, having face-to-face meetings with everyone at the table was essential to establish a shared view of the project and common goals. Once these were defined, we were able to use digital tools to review and track process in all quarters, and we held weekly calls to ensure clear communication throughout the process. Spinifex also developed a model that enabled us to view media mapped to a 3D visualization, which turned out to be invaluable. In addition, we had two full-scale mockups built—one in Shanghai and one in Berlin—that enabled us to review and refine the project in person at critical stages.

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In Las Vegas, on February 26, at the Digital Signage Expo (through February 28) everyone will be talking about “New Design Directions: Dynamic Digital Environments.” In a session called “Transforming Architecture & Interiors Into Media-rich Environments,” Jeff Kovel, AIA, principal at Skylab Architecture in Portland, Oregon, will discuss, in some detail, his firm’s experience in building Camp Victory for Nike. From the conversation that follows, it seems that the ways and means of sustainable design are similar to integrating digital media into architecture. Both types of projects are organized around research oriented, multi-skilled teams. In my previous interview with Paul R. Levy, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Center City, we explored the use of digital media in the large-scale urban environment. Here we dig down into one, very particular building and its media-rich message.

Susan S. Szenasy: As architects working in the physical world of tangible materials and expressions, did you need to make a mind-shift when you took on the Nike Camp Victory project? That project, from where sit, has a sophisticated digital component, way beyond what you’re used in architectural software programs. To begin with, please describe what the assignment was, and what you had to learn immediately upon accepting the commission.

Jeff Kovel: Camp Victory began in research and collaboration; there was no predetermined outcome. This approach of creating a vision, prior to defining a project’s limitations, is a testament to Nike’s commitment to innovation. The project began by meeting Hush, our digital partner, for the first time. Jointly we were briefed on the history of Nike, Eugene (Oregon), and the US Olympic trials. A full day insight into Nike’s upcoming innovations, to be launched at the Olympics, followed. We were some of the first people outside of Nike to see the Olympic Speed Suit and track spike, the Knit footwear, and the efforts being developed around Nike+ (digital). The task at hand was to create a temporary interactive exhibition around these innovations, immersing the viewer in Nike innovation. The limitation was that we could not penetrate or damage the newly laid artificial turf field that was out site.

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Parking structure, Roosevelt Island, New York

Do you ever wonder how another person does what you love doing? As a photographer, trained in architecture, I do. So when I get a chance to talk to a person who’s as turned on by cities, structures, and details, I grab the first chance I get a conversation going.  Meeting fellow photographer Heike Buelau, known for expressing herself through capturing the poetic aspect of our constructed environment, was like meeting a kindred spirit. As I was to find out, we share some aesthetic sensibilities, but how she arrives at her vision is completely her own.

Jean Nouvel, Chelsea condo tower, New York

With training in classical operatic singing, the German born Heike brings a sound/musical sensibility to her photography, framing every shot she takes, brining to the appreciation of the city and buildings a special flair. Used to the language of rhythmic tempo, the pauses, the piano forte, the crescendos, Buelau visually re-interprets the city as if composing a piece for chamber music: gentle, subtle, every note essential, regardless of how simple.

In a temporary hiatus from the U.S., with her a new show opening in Torino, Italy—as she was preparing the imagery she created while exploring new horizons, sights, cityscapes in the Far East, from Dubai to Abu Dabi and Kuwait—I caught up with Heike and asked her to elaborate on her views on architecture, art, and the Dubai urbanscape.

Smith Gill Architects, Burj Khalifa Tower, Dubai

Paul Clemence: What catches your eyes as you navigate the city?

Heike Buelau: Detail, small, hidden, largely undetected detail.

PC: You talk about silence a lot, how you value it….Amidst the urban chaos, how do you find it?

HB: This question ties beautifully into the first. To me a moment of silence is a moment in which I get to experience a pause from the constant influx of imagery and information in daily life, which generally sets off a never ending and unwanted noise in my mind. I have come to find that pause, that silence more and more in the detail of things and structures. The more I close in on the finest feature of a particular building, for example, the more I get drawn into its absolute beauty. Subsequently this results in that magical moment of silence. A moment of having discovered something in which all else gets shut out. All that exists to me at that point is the creative genius of the architect and my very own response to it.

