Waste Not

The New York Times Magazine Sunday was largely devoted to articles about environmentally sensitive design, including an article about Shigeru Ban , whose ecological designs include elegant and useful buildings out of paper (from emergency shelters in Rwanda to a paper church now ten years old), and an interview with William McDonough about his obsession with renewable energy systems and recycling waste.

The article on Ban is headlined "Waste Not: The Accidental Environmentalist." Both the content of these articles and that title remind me of a position I've long espoused: that basic ideas behind "environmental design" and energy-saving processes are completely in line with some traditional practices and ideas. Some are simply traditional processes with fancy new names.

Years ago, when Pennsylvania was adopting its mandatory recycling plan, the editorial firm I worked for in Pittsburgh was responding to a Request for Proposals from the state government on how to effectively publicize the program. I developed the basic framework of a campaign that attempted to show that "recycling" was really a traditional idea with a new name and a larger purpose. To communicate that idea, I proposed using the Benjamin Franklin dictim of "Waste Not, Want Not" (which I thought would make a good reggae hook). Franklin was also the most prominent Pennsylvanian among the Founding Fathers.

Around that time I wrote an oped piece for one of the Pittsburgh dailies predicting (contrary to its official editorial opinion) that Pittsburghers would recycle with few problems. My reason was similiar: the immigrant frugality of just a few generations past in this very traditional and ethnic city would make this a common sense concept. And "recycling" in order to further a larger goal was also familiar from efforts during World War II to help the war effort.

We came in second to a much larger Philadelphia advertising firm on the recycling contract, but I was right about Pittsburgh's response to recycling. In fact, the willingness and even eagerness of people to recycle has been an unheralded success story almost everywhere.

For our grandparents and even our parents, it was simply common sense to reuse, reduce waste, and "recycle". You don't throw away socks when they get holes; you darn them. You don't throw old clothes into the trash--you tear them up for rags, which you use to clean. Though these attitudes would be ridiculed in the consumer "throwaway" society, they remained dormant but alive. "Waste not, want not" was a rule of survival, and it had a certain elegance and satisfaction to it at well. It was part of a traditional way of life that people seem to be paying a lot of money to emulate these days.

All that "waste not" requires is removing the stigma, the idea that it is shameful not to waste ( because it is a sign of being poor and therefore a failure.) That's the role of leadership and institutional support. It's how recycling happened, and it is a procedure that in general will work in other areas, such as energy efficiency, in addressing the climate crisis.

Designing a Better World

Earth Day brings out the optimism, so as it gets closer let's focus on some positive ideas. The World Changing site is doing a series of Earth Day statements and interviews, and two of the first were with designers/architects with the kind of expertise and vision to actually build the constituents of the future.

One is William McDonough, a vital visionary who isn't nearly well enough known. He may turn out to be the Buckminster Fuller of the Climate Crisis era, with actual designs that arguably are more practical. His "cradle to cradle" concept accentuates the positive, in more ways that one:

We can envision and design, for example, buildings that purify air and water and produce more energy than they use. Design can eliminate the concept of waste, producing perpetual assets rather than perpetual liabilities. An architecture of abundance would create objects and energies that are socially, economically, and ecologically delightful.

His World Changing statement is here, and his website is here (it's also in the Climate Crisis Links column to the left.)

John Thackara is another designer and visionary of the practical/physical world. His statement begins:

William Gibson's take on the subject has become a classic modern aphorism: "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed." Most elements of a sustainable world exist. Some of those elements are technological solutions. Some are to be found in the natural world, thanks to millions of years of natural evolution. The majority, I suspect, are social practices - some of them very old ones - learned by other societies and in other times.

Thackara can also be found at Doors of Perception. I recommend his book, In the Bubble, as well. I reviewed it for the San Francisco Chronicle, together with a couple of others.

Environmentalists are often their own worst enemies, either losing themselves in bureaucratic envirospeak or getting lost in the ozone layer of their worst stereotypes. And architect/ designers have their own problems with relevance and direct language--but I'm forgetting this is an optimistic Earth Day post. Let's try and extract the really good practical ideas and the really healthy and inspiring visions. We've got a few days left.

