I visited the “foreclosed” exhibit at MoMA recently and came away a bit perplexed and disappointed, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. Then I read this great review of that show by Felix Salmon. In an earlier post, I lamented the lack of empathy for exactly why millions of people choose to live in the suburbs. Salmon sums it up perfectly:

“Any honest attempt to fix the suburbs has to start with facing up to why so many Americans live in the suburbs in the first place, and who those Americans are. Suburban families are bigger than urban families; they like their space; and they like living in places where they’re a good distance from their neighbors and a long way indeed from people of other social classes.”

Our design for Fresh’s new Global Concept Store captured both the Store Fixturing Award at the 2012 A.R.E. Design Awards as well as the Silver Medal for Digital Signage in Retail at the 2012 Apex Awards.

Every now and then, it’s great to receive a little recognition for your team’s hard work and your client’s dedication to a vision. In the case of the Fresh Global Concept Store, that recognition just keeps coming! Aside from the remarkable amount of positive press we’ve received for this project, we’ve also recently collected some hardware on behalf of the entire team recognizing some key components of the store design.

Without thoughtful fixtures a store is nothing more than storage, so we were thrilled to collect the Store Fixturing Award at the 2012 A.R.E. Design Awards for the design of the Fresh Sensorial Bar. This piece, designed by Mapos down to the precise curvature and proportions of the drawer pulls, manages to be beautiful, functional, and most importantly, fun and interactive! Our hats are off to the good people at Amuneal for executing a pitch perfect piece.

Paramount to our new concept for Fresh was to create limitless opportunities for storytelling through interactive technologies. Doing this in a way that is “indistinguishable from magic” was just as important to us as designers. Working with Materials & Methods, we created a fully integrated storytelling experience utilizing a combination of Christie Microtiles and iPads which worked at multiple scales, from the person peering in from the street to the face-to-face touch of a fingertip. The successful results captured the Silver Medal for Digital Signage in Retail at the 2012 Apex Awards.

This little gem of a store is just the first step forward of many more as this innovative and thoughtful brand expands their presence into Asia and beyond. Stay tuned for more Freshness!

The elephant is in the room and we all know it. This excellent piece shines a light on the decaying and empty shopping centers that are littering the suburbs of the U.S. They’re huge. Their parking lots are huger. The “power centers” where they are built play big in people’s daily lives. They’re inefficient, destroy greenfields, and aren’t that beautiful to boot. Small towns have fell victim to their construction (as they win out over Main street) and often struggle for survival when they eventually die themselves.

What can we do about them? How can we leverage the energy (and money and materials) already spent on their development? What does their second life hold? Community centers? Schools? Housing? Mixed-use? Suburban agriculture?

At the same time, why were they built in the first place? While most are copy-cat developments with little thought to the long term, some are products of very smart people actually putting a lot of thought into their creation. What are their assets? (easy construction, ease of access, easy parking, great for mass retailing) What could greatly improve the relationship between people and planet (connections to mass transit, parking as landscape, connection to the outdoors, skylights, recycled materials, creative fixture design).

With over 100,000 shopping centers in the U.S. – and many of them dead or dying – these seem like good questions to ask.

Newsweek magazine recently commissioned six design firms to imagine the “city of the future.” Three firms each looked at New York and Los Angeles to envision how America’s two largest cities might develop in the coming decades.

The results echo the recent statistics that urbanism – namely densification of programming and built area – is a viable susatainable strategy for a more populated world. It’s rather predictable. More people live in urban areas than ever before, and this pattern will continue, as it has for millenia, especially in the developing world. We are increasingly living, working, playing, and commuting, within the same landscape and in closer proximity to each other. This is not new. What will be new, if we take the beautiful renderings as prophecy, is an urban landscape that is scrubbed clean of texture and history and the messy vitality that IS humanity. Especially a humanity that lives so close together for so long. Why does utopia look so banal and boring?

As New York is already the poster-child for density, the three New York teams had no real room to move, and no real new ideas. Proposing urbanism at the scale of the building is not new. Mixed-use has been around since the first farmer built his home above the stable. It isn’t even that new to think that infrastructure – highways, rail yards, water ways – is fertile ground for mixed-use. The proposed projects at Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, and Sunnyside Yards have been on the boards for over a decade. What might be new is an overly optimistic view that as long as two different things can happen at the same place, happy, sustainable, urbanism will flourish. We’re not advocates of single-use zoning by any means, but multi-tasking is more of a syndrome than a cure.

Out in Los Angeles, things are a bit better, perhaps because LA, unlike New York, is typically American in its sprawl, so can be an example for cities across the country. So what would LA do? Evidently be more like New York. Densify the landscape with infill construction and multiple uses. Fill backyards with new homes. Build atop the freeways. Develop parks along the rivers. What is novel here, however, is the appreciation for what is quintessentially LA. The strip malls and fast-food restaurants and parking lots are not plowed under for gleaming new visions of a happy future. The are renovated and incorporated and included. In-N-Out IS LA, and it is good.

