Same Handed Design

Metro Health Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan is a LEED registered facility that includes same-handed design in the rooms. Patient rooms look out onto the green roof below.

I've been traveling quite a bit these days and staying in different places. One of the challenges of leaving a familiar space is that you have to relearn basics, like where the light switch is located, or where the toilet paper rolls resides. Seems small, until you're fumbling about in the middle of the night or dropping a glass on the floor cause there's a table next to your bed at home. Simple tasks—locating silverware and plates, tv remotes and dishsoap—can add up throughout the day. I realize how habitual a daily routine becomes. We function without thinking, knowing intuitively where things go.

One of the things cropping up in interior design, especially in the healthcare field, is the idea of same-handed rooms. In most buildings—like hospitals and hotels—rooms are mirror images of one another so that they can share a wall of internal infrastructure, such as plumbing. It's cheaper that way. In same-handed facilities, however, every room is exactly the same. So when a nurse moves from one room to the next, all materials and supplies are located in precisely the same spot. There's no need to relearn or remember where you are.

Subway Poster Art

This morning on the F train from Brooklyn to Manhattan I noticed the above poster. It's part of a series created for the Freelancer's Union. Besides the great yellow of the background, it caught my eye for its Bauhaus feel mixed with a modern day DIY hand stamping effect. A blog on the Freelancers Union website noted that the font spreads apart in the word "mobilize" suggesting an action to the word, a literal movement across the page.

The queen bee of the Freelancer's Union (sorry, couldn't resist), is Sarah Horowitz. She founded the organization in 1995 and has been working to bring independent workers healthcare and retirement benefits, among other things. There's a brief but interesting Q & A with her here where she talks about the rise in freelance work in this country and how, increasingly, companies hire contract workers versus staffers. She said:

"The workforce is definitely undergoing a shift. I think that more of the people who do work for large companies are going to be freelancers and independent consultants, and that there’s going to be a boom in entrepreneurship. The American dream isn’t just about a house in the suburbs anymore—for a lot of people, it’s now about doing what they love and being their own boss."

Workplace revolutions, the poster above, and the looming threat of a recession got me thinking about WPA-era art. I found a few for fun:

Publicolor Event in Manhattan

Michael Kors leads a team at last night's Stir, Splatter + Roll event in Manhattan.

I'm stepping in as the editor of Metropolismag.com for the next two months, and have posted my first story on their web blog P/O/V. It's about an annual benefit for the non-profit Publicolor. I stopped by last night and it drew a great crowd of designers, like Michael Kors and Lella Vignelli. You can link to it by clicking here.

Spotted: A Bike Lane?

Newly painted bike lane symbols on Chestnut Avenue in Baltimore

Baltimore has a new bike lane traversing the city and painted icons are appearing on asphalt all over town. Trouble is, there isn't much of a "lane" to these lanes. In fact, they are right smack in the middle of traffic. Inspired by a recent video posted on Slate titled the Stupidest Bike Lane in America—about a one block bike lane in Los Angeles that abruptly ends in traffic—I went out and took a few photos:

Without car...

With Car...

From the dashboard: drivin' over bikes.

New York Times Green Issue

Reusable totebag seen in a storefront on 36th Street in Baltimore.

Tomorrow the "green" themed issue of The New York Times Magazine hits the newsstands. I've contributed several pieces, including one about the mounting stress over the environment and our personal responsibility for its downfall (and salvation). I interviewed a few therapists and psychologists about eco-anxiety and one mentioned how we've all become so judgmental about each other's (in)actions on the matter. I saw this bag in a store in my neighborhood. Environmental consciousness has gone snarky. Bumperstickers to follow, I imagine. It's funny, because it not only berates the reader—that person perhaps asking for the plastic or paper bag at the grocery check out—it also makes fun of the bag's owner. Eco-Freak indeed.

News!

