Fieldnotes: Weeks 426–431
I’m going to quickly glaze over the fact there’s been an absence of weeknotes over the last few weeks and dive right into a bumper version of what’s been inspiring and motivating us the past few weeks:
The UK in 100 seconds
I met Dan Raven-Ellison a while back — he was one half of Crafty Explorers (one of the teams on the Design Councils Knee High Design Challenge which we designed the branding, publications, and event space for).
Dan is a Guerrilla Geographer & Creative Explorer (how jealous are you right now)… you could lose quite a bit of time delving into his projects but his most recent one will only take 100 seconds to explore. This short film uses one second to show each 1% of what the UK looks like from the air… all of the time a drone dutifully follows Dan; the camera trailing just behind – almost like your playing a video game willing the adventurer to keep exploring. The first time I watched this was with the sound off and it’s utterly beautiful, the woodlands provide a perfect but far to short a punctuation… but I strongly recommend watching with audio for commentary by Benjamin Zephaniah.
More on the project in partnership with Friends of the Earth here.
Be my eyes app
I’m yet to try this out but the proposition of this app humbles me. Be My Eyes is a free app that connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers and company representatives for visual assistance through a live video call.
Warby Parkers story
I seem to be forever sharing the Warby Parker story with clients, specifically this video… WP is one of those businesses that kind of makes me go ‘I wish I did that’, its a wonderfully principled and successful business, all of the business decisions from the outset almost seem like design decisions. This talk at Columbia Business School is co-founder Neil Blumenthal talking about the first couple of years of the business. Its an amazing resource for how to design the way your product or service gets to market. Enjoy.
Building Number 20 (MIT)
On a podcast I recently heard Bjarke Ingels (BIG — Bjarke Ingels Group) talk about creating spaces that incubate innovation, in particular Bjarke was talking about Googles Mountain View HQ that his company is designing…
Apparently in the briefing Sergey and Larry talked about MIT’s ‘Building 20’ in revered tones. I did some digging and this building really was quite special… entirely unremarkable perhaps from its outward appearance but entirely incredible in what it facilitated.
Essentially Building 20 was intended to be a temporary building at MIT erected in 1943… it was intended to last just the remainder of the war and then 6 months thereafter. It was however used for decades and only knocked down in 1998 to make way for a new campus building. Building 20 was built in a hurry, pretty much a timber construction with windows that would periodically fall out and a timber roof quickly covered in tar. The building was far from precious and allowed inhabitants to reconfigure the space exponentially… A DIY attitude prevailed throughout the building for decades allowing the interiors to morph and recalibrate. It seems to be a bit of a dynamite incubator… the DIY attitude and adaptable space led to a community that fostered notable research project after notable research project… I stopped counting the nobel prizes that were incubated in this space after I hit double digits.
“Walls were torn down without permission; equipment was stored in the courtyards and bolted to the roof. … The space also forced solitary scientists to mix and mingle … The building’s horizontal layout also spurred interaction.”
This slightly kooky documentary by MIT is an endearing love letter to the building:
Forest by Numbers
Staggeringly beautiful. Forest by Numbers an installation by Emmanuelle Moureaux.
AR comics
AR comics need to become a reality. I want to explore the city and watch a story unfold around me… If you could combine this with something like Detour (an app for location enabled audio walking tours) I think you could make something really special. Let’s unlock location, movement and story in new ways.
Purpose
I had the pleasure of seeing david hieatt (co-founder of Hiut Denim, The Do Lectures and previously Howies) talk recently, what a legend. If only more people in business could be as earnest as this man in having a sense of Purpose and using business as a force for good. He’s a brilliant speaker, his books and newsletter are also inspiring reads.
Isle of Dogs
Earlier this year I popped into the Isle of Dogs exhibition and saw all of the models and sets of Wes Andersons latest movie… I only just caught the film and its absolutely delightful… I wish that I had caught it on the big screen.
Plastic straws and disabilities
Tea Uglow highlighted something really interesting lately, I can’t quite remember where I saw her share this but it made me stop and think about what ‘good’ means. There is an undeniable rise in more conscientious consumerism, which is ace… removing our dependency on plastic is incredibly important and it’s entirely necessary that consumers share a role in reducing our reliance on plastic goods. The awareness over plastic straws has especially lately been become part of the public conversation. I have to admit that I probably was firmly on the ‘ban all plastic straws’ boat but hadn’t really considered for some people an artefact as simple as a plastic straw is incredibly useful. Tea pointed to an article highlighting just how useful plastic straws are to some disabled people.
https://mashable.com/article/plastic-straw-ban-people-with-disabilities/
This all reminds me of similar issues around ‘shared spaces’… shared spaces are where the road level is raised to the pedestrian level in an effort to calm traffic (the removal of a kerb encourages pedestrians and drivers to act with a shared responsibility for each others welfare… or rather a coerced shared liability for how they interact with each other)… all good in theory, however shared spaces are a real nuisance for some blind and visually impaired people people who use the pavements inner and outer shore lines as a navigation aid. The outer shore line is literally the kerb so without it a core piece of infrastructure that enables safe movement is missing for some people in shared spaces. So where do we draw the line on designing to do good? It’s far from black and white if you look hard enough.
By the way Tea has an excellent blog over here: tea uglow
Scribit
I’ve been fascinated with drawing robots since first seeing Jurg Lehni’s Hektor around 2008… Scribit is the latest, I love that it can write and erase… Not sure how this will fair as a consumer product but hell lets just find out, I wouldn’t mind one for client presentations!
Florence bins
On holiday in Florence I got a bit obsessed with bins. The thing is in Florence they are all underground. It doesn’t sound like a big deal but the impact of having no bins or refuse sacks hanging around on the pavement at street level is incredibly striking… Refuse collection for me has always just seemed like a fact of life — I had never really challenged the thought of taking the bins out for them to not sit on the street and await collection…
Is it not a bit mental that it is entirely normal (in the UK at least) for rubbish sacks and bins to act as a daily obstacle course in the urban realm?
‘Behind the mountains. More mountains’ — Haitian proverb
That’s it. See you next week.
