cradle to cradle

I have to say, I'm very excited about this book. It's been recommended to me numerous times, and while I've meant to read it before, I never have. I was already familiar with the basic subject matter of the book, but it immediately surprised me just how in-depth it is. Both of my parents are dedicated environmentalists (i.e. they both have the word "sustainability" in their job titles) and have been since, as they put it, "before it was cool." As such, I was raised in a house where we turned the lights out when leaving the room, recycled everything (even had to get an extra Rumpke bin to fit it all), and walked, bused, or biked just about everywhere. Suffice to say, I feel that I am a bit more aware of my impact on the environment than most Americans. Nonetheless, some of information in the introduction of this book surprised me. I never considered the tiny little particles that come off of my furniture and into my nose, or the fact that my shoes will never serve another purpose. I love the idea of finding environmental solutions that don't limit people's lives. This year, I made a New Year's resolution to never use new plastic bags when I buy things. So far, I've slipped up once, and overall, not using the bags provided for free has made me feel a bit self-conscious. It's not normal to buy groceries and then load them up in a big messenger bag. I don't really care if other people find it strange, but I can see why most people prefer to just use the bags provided. I've not bought a single beverage that came in a plastic container since the beginning of the year either. My beverage choice is now down to water, coffee, milk (from a cardboard container of course), tea, and (occasionally) alcohol. It's not a big deal, but it does kind of suck to be unable to partake in the variety of options offered. I think that's what I find most exciting about reading this book; the idea that there are solutions (or at least could be solutions) to help both the environment and the individual, rather than limiting one or the other.

found it

 Clue 01
The Barcelona Chair was originally designed by Mies van der Rohe. The trademark rights are currently owned by a company called Knoll, but there are many knock-offs of the chair which have caused them considerable legal trouble over the years.

Clue 02
This is the Coconut Chair, designed in 1956 by George Nelson. Nelson's intent was to design a chair that could accommodate any possible seating position. Here I'm reading L'Arca Magazine.

Clue 03

Controversial Design: Eisenman has been critiqued for his design due to the fact that after just 10 years the Wexner Center required a 10 million dollar renovation. 

 Clue 04

Philip Johnson's design of the Science and Engineering Library is about as boring as... well science and engineering. I do kinda like the big arches though.

Clue 05

Fun Fact: Thompson Library's latest addition was designed by Acock and Associates, but they chose to restore the original East facade (designed in 1910) rather than designing a new one.

How we did it:

Our method was pretty simple; I already knew the first three due to the fact that I spend so much time in Knowlton and had to take an architecture history course my first year, and we just googled the other two. Carl  provided the computer, while Telina organized the info and, as the person who's spent the most time on campus, I helped us get around as efficiently as possible. We took turns taking photos and ended up doing the research individually.

Week 4

The first thing that I absolutely must say about this week is this; landscape architects (NOT architects) figure out curb cuts. Also, landscape archs design the ramps that get you to the building. Sometimes architects do, but usually not well (see: example in the lecture). Aside from that, I thought the ADA lecture was pretty interesting. We deal with ADA restrictions all the time in landscape arch, but until now, I was unaware of how ADA plays a part in other design fields. I think that universal design is a really great concept. I hate seeing places and things that were clearly not designed to be universal that were later adapted to fit the needs of disabled individuals. It seems a bit irresponsible to be a designer without thinking about the needs of every possible user and figuring out how to accommodate them. Granted, this is rarely easy and sometimes impossible. For example, no one will ever design a bicycle for paraplegics. As far as the scavenger hunt, it was interesting to learn about some of the buildings on campus. I grew up in Clintonville and spent a lot of time on campus in high school, so I'm already familiar with how to get around, which definitely made things easier. Also, I spend a lot of time in Knowlton, which made a couple of the clues really easy.