Unintelligible Design

So folks are opening their high tech gifts and good luck to us all. I just perused a book called The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda of MIT's Media Lab, which is a designer's response to new devices that are too complex, like DVDs with multiple menus and nifty little electronics that come accompanied by manuals way bigger than they are. It's not a bad book--I especially liked the chapter on Emotion (you can see the Laws for yourself at lawsofsimplicity.com) but it doesn't really address the problems I have.

It's not that devices are too complex (though they are) but that their most basic functions are increasingly difficult to use. Maeda praises the simplicity of the Ipod dial, which may or may not be so (I don't have one) but I have reason to doubt this is a real solution. One major problem with small devices is that the buttons and dials that operate them are very, very small, and often the "simple" design hides them. Screen menus, also very small. Plus they are dominated by "simple" icons. My lovely little digital camera has a little thing you move that puts you into "portrait" mode (as distinguished from "image" mode. Because of course a portrait isn't an image.) Then you press Menu and up comes a screen full of row upon row of indistinguishable icons that you need to decipher in order to control light and exposure and focus, pretty important when you're taking pictures. But not only do I need extra-strength magnifying glasses, I require the assistance of perhaps an Egyptologist skilled in the peculiar hieroglyphics of this particular camera brand and model.

The problem of buttons that are too small to distinguish and often to find, plus too small to see, is perhaps more a problem for aging baby boomers than the original target market for these devices, although since there are thirty billion of us (approximately), more than any other age cohort, it might be a good idea to keep us in mind. Devices to hear music everywhere, to edit video and sound, etc.--we've been dreaming of this stuff since the 60s. We're primed. And quite clearly, we're being dissed.

But it's not just age-related. How many of these devices do we use when we're supposed to be looking at something else--car music systems are perfect examples. If you've rented cars you know how insane many if not most if not all of these systems are, and how insane they make you. Just trying to figure out how to turn them on (or off!), change the station, get the station back you were listening to before, or switch to a CD etc. is difficult enough when you're looking right at it, but here's a newsflash for designers--people who use them are quite often DRIVING. Their attention--and their eyes--are needed elsewhere.

And there are other circumstances in which we'd like to turn the volume up or down, or whatever, by touch. I've got a portable CD player (I know, how quaint) that works admirably--good sound, doesn't skip--or not much--when I'm moving. But the various functions are scattered all over it, the play and stop are on top, the volume control is on the side, and is indistintinguishable (even when you're looking at it) from the control that pops open the lid of the CD. It's a nightmare, especially since the controls are very sensitive to touch, and if you brush the wrong one, you're screwed.

But don't worry--I've got a hot design idea for these devices--it may sound radical, but hear me out: How about an actual on/off button that's the biggest button on the thing, and a nice big red light to say it's on. Or even better--a dial that when you turn it to the right, clicks on with a discernable sound, and as you keep turning it to the right, it increases the volume. And put this dial on, say, the far left of the device. Then on the far right, another dial that allows for manual control of things like radio stations. And if you must, you can put a bunch of other buttons in a row between them. But the real key is, this design is the same on every device, no matter the make or manufacturer, so we all have a clear idea in our heads of how it operates, and we can do the most important functions without looking, even in the dark, even without taking our eyes off that idiot weaving into traffic in front of us.

I know it sounds far out--oh, wait--isn't that exactly the configuration that's been on every audio and video device since the dawn of humanity, until quite recently? I wonder why?

I understand as well that these devices are made for the mass international market, so they come loaded with icons and with manuals providing the same noninformation in six languages. So icons may be a fact of life, but how about a few words here and there? I'm willing to learn the Spanish for "low light" or the Chinese for "daylight." I already know the French for "night."

And if you want to work on a real design problem, how about earphone wires and other wires that don't make it their life's mission to tangle up and intertwine? There are times they seem to exhibit the only signs of intelligence these devices can offer: the clear intent to make things difficult for me.

City of the Future: City of Broad Waters?

What is the future of the city? A contest set up by the History Channel gave eight teams of architects in Chicago the chance to (quickly) come up with their visions. As described at World Changing, all of the entries were inspiring. Perhaps because, unlike the utopian visions of the recent past, they were both imaginative and realistic in terms of ecology and energy. And not simply in how the city preserves or enhances its own ecology while using energy efficiently--but in how the city responds economically to the challenge (and the opportunity) of future ecological and energy needs beyond its own borders.

