Active Design Guidelines

Much has been written recently regarding the health risks and future costs of sedentary life and obesity. Late last year New York City, through a multi-disciplinary effort of city agencies, academic partners and AIA NY, published what I think is the first comprehensive guideline focused on design features and elements that promote physical activity. The guide has four chapters including Design and Health, Urban Design, Building Design and Synergies with Sustainable and Universal Design.

This is a great reference and resource for use in all of our work and is very consumable through clear writing, good graphics, linkage for evidence-based design/good practice, case studies and checklists. A free download is available from nyc.gov.

A quote from the guideline’s executive summary frames the context for the current challenge for architectural and urban designers.

“In the 19th and early 20th centuries, architects and urban reformer helped to defeat infectious diseases like cholera and tuberculosis by designing better buildings, streets, neighborhoods, clean water systems, and parks. In the 21st century, designers can again play a crucial role in combating the most rapidly growing public health epidemics of our time: obesity and its impact on related chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. Today, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are second only to tobacco as the main causes of premature death in the United States. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.”

So every opportunity to design and construct a component of the built environment is an opportunity to carefully create a design that promotes active living. The most obvious are stairs for everyday use. Let’s actively engage this research into our planning and design work.

Together We Can Each Be More Creative

I never really though I'd learn much about creativity and design thinking from a cartoon character until I read Robert Fabricant's essay posted on Fast Company's blog, Frog Design: 3 Things Wile E. Coyote Teaches Us About Creative Intelligence. The essay does a fantastic job of helping to examine and explain just how we bring out creativity in one another. I think it's incredibly relevant to our firm and the A/E profession in general. Those design challenges, different ideas and unique perspectives that make up our profession can help drive us to be more creative.

Fabricant shows us how we can push each other to be more creative by examining the relationship between Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. He argues, 'Would Wile E. be anywhere near as creative without Road Runner? Would his inventions emerge out of his own faculties unprompted or only in response to a situation? His relationship with Road Runner is a dynamic that constantly pushes him farther, faster and (unfortunately in more cases) higher than he imagined.'

Think about this as you work on new projects. Engage with as many fellow teammates, clients and colleagues in the profession as you can, whether they think like you do or not. Responding to challenges and seeking diverse views make for the kind of mentality and attitude that will drive us forward. It's those collaborations that can increase our firm and profession's overall creativity quotient.

Fabricant sums it up with, 'Creativity emerges out of relationships; it's the tension between different ideas and perspectives and so it is risky to define it as an ability that we inherently possess.'

Don't shy away from the tension of different ideas and perspectives. Seek them out, elaborate and strive for creative solutions to our challenging design opportunities.

Watch some Wile E. for inspiration.

Searching for Quality...

Carlo Rotella's opinion article in the Boston Globe yesterday struck a chord with me in a number of ways. First, it started on an anti-technology direction, “Why I don’t allow laptops in my classroom,” but then switched to a more favorable and interesting view. He then argues for the need to distill the current large quantity of media/social media into quality.

The example he uses is the viral hit “Thru-YOU,” by Kutiman, a compilation of tunes assembled from YouTube samples. The video, and in particular the tune called “The Mother of All Funk Chords”, shows that large quantities of uneven quality material can be distilled to produce a new level of quality. It is a good demonstration of how the great streams of online information, in this case YouTube videos, can be used to produce unexpected musical quality.



Rotella’s quote sums it up:

“But Kutiman offers a reminder that quantity is not the enemy of quality, and that to live well online one must learn to transmute quantity into quality.”

It obviously works for Funk Chords. Can it work for architecture as well as we sift large quantities of research, articles, blogs and tweets in a search for quality evidence for our design process?

Research Opportunities Are Everywhere

I recently read an article by Thomas Fisher, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, that was part of the material attached to the Boston Society of Architects publication regarding their Research Grant program. The article, Research in the design studio, from page 6 of the 2009 Research Grants program review and report, reminds us that research opportunities are everywhere in our daily work. Sometimes we just don’t recognize them and then don’t use disciplined methods to record that information. Too often we don’t look for and use available information, better known as someone else’s research. Thomas Fisher’s message is clear and applicable to all of us and in all that we do. We shouldn’t be intimidated by the term “research” and think that it is done by someone else in a “lab” somewhere else. Remember our life and our work is our lab. I believe his message is all about how we approach our questions, our inquiry, our curiosity and our search. That search will allow us to take on the big challenges that face our profession and our planet.

In case the link above does not display, page 6 is pasted below.

Research in the design studio
Thomas Fisher, AIA

Research occurs in design studios and offices all the time: historical research, precedent studies, and programming analyses, form explanations, functional evaluations and so on. But we often don’t think of this as “research” and so we rarely frame our work using research protocols, such as hypothesis statements, testing methods, evaluation criteria or generalizable conclusions. Nor do we document and share the results of this research with colleagues very often. If we are to transform architecture into a more evidence-based, value-added discipline and profession, we desperately need to see design as a form of research and to capture and peer-review the knowledge we produce as a result.