Asymptote ,  project, Yas Hotel Abu Dhabi

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Victoria Meyers is an architect with a prolific and varied career. She is a founding partner at hMa, where her current design interests include how architecture can achieve beauty while embodying the principle of “zeroness” as well as using sound and light to produce unique architectural solutions. But Meyers does not limit her endeavors solely to practicing architecture. She also writes—one book on light, another currently in development, on sound—and she teaches.

Given that the field of architecture has changed radically over the past five years through a convergence of economic factors and technological advancements, we asked Meyers to offer some of her observations on architectural education.

Won Dharma Center, image via hanrahanmeyers.com

Sherin Wing:  How did your own education influence the way you teach now?

Victoria Meyers: It’s hard to know what to tell people. My undergraduate degree was in civil engineering and art history, so I had a much broader knowledge of art history than my contemporaries at the GSD. It’s not for everyone to do what I did. Most people don’t want to be in school as long as I was, they don’t want to read as many books as I’ve read and they don’t want to spend as many hours studying as I’ve spent studying. But when I’m teaching and when I’m talking to contemporaries about a project, I will always go into the history of a typology more because that is very real for me.

SW:  How has your perspective on education changed over the years?

VM: For many years I was tough as a teacher, though now I’m not. I look at the kids and I see such a rough road ahead of them and I think back on my own educational experience. I think back at the different things that were evaluated and realize that things never turn out the way we were told or expect them to. When we were graduating, there was one or two students held up to us as superstars, but we never heard from them after graduation. I’ve also been behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain and I know all the machinations of people who teach, psychological games, and how they’re presenting information.

Infinity Chapel, image via hanrahanmeyers.com

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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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My Game Changers profile on Edward Mazria focused on the nature of the architect’s activism. How does an organization of less than five full-time employees have such a big impact? Ed’s genius was in reframing the issue of climate change as a design problem, with easily defined goals (not easy to achieve goals, but with a clear path forward). Just as important, Mazria’s group, Architecture 2030 encourages organizations to take ownership of the issue. There are no better examples than the 2030 Districts popping up all over the country. Each is a local response to a global problem. Recently I talked to Brian Geller, executive director of the Seattle 2030 District about the birth of his organization and the way forward.

Brian Geller, executive director of Seattle 2030 District

Martin C. Pedersen: Ed Mazria calls his group, Architecture 2030 a “seeding organization.” Your effort in Seattle is certainly a good example of that.
Brian Geller: It’s true. It’s interesting to note that when your “Architects Pollute” issue came out in 2003, I was in architecture school in New York, and it was something I vividly remember. That story had a big impact on me, on deciding where I wanted to go with my career.

MCP: How did the Seattle 2030 district begin?
BG: It started about three years ago. I was working as a sustainability specialist at ZGF Architects. I was working at the Seattle office. Bob Zimmerman, the managing partner of the office, had just come back from a conference in Chicago and was telling me about this de-carbonization study that Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill had worked on. Bob said: “It sounds fascinating. I’m surprised that Seattle hasn’t undertaken something like that.” I took that little nugget back to my desk and was thinking it over. It sounded like a great idea. But I thought that if we wanted to do something like that here, it seemed that a study was not the right approach. So I made this map. I started with Seattle’s steam distribution map. We’ve got a small district steam utility here in downtown. They were in the process of building a biomass boiler that would reduce the carbon footprint of their entire operations by 50 percent, and the heating-related carbon footprint of the two hundred buildings attached to them by half as well. There was other great stuff going on, too. There were a number of large building owners undertaking portfolio-wide certification, putting together important tenant engagement programs. The city was about to pass a disclosure ordinance, requiring building owners to benchmark their properties and disclose some of the data to the city. All of this stuff was happening, but it was happening somewhat siloed. So I took their map, put on the ten largest property owners and managers that I knew downtown, who were all doing cool things, and went to a few people in the city, and other architects and engineers, and said, “Look, this is what they’re doing in Chicago. They’re doing a study. But if we did something like this here, and instead of doing a study, invited these people on this map in, we would cover a lot of downtown. We could get all of these large entities measuring their progress the same way, united around one set of goals.” I told them, “You’ll get a lot farther together than you would on your own.” They’d learn a lot from each other. They wouldn’t be duplicating efforts. Hopefully, they’d be generating more work for everybody in the city. People liked the idea.

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In the course of reporting my piece on Edward Mazria, I had a very interesting conversation with Andrew C. Revkin, for years an environmental reporter for the New York Times. Today he writes the paper’s Dot Earth Blog and also teaches at Pace University. A big admirer of Mazria, Revkin has an altogether clear-eyed view of the environmental road ahead. An edited version of our talk follows:

Martin C. Pedersen: First off, what’s your role at Pace?

