Can Good Design Help Save the World? 500 Colored Pencils Might Help

Photo via: Social Designer

Kristin at Novità Communications in Brooklyn asked design writers like me to “spread the word to the creative community” about a very cool competition from Felissimo and Social Designer. Here’s the design brief:

You create a one-minute video that shows or tells the story of something you believe is worth waiting for, or, from experience, something you had to wait for that was worth it in the end. The winner gets $500, plus a set of 500 Colored Pencils from Felissimo.

Deadline is March 16, so it’s time to get focused.

Felissimo is a subscription-based clothing and household goods company that believes good design promotes happiness and well-being, adding value to everyday life. Sounds a lot like Herman Miller. Says Felissimo: “We hope that our efforts will demonstrate our awareness of the power of design and our responsibility to take good design and use it to design good.”

When you order the 500 Colored Pencils, every month you receive a box of 25 new colors, from Drizzly Afternoon to Lobster Bisque, until you have a full, rich rainbow to draw from. For every 100 boxes of pencils sold, Felissimo donates a set to a UNESCO arts education program for underprivileged kids.

Felissimo created Social Designer, an online platform for customers, consumers, and designers to meet and participate in design for the greater good. It also helps promote meaningful causes by developing high-visibility design competitions for corporations and nonprofits.

A New Wave in Architecture

Aqua Tower, with its wavy exterior and Lake Michigan views, is open now in Chicago’s Lakeshore East community. For a fascinating perspective on the 82-story apartment/condo/office tower, and a profile of the architect, Jeanne Gang, of Studio Gang Architects, check out The New Yorker (Feb. 1, 2010 edition).

Aqua Tower is getting a wave of good reviews for many reasons, but its most obvious attribute is the undulating cantilevered balconies, which change slightly from floor to floor, forming a curvaceous façade that also shades apartments and protects the building and balcony sitters when Chicago’s hawk talks (that’s Chicagoan for “oooh, it’s so windy”). No two balconies are alike. There’s also a big rooftop garden. And LEED certification is being pursued.

Condos range from about $300,000 to $2 million; rents start around $1,500 per month.

Says The New Yorker, “It reclaims the notion that thrilling and beautiful form can still emerge out of the realm of the practical.” And it calls Gang an “anti-diva” for the building’s lack of conceit.
 
Some critics and bloggers complain, though, that the balconies are gimmicky ornaments disguising a traditional box structure. Indeed, The New Yorker notes Aqua is “an ordinary glass condo tower” turned into something exciting. What do you think? Let us know.

Photos via: Studio Gang Architects

Fun With Swatches

This is the second of a two-part series about Herman Miller’s Materials Program. To read the first post, see “Materials Website: So Simple Even I Can Do It.”

I don’t envy designers their task of deciding which fabrics and finishes to choose for furniture. With so many choices and constraints to deal with, I hear it can be a complex and frustrating process. But it’s also typically the favorite part of their job because it’s a chance to get creative. So to make things easier, more gratifying, and more fun, Herman Miller revamped its Materials Program. They’ve made it simple, logical, and closely aligned with how designers and specifiers like to think about and use materials.

In addition to the online Materials Program, Herman Miller developed a new way for designers to interact with the choices the company offers. The Materials Collection, a sensibly-sized, permanently bound, recyclable set of books, contains complete swatch presentations for the entire textile and finish offering. The Collection is housed in four Baltic birch plywood slipcases. Nice. Reliable. Easy to use. So easy even a writer could do it.
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Materials Website: So Simple Even I Can Do It

Have you checked out Herman Miller’s Materials website lately? For designers and specifiers, it’s a great sampling and information tool that makes it easy to interact with our Materials Program. For people like me, it’s just fun to play with.

On the home page, there’s an intriguing chromatic arrangement of Herman Miller’s entire Materials offering—the textiles, translucents, laminates, woods, and veneers that adorn Herman Miller products and help make them durable and eco-friendly. The page gives you an overall idea of the depth and structure of the Materials Program.

From there, you can narrow down and sort your selections as you like. With every choice, you see swatches of your picks, and detailed, printable, e-mailable information is a click away for each swatch. It’s so simple to view which materials are available on what products, plus (better yet) which materials are shared by different products. Really, you can do all kinds of stuff. So give it a spin, and tell us what you think.

The Materials website is designed to be used hand in hand with the new Materials Collection—a bound set of 15 books containing physical samples of all Herman Miller textiles and finishes. I’ll have more about that in my next post a week from now.

Achieving the Promise of Programmable Environments

Note: This is the fourth in a series about Herman Miller’s Programmable Environments (PE) initiative. To read the first post, see “Getting Buildings and People In Sync.” Second post: “Cut Electrical Use, Get ‘Stimulused,’ and Earn LEED Credits.” Third post: “Energy Manager Saves Energy, Optimizes Real Estate, Cuts Costs.”

According to Always Building, Herman Miller’s book about PE, “To achieve programmable environments, we think about a digital as well as physical dimension of space.” Integrating the digital dimension can make a building smarter, more efficient, and responsive to the people who use it.
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Energy Manager Saves Energy, Optimizes Real Estate, Cuts Costs

Note: This is the third in a series. To read the first post, see “Getting Buildings and People In Sync.” For the second post, “Cut Electrical Use, Get ‘Stimulused,’ and Earn LEED Credits.”

What if someone invented a simple, affordable device you quickly attach to your car to save you gas? Genius, right?

Well then, check this out. It’s Herman Miller’s new Energy Manager—a simple, affordable device you quickly attach to your Herman Miller systems furniture (new or retrofit) to save you electrical energy, 24/7.
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Cut Electrical Use, Get ‘Stimulused,’ and Earn LEED Credits

Note: This is the second in a series. To read the first post, see “Getting Buildings and People In Sync.”

The nutshell idea for Programmable Environments (PE) is to use technology to fill new or existing buildings with intelligence. The building becomes a digital network so that permanent fixtures become adaptable. You can make them do exactly what you need them to do at any moment, change them instantly, and gather real time information about how they are used.

And it’s easy. Here’s the story:
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Rate These Amazing Concepts in New Architecture

Photo via: The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post blog has a fun way to get to know some fascinating concepts in architecture, all of which exemplify new technology and sustainability. It’s a poll called “11 Incredible Buildings from the Future” where you can rate startling new concepts on a scale of 1-10—Snooze to Super.
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Getting Buildings and People In Sync

Note: This is the first in a series of four posts on Programmable Environments.

You hear it all the time: “Technology has changed everything.” Well, duh. But it’s not totally accurate. There’s one part of our daily lives that’s largely untouched by the changes. It’s the buildings where we work and live—static, rigid, set in their ways.

While technology makes us faster, our buildings often hold us back. Unable to keep up with change—much less enable change—our buildings become out of sync with us.
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Inside Ayse Birsel’s and Yves Béhar’s Sketchbooks

Designers Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck of birsel+seck in New York think and communicate in sketches. “Our language is drawing,” says Ayse. “Sometimes we stay ‘en quarantaine’ in the room and we do some drawing together to exchange our ideas.”
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