Five Faces

 Front yard tree 1

 Front yard tree 2 (same tree)

 Mr Clean

 Big mouth sink (kinda looks like a muppet)

Silly (and a bit creepy) smile

Identities and systems

Overall, I found these chapters much more interesting than previous ones. I thought it was interesting that Japan has the highest rate of plastic surgery in the world. I saw a video on Vice Magazine's website a while ago about "donut heads," people who inject saline into their foreheads. In the video, they said that this practice is becoming pretty common in Japan. Not to sound xenophobic, but there's something odd to me about putting saline in your head. Also, I recently heard that women in a lot of Asian countries wear pupil enhancing contacts. I think the fact that people go to such lengths to present themselves a certain way is very telling of the importance of identity, whether for individuals or corporations. The point about how people reacted to the new British telephones was interesting too. In Banksy's documentary, Exit Through the Giftshop, one of the pieces shown is an old style British phone booth that's been modified to look like it's been chopped in half by a pick axe. I didn't really understand the point of that piece until reading about the negative attitude people had about the new phone booths. Near the end of the chapter, Heskett made a point ab out how quality of service is still important, regardless of identity. Right after this, he used FedEx as an example. I thought that was kind of funny, given that FedEx, while more innovative in the past, is really not a great company compared to, say, UPS. A friend of mine once saw a FedEx semi plow right into the side of building, and while it might seem like an isolated incident, it's really surprising how often FedEx drivers screw up. They don't have as strict of qualifications for their drivers, and they actually get into accidents pretty often. Also, I don't understand how having one headquarters in Memphis doesn't limit their efficiency. The systems chapter immediately made me think about infrastructure, which is what we're dealing with in my current landscape arch studio. I've been getting more and more interested in infrastructure over the past year and I think it's one of the few things that relates to both my major and my minor. The last paragraph of the chapter was the most interesting to me. Heskett seems to be under the impression that designers don't deal with reconciling natural and artificial systems. Maybe a lot has changed since 2002, but reconciling these systems is probably the largest, most important focus of landscape architecture. I get the impression that a lot of designers are unaware of what landscape architects do, and I think it's kind of a shame, because we focus so much on eco-friendly design and other fields could learn more from ours.

Week 3

It was a short week, but interesting nonetheless. I really liked the video about IDEO. I found it a bit strange and surprising that so many of the people on their staff don't have formal design training. I thought it was kind of cool how one of the team members turned down medical school to work there and I think I would do the same thing in his shoes. I've seen some videos of other firms, most recently in the documentary Objectified, but none of them look as laid back and innovative as IDEO. We're reading Tim Brown's book Change by Design in my other design class this quarter, so I've been getting a lot of exposure to the IDEO way of doing things. I have to say, I would really really love to work there some day, or somewhere with a similar mentality. I had a lot of fun with this week's assignments, especially the survey one. I decided to try to do all of the icons myself, but I ended up having to do a lot of tracing in Illustrator. Still, it was really fun to give it a try.

objects, communications, and environments oh my

This reading was pretty interesting, although most of what it covered was already familiar to me. Nonetheless, there were some very interesting points made. I remember reading about Philippe Starck's juicer a while back in Donald Norman's book Emotional Design. I've always had mixed feelings about that product. Norman mentions that he bought one of the special edition golden ones, and that it couldn't even be used for juice, because the acid would damage the gold coating. In my mind, that doesn't really seem like design, at least the special edition ones that don't even function. In the same book, Norman mentions ATM's, which were also discussed in this chapter. He talks about an experiment conducted in Israel, in which two ATM's were tested against each other. Each one had the same exact functions and used the same system, with the same display, but one of them had been re-designed to be more aesthetically pleasing. Customers who used the ATM's were asked to rate the machine's usability, and it was found that people actually thought the aesthetically pleasing machines worked faster and were easier to understand. I always thought that was interesting, and I think it's something that every designer should know. We had a discussion in one of my landscape classes last quarter about the role of beauty in landscape architecture. In contemporary practice, most landscape architects will write off the value of beauty, choosing instead to focus environmental and ecological aspects. I'm all for that, but I think that beauty plays a more important role than most designers (or at least landscape architects) think it does. In the chapter about communications, I found it strange that the Weather Channel's website was used as an example of good interactive design. Sure, its great to have quick access to the weather forecast for the next ten days, but that website sucks. Half of it is advertisements, and they constantly change the layout, making it confusing and difficult to get the most out of. The environment chapter was interesting to me for obvious reasons, but even more so because it dealt with the type of environments that I don't spend 60 hours a week thinking about. The point I found most interesting was about how Japanese homes utilize vertical dimensions. I stumbled upon a video of a Japanese man who converted his apartment to be made up of move-able pieces, so that he could reconfigure it into several different rooms. It was really cool because each room looked like something you would see in an American home (size-wise at least), but he was able to fit it all in a couple hundred square feet.