For example, the winning entry was a plan to make Chicago, the city of broad shoulders, a prime producer and exporter of...water. Yes, cool, clear water, pure water, drinking water, because water is likely to no longer be everywhere. The Climate Crisis as well as pollution is very likely to make water the most important natural resource of the near future.

This vision (by UrbanLab) lays out an elegant plan for how Chicago can use its river and access to Lake Michigan to produce clean water and export it, and in the venture, become a greener city, with far less dependence on automobiles.

This will become an entry in a national competition, but the beauty of it is that it is site specific--it could really work for Chicago. While politicians and the media babble on, at least some engineers and architects are looking realistically at the likely needs, conditions and opportunities of the 22nd century (though the water crisis is likely to be a mid-21st century situation, if not sooner) and coming up with imaginative solutions that are of the kind that can very well characterize such future planning: win/win, non-zero sum change.

Sticking Out Like a Healthy Thumb?

You don't expect to find one of San Francisco's most humane new buildings at the corner of Sixth and Howard streets, right in the squalid heart of Skid Row.

But that's where the new Plaza Apartments stand stocky and tall -- an eight-story cube that not only is designed to provide shelter and support for 106 once-homeless adults but to do so as a showplace of "green" design.

Aesthetically pleasing, non-uniform, environmentally friendly and advanced, and includes a Latino theatre company's home theatre, carefully planned for improvization and the possibility of economic viability as well---if San Francisco Chronicle Urban Design writer John King is right about this place, it must be an international model as well as a triumph for San Francisco.

The Hybrid House

From Renewable Energy Access:

In the Oshawa community of Copperfield, the heat was turned on in Ontario's first production home equipped with a solar-thermal-geoexchange clean energy system.

The system, said to be the first production home system to integrate solar and geothermal technologies, powers the home's heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, as well as providing its domestic hot water (DHW) needs. The Stream saves homeowners up to $2,500 a year on home energy bills, and reduces conventional energy consumption by 79% compared to traditional, natural gas furnaces and hot water heaters, said the release.

Captain Future's Log

Upcoming in Site Crime...

A book I'll be getting to in a day or two put me onto a website called Viridian Design, apparently the web face of a futurist organization in which Bruce Sterling, otherwise known as a science fiction/cyberpunk author, is a principal.

There are all kinds of neat things about this site but I'm especially enjoying Sterling's "Viridian Notes," which are like blog entries of a special kind. The entries that knock me out are documents---speeches, news stories, etc.---with Sterling's interpolations, which are both stunningly funny and on the mark cogent and insightful.

He's very good on climate crisis matters, for instance his slice and dice of a Guardian story on the so-called Pentagon report on sudden climate change here, which is even more hilarious--and his comments more perceptive--a couple of years later.

Or a more recent note, a speech by Al Gore on global warming. Apart from being bracingly clear-minded about what's really going on, Sterling's comments are unusually witty by net- snark standards---pithier versions of what we really think when we hear or read this stuff (and in this piece, Sterling is generally sympathetic to Gore's points; in fact the post is a kind of extended lament that this guy isn't the president).

For example, after Gore begins his speech with the pro forma announcement that we must address this crisis now, Sterling writes, "I also wonder why politicians always say "the time to act is now," even when it's crystal-clear that the proper time to act was quite a long time ago.

I'm bringing this to your attention because I hope you'll get as much of a charge out of reading this as I did. And also because I plan to steal this technique, and this constitutes fair warning, if not fair use.

landscape with buckydome

Remember the Future? Forget It!

This past week, from July 12th to the 15th, a global Technology, Entertainment and Design conference was held in Oxford, England to consider the future, including the roles of politics, the environment and social issues in shaping 21st century life.

Among the more than 300 participating scientists, technologists, thinkers, designers, musicians and playwrights were Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis and Nokia director of design strategy Marko Ahtisaari.

From the fairly sparse reports (mostly from the BBC), this conference seems to represent the usual confusion of which futurism is heir to. There seem to be a lot of technologists plugging their products (as well as plugging them in, except for the wireless of course) and authors flogging their books. Every expert ignores the field of every other expert. And one biotechnologist extols the complexity of life while proposing to apply reductionist techniques to create more artificially.

Asked about the digital media future, one expert predicted “fifty years of chaos.” With these folks, who could predict anything else?

MORE HERE