Andrew C. Revkin: I am Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at the Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.  And I co-teach three courses. One is a new course I’ve launched called Blogging a Better Planet. In the spring I co-teach a documentary production course, where we do films on sustainability topics, and an environmental science communication course.

MCP: You’ve been aware of Ed’ Mazria’s role in the environmental movement for a while. How would you characterize it?

ACR: His case—and it’s a good and simple one—is that buildings really matter. He’s trying to shift how we design them, and how we design architects, as well.

MCP: How does his advocacy differ from someone like Bill McKibben http://www.350.org/?

ACR: I think Ed is focusing on things that are imminently more doable. Bill is very good about building movements around numbers, but has not adequately articulated how you get there. In other words, besides yelling at fossil fuel companies. That may be something that needs to be done, but it’s not a path that will actually change a lot of things. Ed is working in a space where there’s a lot to be done, both on existing structures and on new buildings. There’s huge potential to make big gains.

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When we published a Metropolis issue on Access in 1992, we were optimistic about the positive changes the Americans with Disabilities Act would bring to the designed environment. Signed into law by president Bush the elder two years earlier, the ADA was a hopeful expansion of civil rights, promising to include citizens with disabilities, in all that America offers. Considerate design was to be at the heart of this momentous social change. Well, it didn’t quite turn out to be that momentous. Compliance to the law seemed to wipe out the possibilities for design thinking about real people’s real needs.

Five years earlier we told the story of Patricia Moore, an industrial designer and gerontologist, who as a young woman took aging seriously and set out to experience the built environment—from street crossings to shopping—as an eighty-something. With the aid of a professional makeup artist, she navigated the world as an elder whose mobility and reflexes had been compromised by the natural process of growing old. In addition to her own research, Moore was also instrumental in helping craft the ADA. Through the years, her abiding commitment to inclusive design has never flagged (though it has been often frustrated by an uncaring marketplace).

As we developed our 9^th Annual Next Generation Competition, focused this year on inclusive design, we asked Moore to serve on our Advisory Board and as a member of our jury. In between one of her trips to China and some other far-flung stop, we caught up with Patricia A. Moore, president of MooreDesign Associates, LLC. Her stellar credentials include communication design, research, product development and design, package design for such clients as AT&T, Bell Communications, Citibank, Maytag, 3M, Sunbeam, and scores of others. As February 18, 2013, the deadline for Next Gen entries nears, I decided to ask my friend Pattie to talk about design in the service of human needs, give some advice to practicing designers, as well as those just stating out. Here is what she told me:

Susan S. Szenasy: Your game changing work came into my consciousness when we, at Metropolis, ran an article on you at age 26 navigating the built environment as an eighty-something. This was 26 years ago, when I came on board as the editor of the magazine; your story has informed my thinking about design responsibility ever since. For those few who might not know your story, can recap the reasons for your so-called “cross dressing” adventure?

Patricia A. Moore: In 1979, when I undertook my “Elder Empathic Experience,” the focus on ageing was primarily a medical model for treatment of illnesses and the chronic conditions related to growing older, and being an elder. The architecture, design, and engineering communities were essentially ignoring older people, with the very erroneous assumption that elders were not “consumers,” but rather “patients,” and therefore, not their concern.

My personal tipping point was the moment I was chastised by a superior at Raymond Loewy International. I was the youngest and only female industrial designer in the New York Office. We were gathered in a meeting room, discussing the design a refrigerator, when I asked if we couldn’t consider some door handle solutions that would be easier for elders and people with grasp and strength limitations to use.  The response was a dismissive, “Pattie, we don’t design for those people!” Those people? If the Raymond Lowey organization wasn’t designing for consumers of all needs, then who was?

I realized that observation and surveying, while important tools, would not be adequate to communicate the findings I so passionately knew to be true. As a child, watching my grand parents and their friends struggle with the activities of daily living, I instinctively knew the failure wasn’t theirs, but the result of poor and inadequate design solutions.

When I met the television and film make-up artists who helped to create the various elder personas I utilized, from the first day my foot touched a sidewalk in New York City (May 1979) until my last sojourn in October of 1982, I realized the means to provide a proper “wake-up” call for action. By becoming woman in her eighties, I was able to immerse myself into the daily reality of life as elders living in a youth-oriented society.