Photo: Aimee Herring

When Mapos was asked by Green Depot to come up with an interactive way to showcase emerging lighting technologies that is both educational and fun, our answer was the (now famous) interactive Light Booth.

Within this tidy little space (recalling the once ubiquitous photo booth), one can test and compare several different lighting technologies against your own selected palette of materials and colors. Not only is it, ahem, enlightening, but there are no more surprises when you get home and screw in that new warm white CFL you just purchased at Green Depot, because you’ve already given it a test drive in their Light Booth.

Needless to say, we were thrilled to learn that NY Magazine recently included the Light Booth in it’s “Best of NY 2010″ issue under the category Best New Idea.

*sniff*

Mapos can’t help but feel like proud parents to this wittle fella. To achieve this accolade at only 1 year old… Well, who knows what this Light Booth will achieve someday? Time Magazine’s Fixture of the Year? A MacArthur Grant?

Okay, enough fawning. Who wants some cake?

Some years ago I was at friend’s party in Los Angeles. I was living there at the time and becoming immersed – and enthralled – with the “city” and mindset in Southern California. Like any place I spend a particular amount of I time, I inevitbaly try to discern what is unique about a place. What could only happen here that could not happen anywhere else? Call it a quest for identity, and taste for the zeitgeist, or simply an innate desire to not feel like an outsider, I wanted to know what it was about LA that made it tick. And despite my New York centric view of the world, I wanted to know why I liked it so much.

There were the obvious reasons, to be sure. The weather. The ocean. The beaches. The mountains. The desert. The laid-back “California lifestyle.” There’s also the fact that LA could be considered a one-industry town. Like politics to Washington, Autos to Detroit, and insurance to Hartford (snooze), Los Angeles is about film-making, and this singular industry just happens to be a creative act that generates huge sums of money which then supports other creative industries, from the arts, to music, to architecture. At last count there are 7 major architecure schools in the LA area (and countless more design academies) -  more than found here in New York – graduating young and energetic creative types who throw themselves at their craft with progressive vigor and experimentation. And the climate helps, too. It’s easier to push the boundaries of architecture if you don’t have to worry that much about rain and snow and insulation. All of this creative output definitely makes Los Angeles a capital of creative output in this country. Now don’t get me wrong. New York, and Mapos with it, are not going anywhere. There’s just something about LA that I was trying to put my finger on.

In a recent article in the Times, Nicolai Ouroussoff pays tribute to Charles Gwathmey and the fading importance of the “New York Five,” who are now the elder and passing figures of New York’s prominence in Art and Design. Somewhere along the way, Gehry and Kappe and Mayne and Rotondi and Ruscha and Irwin and Turrell and Moss and Eames and Koning grew into the most influential and exuberant artists and designers in the US. What happened to the promise of New York?

At my friend’s party, a fellow guest quickly – and without any prompting – suggested why LA was the epicenter of a movement, and the reason for my crush. He simply said , “it’s the Wild West.” His theory was we were living at the Western edge of the Western hemisphere and we had run out of places to move on to. This is where civilization came to some sort of wall and doubles back on itself, building on the collective captive energy pushed up against the end of the world. Anything is possible in LA. The sun keeps moving West.

If we had a dollar for every time we said to ourselves, “what is going to become of Detroit?” we’d be rich men. Well, our accountant may say otherwise, but that doesn’t stop us from pondering the ins, outs, ups, downs, and what-ifs for our favorite urban punching bag.

On a recent trip, I had taken my family on a bit of an urban scavenger hunt, travelling from abandoned building to empty lot to derelict factory. The result? An idea we call DATA DETROIT.

Detroit once was the global capital of the automobile industry. It was the hub of several transportation networks that both imported raw materials and labor to its factories and exported automobiles to the world.

Detroit is arguably still at the center of this network, though it is rapidly losing its industry and its work force leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned buildings and square miles of empty land.

Several cities in the North East US (the Rust Belt) and around the country are experiencing similar shifts in population and infrastructure.

Using its existing under-utilized infrastructure, Detroit could become the regional (and then global) capital of a new industry: the reclaiming, recycling, and re-purposing of automobiles, trains, ships, technologies and housing. The networks that once brought and sent materials and automobiles can now bring in used and abandoned consumer goods, strip them down to their base elements, and ship them out to interested buyers. Detroit’s excess building stock would serve as warehouses for these various goods.

• The GM and Ford plants would receive, recycle, and store automobiles.
• The River Rouge delta would become a recycling yard for boats and ships.
• The train yards would become the center for recycling locomotives and train cars.
• Various empty factories would recycle and store the growing number of technologies: cell phones, computers, TVs, etc.
• The empty neighborhoods would become massive yards to store and display the reclaimed and recycled housing stock being shipped to Detroit.

All of the commercial activity would likely happen online. Buyers could surf the multiple websites of the multiple recyclers looking for their desired goods. This would require server space. Millions of gigabytes of server space. A select number of abandoned buildings would become server farms – data centers – that would store the billions of photos, specs, and information on the world’s recycled materials. The new center of Detroit would be a symbol of its place in the new world economy.

• The Michigan Central Railway terminal would become the world’s largest data center.

