Listening

How do we practice something we think we already do well? Most of us assume we are communicating clearly all the time. The problem with our communication is that we are fulfilling only half of the bargain; we have so much to say that we forget to listen (or we’re listening to ourselves). Yet, listening may be the most important element of collaboration. We credit ourselves with being attentive, but we recognize the real thing when we note: “She’s a good listener,” we inadvertently make an implicit confession; to listen well is rare.

The first step in listening well is simply to hear what someone is saying. The next step is to acknowledge what you “think” you’ve heard, and not simply by nodding in agreement – that is diplomacy. Echoing back to the speaker what you have understood reinforces the authenticity of the interaction and may clarify the message for others in the room. To listen effectively is to reflect just enough comprehension back to the speaker while devoting your attention to what is being said.

From the other side, to be listened to, fully and earnestly, is to be accepted. Real listening encourages and supports a deeper, mutual exchange. Of course, being heard is so unusual and so unexpected that it can also be uncomfortable. As mild panic settles in, we admonish ourselves: ‘Best say something useful!’

Opening the Door

Collaboration opens the door for more to enter. Inviting collaboration starts with the basics—hearing everyone introduce him- or herself. Further devices can be used to open things up. For example each participant might pin a thought, concern, or revelation anonymously to the wall. Barriers break down and people get more comfortable with one another. Later, each participant might put forward an alternative to the plan being discussed, or suggest three good reasons why a popular idea is mistaken.

Finding strengths and weaknesses becomes the shared work. Issuing an invitation to participate fully makes it possible to explore, weigh, and compare without injuring anyone’s self-esteem. The discussion becomes livelier, the results richer. Read more…

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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AIA Technology Symposium from KPFF Cinema on Vimeo.

While attending the recent AIA Portland Technology Symposium I was inspired to think about the importance of play relative to technology’s emerging impact on the design professions. I went into the conference knowing that successful companies often foster a culture of experimentation and exploration. They encourage employees to explore tangents, push boundaries, and chase down hunches knowing that it may have little to do with how a company’s goods and services are delivered. Employees are simply asked to play and see how far they can take an idea.  Play helps you keep your finger on the pulse of innovation and connects processes to adjacent possibilities.

Presenters at the Technology Symposium came from brands like Nike, Laika, Adidas, Pixel Pool, Ziba, Intel, Lucid Design Group, ADX, showing how they use technology to Think, Make, and/or Tell.  There were almost no architects in the lineup. It wasn’t until nearly the end of the event that J. Meejin Yoon spoke and we heard from inside our profession; but in reality she is more an artist/creative problem solver than an architect. In fact, creative problem solving was the common thread that ran through the symposium.

The speakers explored the current and emerging relationship between the “creative” and technology. While I had anticipated to hear how technology can think, tell, or do without the human brain, this was not the case. The fear of technology’s power, dating back to IBM’s unveiling of the first super computer, is prevalent even among those who champion its prowess. The idea of being replaced by technology is where we, designers, get scared. The major distinction between designers and their technology is vision, and the desire to control that vision. When technology is synonymous with tool, we don’t seem so conflicted – tools are trusted to hands, vision is followed. Craft still comes from the craftsman, creativity from the creative and architecture from the architect.

The power of technology as tool is its ability to streamline design parameters in a more directed, vetted, and fitted manner, be this through structural modeling, energy modeling, rapid prototyping, BIM environments, or exploring delivery methods.  Technology pushes design forward by allowing designers to make things more quickly, from prototyping objects to exploring manufacturing processes to exploring materials.  But it also increases our ability to access  the tools and the information to use those tools, thus increasing the speed of ideation, to prototype, to creation, to marketplace by simply making it easier to get over previous hurdles.

left to right:  The Jammy!  A funky-fresh boombox (top: Leaptronic.com, bottom: Nicolle Clemetson), PICA:TBA (top: Ellen Fortin, bottom: Mitch Snyder), manufacturing tools and inspiration (Adidas)

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If we need any further proof that the Danish architect and wunderkind Bjarke Ingels is destined for superstardom (and we don’t), here’s another piece of evidence: a new documentary on Parkour, the so-called “urban sport” where competitors race from one spot in the city to another as quickly as possible. (Fifty years ago this was called “playing on the fire escape.”) The film—directed by the Danish director Kasper Astrup Schröder and entitled My Playground—began as a modest twenty-minute effort. But the irrepressible and relentlessly media savvy Ingels watched a rough cut, saw hipsters at his Mountain complex in Copenhagen leaping from one terrace to another, and suddenly a short film on Parkour became a somewhat longer film on Parkour—and architecture. (More specifically, Ingels’ architecture.) Think of it as a benign form of creative hijacking. The trailer, in fairness, looks like a lot of fun:

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Jacopo Foggini at the INTERNI exhibition. Photo: Paul Clemence.

The Milan Salone is going full blast and millions of micro to macro world views can be heard there. One moment you might see the exhibit of Italy’s largest design magazine, Interni, which challenged well-known “macro” architects to create “mutant and adaptable” larger than life building forms and the next, an up-coming artist’s micro-experiment to explore with video and dance such puzzling questions as why bees are disappearing from the planet.

Clearly the Salone del Mobile is much more than a furniture trade show. It is a vast dialogue on multiple, curious, holographic, networked, and hive mentality  — from the flood of global visitors to thousands of local teens crowding the streets, design revelers shuffling from one lively party to another. After sprints around three Milanese zonas and little sleep, here is a glimpse at the sites and happenings we took in. Read more…