It's been a slow posting week because I've been traveling lots between New York and Baltimore. The first trip had to do with a very interesting piece I'll be publishing in the June issue of Architect...more on that later. The other reason is that I'll be jumping into the Web Editor position at Metropolis magazine for a few months while the current editor travels the globe. Look for more blogging by me on that site as well as posts by writers Mason Curry, Michael Silverberg, Jade Change, and more. Click on the heading P/O/V (point of view) on the Metropolis home page. While I'm there, look out for posts from the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, which happens in mid-May in Manhattan.

The City at Night

Lights out: A picture from space during the 2003 New York City blackout.

In the great construction boom leading up to the Olympics, whole swaths of Beijing are being transformed with new residential towers and commercial buildings. Italian photographer Daniele Dainelli has captured these buildings as they rise, photographing them at night while they sit slumbering, unoccupied and in near complete darkness until street and interior lights click on. By using medium-format film, Dainelli is able to bleed in what little light exists to render these hulking structures on film. Mason Curry of Metropolis writes about the photos in this month's issue of the magazine. "The resulting images feel otherworldly, and at times menacing. In some you can barely make out the contours of darkened buildings rising against inky skies, yet you feel their weight. A strange new city seems to be on the verge of awakening—but we'll have to wait until August to see it in the daylight."

From Metropolis' April issue: A tower going up in Sanlitun, Beijing. Daniele Dainelli/Contrasto/Redux

Less than 140 years ago, it would have been the lights at night that seemed otherworldly. We did not have the luxury of seeing cities in full lamplight until the late 1800's when the first electric streetlamps began illuminating France and Britain.

French architect Philippe Rahm reminded an audience at New York's Cooper Union School of Architecture on Friday night that constantly lit cities are a new phenomenon that totally altered human existence. "Paris was completely dark at night until the 19th century," Rahm said during a slideshow presentation of his work. With the invention of the streetlamp, "we erased the night from the city. It allowed people to come out, where before they stayed inside. There was no longer the cycle of day and night. It created a perpetual day," he said.

Rahm has studied how that perpetual day interrupts the natural cycle of human circadian rhythm. The hormone melatonin is secreted in the body by the pineal gland in response to darkness, and is believed to regulate our natural biorhythm and our ability to sleep. Our internal cycle is meant to be in sync with the cycle of the earth. Light pollution, Rahm explains, retards the human capacity to create melatonin. It tricks the body into thinking that it is day when it is night.

Rahm began to wonder about the inverse: if we can create a fake, perpetual day, could we also create a fake, perpetual night? "Modernity perversed the natural cycle," Rahm said. "Can we invent something within this artificial cycle?"

Day becomes night: Diurnisme at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris, 2007

In his 2007 Diurnisme exhibition, pictured above, Rahm created a false night within a room at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He used a type of yellow light with a wavelength above 600 nanometers because the body perceives it as true night. "The room becomes a paradox between the visible and the invisible: a night which looks like a bright day," Rahm once wrote.

By creating a fake night, the designer becomes a time traveler of sorts. "Architecture is not only space making. It is also time making. You can jump from day to night and choose where you want to be," Rahm said on Friday.




Rahm has also created actual "night lights" for a promenade in the City of Gdansk, Poland. The rendering is pictured above. From his website:

"The introduction of street lighting in the city during the 19-century was at the origin of one of the most important social and political revolutions of the urban practice and of the form of the city...The street lighting caused new urban typologies (the boulevard for example) but was also the cause of new behaviors, those of the noctambulism, sauntering the evening on the boulevards, dancing in the balls.

Our project is to invent a negative urban standard lamp, producing the night during the day, physically. It's a perverted answer to the perpetual day created by modernity, the Internet, and globalization.