At the same time, peer-reviewed research rarely gets folded into the work of design studios or architectural offices, which often means that we end up repeating or rediscovering what we already know, without much attention to the discovery or development of new knowledge. This happens, in part, because we don’t have a good sense of what constitutes “new” knowledge in our field. The need for greater access to and inclusion of research in our work has never been greater, even though our field has given it relatively little attention or funding.

In universities, design studios have many of the same features as “labs,” requiring the same levels of computing equipment and shop support. However, conceptually, most architecture schools treat them more like fine art studios, in which originality and individuality gets rewarded rather than the common knowledge generated there.

We can no longer afford this fine arts model, not because it is too expensive, but because the world needs architects and designers to grapple with the big problems we face on this planet – such as climate change, habitat fragmentation, dysfunctional cities, inadequate shelter for billions of people, etc. We need to find ways to identify the most pressing problems, identify the best solutions and peer-review them for broad dissemination. The world needs design studios, be they in universities or offices, to act more like research labs, and we will have no choice but to respond to that need.

Snap Judgements

The current issue of Harvard Magazine has a very interesting article by social psychologist Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School called The Psyche on Automatic. In the article, Cuddy probes the topic of snap judgments, the spontaneous decisions we make and that others make about us. Based on her research she has found that there are two critical variables, warmth and competence, and that they account for about 80% of our overall evaluation of people.

As I reflect on the article and my personal experience, I think this research is also profoundly useful and relevant to professional life. Its impact is wide ranging, from capturing work and client partnering, to team collaboration and daily interactions. While I understand the warmth and competence aspect, I think we all should think more about what we value, what we know and how we actually interact. It may not be conscious but there are warmth/competence tradeoffs. In short, Cuddy says that warmth is perceived first, and accounts for more in someone's overall evaluation than competence. On the other hand she notes a conflicting view where an individual's self perception values competence over warmth. In our design and technical architecture and engineering focused world, the bias to competence is understandable. Do you rate competence more than warmth?

Beyond this basic theme she covers many other useful concepts, including the neurological and physical impact of body position in our interactions, awareness of cultural and gender bias, stereotyping and other nonverbal signals. All of these factors contribute to our automatic responses. The last two paragraphs in the article provide good advice; focus on connecting. This quote makes her point clear.

       "That said, you don't have to prove that you're the most
        dominant, most competent person there. In fact it's rarely
        a good idea to strive to show everyone that you're the
        smartest guy in the room: that person tends to be less
        creative, and less cognitively open to other ideas and
        people."

Further she notes that competence oriented presentations and meetings, with their focus on words, content and precise delivery, can feel or sound scripted. Her advice instead? "Come into a room, be trusting, connect with your audience wherever they are, and then move them with you."

Start With Why

A few weeks ago at an Educational Practice Leader workshop in Baltimore, we were focusing our discussion and speculation on the future of education and learning. One of the workshop events was a review and discussion of topics facilitated through videos from a number of well known futurists and inspired leaders. The most powerful and transformational video was a talk by author, teacher and leadership consultant, Simon Sinek. The TEDx Talk covered the essence of his book, 'Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Action,' and while not specifically focused on our topic of the future trends in teaching and learning or the design of educational facilities, the talk reminds you to ask why you think about the impact of digital technology, globalization and the preparation of the next generation for the many global challenges. It forces you to think, overall, about why you do what you do. As Sinek says in the talk, people in business or, in our case, architectural and engineering design practice, generally know what their firm does, sometimes know how their firm goes about doing it, but very few can answer the most profound question of why they are doing it.

The why question is not about profit, sales or prestige, it's about the essential purpose and passion. Through examples from the Wright Brothers to Apple Computers and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he shows that inspired leaders always start with why. The talk makes key points about leaders: you can learn to lead, leaders inspire and passion must be linked to purpose. His message "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" is repeatedly stated, and he highlights King's passion. King didn't say "I have a plan," he said "I have a dream." Closing the video, Sinek sums it all up:

"There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or authority, but those who lead, inspire us. Whether they're individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves. And it's those who start with why that have the ability to inspire those around them or find others who inspire them."

Own Your Time

Similar to my recent post, Life in Small Bites, a recent Fast Company blog by Graham Button, 7 Trends to Watch in an Age of Info Overload, looks at why the more information we have the less informed we feel. While he offers seven truths to keep things in perspective, two involved terms new to me - 'information sickness' or over exposure, and 'continuous partial attention' for multi-tasking. But what I find more important, particularly as it relates to our architectural and engineering professions, is the link between the daily information pressure and decisions we make about how to spend our time. Graham states that the real wealth is in owning our own time and being able to use it for creative social change. A quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt reinforces this time pressure vs. creativity link:

"Innovation is something that comes when you're not under the gun. So it's important that, even if you don't have balance in your life, you have some time for reflection… The creative parts of one's mind are not on a schedule."