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Paul Rudolph’s Claire T. Carney Library at UMass Dartmouth, Western facade during renovation

When I read Robert Campbell’s recent article in The Boston Globe on designLAB’s sensitive renovation of a significant Paul Rudolph building at UMass Dartmouth, I was intrigued to learn more. The word that got me going was “Brutalism”. For some time now we’ve been covering this experimental, some call it aggressive or even willful and arrogant, form making. Our story on the ongoing struggles to keep Bertrand Goldberg’s iconic Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Chicago dates to 2009, our more recent blog on the last minute reprieve of Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center brightened my day even as I mourned the loss other important works from that optimistic period in our culture’s history. And so we welcomed Brunner/Cott & Associates’ ongoing blog series on the trials and tribulations of saving and adapting Brutalist buildings.

Eastern facade during renovation

It’s no surprise, then, that the Boston architecture firm, designLAB Architects’ success at the library at UMass Dartmouth re-awakened my evergreen curiosity about Rudolph, Brutalism, preservation, adaptation, research, and progress. So I went to the source and asked designLAB’s Robert J. Miklos, FAIA, to talk frankly about these and other issues swirling around one of the most controversial movements in architecture history. Here is what he said:

Susan S. Szenasy: Now that your renovation work on Paul Rudolph’s Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is nearing completion, it would be great to hear some of your reflections on the project. I believe that you and your firm, designLAB, consider Rudolph an architecture hero. That relationship can be intimidating to some architects. Did you struggle with Rudolph’s spirit? Or did his spirit seem to be at ease with your re-interpretation of his iconic building?

Robert J. Miklos: Truthfully, we don’t see him as a hero.  His work is heroic, perhaps, but I am a product of 1970’s GSD and was conditioned to reject the work of Rudolph.  At designLAB, our ‘courtship’ of the hero was a long process of research and analysis before we were able to find any true ‘affection’ for his work.

Rudolph with the library site model

It started with a talented young designer on the team who studied his early work at the University of Florida. There, Rudolph truly is a hero, if not a cult figure. I traveled to Florida to tour all his work in Sarasota—it was inspiring. His career is filled with contradictions: rationalism vs. expressionism, structural determinism vs. a personal obsession for hexagonal form. While we were continually trying to understand the original intentions and spirit of this project, we always recognized it as one of many experiments filled with successes and flaws. A radical approach to the interpretation and transformation was necessary, yet we believe our approach is rooted in the spirit of Rudolph.

It’s also important to note that at designLAB, we are invested in expanding the language of a specific context, whether natural or constructed. In this project, the existing building was that context, which we termed ‘Post-Utopian’. Our methodology is similar to what we have used in other contexts, determining when to push back, when to be deferential. Throughout our design process we immersed ourselves in Rudolph’s ideas and process developing a dialog between existing and new where the interventions might amplify the power of his original ideas and compositional themes. We also were not afraid to correct inconsistencies in his approach.

Library’s eastern facade during renovation

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One of this month’s fabricating duos, Jason Pilarski and Steven Joyner of Machine Histories, often works with fine artists to figure out how to bring their larger-than-life pieces into the world.  Their 2009 effort for artist David Schafer, Separated United Forms, was part of a 1% for the Arts commission for the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena and encapsulates the intricacies of their tech-meets-manual approach.  Schafer, an NEA-award recipient whose work has been shown at PS1 and De Vleeshal in the Netherlands, talks about the pair of sculptures:

Jade Chang: You and Jason taught a class together at Art Center?

David Schafer: Yes, it was a moment at Art Center where there was an opportunity to develop a new kind of interdisciplinary curriculum.  I was frustrated with Art Center because there was a Fine Art program, but no way to allow them to have access to the digital side of things.  Jason and I taught digital practices and sculpture. It was not market driven, instead, it was more or less taught from an art perspective. Students could bring in own conceptual ideas, they wouldn’t have to design a blender or anything, and they’d learn rapid prototyping machines and 3D modeling.  We had fine art-style crits—the kind that go on and on—to discuss their work.

JC: And how did you meet Steven, the other half of Machine Histories?

DS: The three of us came together in that class.  Steve was really brilliant.  They just had lots of energy, and the class became a platform for these things to evolve and develop.  It was great to have fine arts students in the class with transportation design students, product design, to discuss everything from product theory to appropriation. Steve is definitely the one that’s the most organized.  He does go to great lengths to make the greatest looking racking to hold something—he gets as excited about the case as the thing in it.

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