If the traditional outdoor lighting, like a mini-sun, emits a visible radiation of light (artificial electromagnetic radiations of the sunlight), our outdoor lamp emits an invisible and cold electromagnetic radiation, like that emitted by the night sky. Our lighting consists of a diffuser like a mini night celestial vault, cooled by the flow of glycolic water at the temperature close to 0°C. Its surface is black, absorbing the whole of the luminous spectrum...Our body, at 37°C, will lose energy by infrared radiation in direction of this cold vault. A hot body always loses heat to the profit of a cold body. Our outdoor lamps will produce the night...."

The single greatest challenge to offestting global warming may be changing our own behavior and our entrenched perceptions of environment. Many of us have difficulty envisioning a new reality, one that moves beyond what we inherently understand and perceive to be normal. The beauty of Rahm's work is that it reminds us that this "normal" we live in is, in fact, not normal at all. Much of it is wholly fabricated; it is an artificial reality. So why not challenge the very assumptions of this false nature?

Coming Soon...

I'm on the road in NYC this week. There are some new and exciting posts coming soon including a Q & A with Fritz Haeg of Edible Estates and the latest from French architect Philippe Rahm. Stay tuned!

Strip Malls Make Me Sleepy

Illustration by Bonnie Ralston, Samuel Sherman, © The Museum of Modern Art 2008.

MoMA curator Paola Antonelli has posted a very interesting article on Seed magazine's website recounting a series of salons held at the museum around the topic of design. The series looked at the links between design and science.

"As science and technology accelerate the pace of society, design has become more and more integral to our ability to adapt to change. Indeed, in the past few decades people have coped with dramatic changes in several long-standing relationships—with time, space, information, and individuality, to name a few. Designers are translating these 'disruptive' scientific and technological innovations by providing thoughtful guidance and a collaborative approach. In order to step boldly into the future, we need design."

"What we're witnessing today is the emergence of a singular design creativity. Taking their cues from sources as varied as nanostructures, biological systems, topography, and cosmology, designers are introducing new areas of study and influence to their field and endowing their objects with new types of functional gradients."

Another interesting group exploring the intersection of science and space is the Academy of Neuroscience of Architecture. They study the ways in which humans respond to their built environment. During a lecture titled "Neuroscience and Architecture," Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in California noted that “the places we live, work and play are changing our brains and our behavior all the time.” In other words, environment impacts our brains and thus our behavior. So how about we stop building so much crap already?

Strip malls make me sleepy and sad.

Architectural Boycott

A model of Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Beijing. Eight towers with a mix of residential, commercial, and retail are interconnected via walkways at the 20th Floor.

Criticism over the Chinese government heated up today as protesters in Paris forced the Olympic Torch to be snuffed during its run through the city.

The Olympics have served to rile people around the world over the Chinese government's treatment of Tibet. Perhaps less on the radar is architect Daniel Libeskind's call for architects to boycott building in China altogether. As reported in last week's edition of the Architect's Newspaper, Daniel Libeskind has taken his profession to task for commissions in the country. "I won't work for totalitarian regimes," Libeskind told an audience in Belfast. "I think architects should take a more ethical stance."

As the building and construction industry stalls here in the States, this raises an interesting dilemma for architects looking for work globally. Massive undertakings, such as Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid set to open this year in Beijing, raise questions of how land is procured and how little architects know about the history of a particular site. "It bothers me when an architect is given carte blanche and told there's a great site, build X," Libeskind said. His comments apparently caused quite an uproar in the British Press.

Linked Hybrid under construction.

From Holl's website: "Focused on the experience of the body passing through spaces, the towers are organized according to movement, timing and sequence generating random city-like relationships."

A rendering shows the walkway system.

AN's William Menking suggests that it is time for architects to consider their role in world politics. "We are not calling for a protest against building in China, or in Azerbaijan, or for any emerging authoritarian dictatorship with an eye on cultural recognition," he writes. "There would be a certain irony in protesting one country's invasions when our own is fighting in Iraq. But it is time for a broader conversation about what it really means for architects to work in the world with eyes wide open."

Baltimoreans can spark that conversation with Libeskind himself when he comes to town for a lecture on April 24th.