What we’re Diggin

Italian firm StARTT (winners of the MoMa/P.S. 1 Young Architects Program) turned the stone courtyard at the MAXXI Museum into an artificial oasis of enormous red poppies and shallow reflecting pools.  The most incredible feature:  The entire Whatami installation will be recycled or “replanted” in other parts of the city that needs a splash of color.  Check out all the pics at Inhabitat.

Designing More With Less symposium at Cooper Union’s new Morphosis building (one of NY’s greener buildings) gave me a chance to check it out from the inside.  The downstairs lecture hall and gallery spaces are well thought out and I liked the use of crinkled mesh on the ceiling of the auditorium. The semi- transparent rippling water effect covered up the mechanicals, while being calming and textural without being distracting but enough about my idle observations of the space and onto the discussion at hand.

MUJI was hosting, IDEO’s Iaian Roberts, Jeremy Heimans of Purpose/ Avaaz.org and Simon Mainwaring who just wrote book We First (which I am looking forward to reading) were presenting, speaking and taking questions…Robin Dorian was the moderator, co-founder of Find Eat Drink.

Designing More with Less speakers

The presentations were short but all seemed on point.  Iaian talked from a design point of view, Jeremy from a social media perspective and Simon from a marketing view point. I took note when Iaian pointed out that design needs to step back and look at the problem/solution not get bogged down in design with a capital D looking to how developing countries solve basic problems from inception with fresh eyes vs. with our myopic western view from plenty. He cited  Zipcar as a good model of shared ownership & that it removes 15 cars from the road…also cited an interesting fact that most cars generally sit idle for 90% of the time in garages etc.  Natura Brazil is another example of rethinking how brands approach markets from the solution first not the traditional design protocol and also ITunes & the new cloud will completely shift an already vastly changed industry streaming music questioning how we see “ownership” in the future and the potential consumption/waste ration of CD & DVDs/packaging etc. within only the last 5 years .

Heimans talked about brands need to look at marketing as a “dialogue not monologue with consumers” and must find compelling easy ways to engage and communicate on mass levels for sea change. They recently did the “Meu Rio” campaign in Brazil using this method. He made it seem easy to mobilize millions across the internet in real time by grasping the root of the issue with clarity and honesty while keeping them engaged…he also looked about my son’s age, amazing, and boy do I feel old!

Simon Mainwaring a guru in marketing circles, had some compelling statistics and was also very well spoken, something that stuck for me was the notion of valuing the wealth of a company by its partnership with community, shifting power to the consumer, contributory consumption where social enterprises give back with every purchase and cross sector collaboration to respond to market shift towards mindful consumption, social entrepreneurship, social media inspiring social activism. I look forward to more compelling lectures sponsored by Muji and to reading Simon’s new book We First.

- Rhea Alexander

Cooper Union Morphosis Building

An abandoned house in New Orleans was transformed by artist Candy Chang into a public bucket list.  The top reads, “Before I die…” which prompts passersby to pick up a piece of chalk and anonymously pour their most deepest desires.  Most responses were sweet, like “… see my students become teachers”, and “… see peace in the world”.  Others set some serious goals, like “… cure cancer” and “… sing for millions.”  Some, just wanted to “… fall in love.”  See all the responses here.