Full of servers, it would be a beacon for Detroit and the first of many new data centers around the city. It would become the center a new digital network, linking Detroit to the world.

• The massive cooling loads needed for data centers would be engineered using natural ventilation. Wind “scoops” would be strategically placed to capture and direct the prevailing winds eliminating the need for air conditioning.
• The heat exhaust would be captured in a new mechanical factory on the roof for storage and heat exchange furnaces in the winter.

As we are all collectively “tightening our belts” in this fun and frugal 2009, the cities a lot of us live in are thinking about doing the same. The Harvard economist and urban guru Edward Gleaser writes up a conise argument and history of the need for our over-bloated cities to go on a diet and trim the fat, literally.

The Rustbelt cities started their population declines in the 1960′s as the promise of post-WWII homeownership reached it’s heyday. Millions fled the cramped conditions of the inner city for the prized lawn we could each call our own. More Americans now live in the suburbs than anywhere else, leaving the pockmarked and abandoned mothership without any tax-fuel. The result? Cities can’t afford to keep themselves functioning. The answer? Downsize. Relocate thousands to concentrate the population and minimize the infrastructural need. Transform thousands of homes into fields and forests. Will the Iriquois return?

In a bizarre reversal of fortune, the Sunbelt cities, fueled by years on the promise of warmth and cheap land, has been seeing the de-migration begin. The suburbs had already shown their banality. The Ponzi-like real estate schemes are finalizing the dexodus and the suburbs now have thousands of  homes in foreclosure.  The result? Entire metropolitan areas are looking for a purpose.

Can Buffalo become Buffalo again? Should it?

Back to the Arieff blog we go. What better forum than the annual International Council on Shopping Centers (ICSC) convention in Las Vegas to review and comment on the cultural leanings of the American psyche. Getting excited? Um, you bet!

Of course we should not be surprised that very little at the convention is groundbreaking, or remotely new, or even interesting. Even in this economy, it’s still Bigger, Better, More of the Same. This industry is the poster-child for the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” set. Taking a cue from Hollywood, it’s all about sequels with bolder special effects and the same, tired story lines. At least some developers are beginning to embrace “mixed-use” if that only means including more program under one roof: malls attached to stadiums.

Arieff was there to judge an ICSC competition on Future Visions. Certainly the overlooked “charitable” component of such amped-up consumerism, she highlighted some thoughtful designs from architects thinking about where the culture may be pointing us. And that’s the key differentiator here – the culture. Each of her highlighted entrants began with the premise of the shopper. What are they doing? Who are they with? What tools are they using to help navigate through their day? (Answer: iPhone). How are our communities changing? What do we need? While the designs are still grandiose, at least there is a human scale here. A nod to the values that keep us linked.

Here at Mapos, we have a saying. It’s called “Design Matters.” Sure it’s a little biased and completely self-serving. More than a tool to produce tangible objects and buildings, design is increasingly being valued for its creative ability to approach and define complex issues. Understood at multiple dimensions and scales – and in all media – design can
transform and affect positive change in every aspect of daily life.

And our favorite crush, Allison Arieff agrees. She puts the design industry – and designers, clients, fabricators, and ultimately all of us ‘consumers’ – to task in rethinking, “what do we actually need?” Well designed objects serve many purposes, not the least of which is the non-stop human necessity to express ourselves and rejoice in things beautiful and true. In this day and age, however, we certainly do need to re-evaluate what we do with our resources, from financial to fossil. As designers, we are in a particularly strategic and yes, suspect, position to cast a light on the design-fabrication-consumption-industrial-complex. Or, as Arieff says,

“At its heart, design is about problem-solving, but it’s also about problem-identifying. Instead of creating a need for things, designers can now focus on responding to things we do need. We may have never been confronted with as many problems as we are today; the blame for them can’t be attributed to designers, but many future solutions can — and will be.”

This week in the esteemed Sunday Rag, two articles caught my attention. If you don’t have time to read them, don’t fret. Just read the cliff notes.

Ouroussoff had a couple of suggestions for Obama. He gives a pithy description of the problems facing urban America (and those other foolhardy citizens who jumped before testing the water) and to his credit, pithy prescriptions tangentially addressed for Obama to consider, to some of the most egregious examples. Oh poor Detroit, I will write more about you later. Oh LA! You, the wise dame of 21st century urban issues. You’ve been here before. Race. Water. Sprawl. Transportation. Immigration. Environment. You have been on the forefront of urban theory for 75 years. Did you know it? Will you show us a way out? Oh New Orleans, you weren’t meant to be on this list, but you are. So much potential. So much visceral culture. So much.

Though I normally get a rather vanilla taste when reading Ouroussoff (though I’m sure he’s a nice man), he has written something so on-the-mark it hit me like a cul-de-sac with thorny bristles about the edges. Are we going to get serious about the shrinking, broken systems that have created “cities” in America? And more importantly, are we going to acknowledge reality? The landscape that we know has been developed for a reason. We can not expect to progress if we deem the decisions that got us here as patently false. They have proven themselves failures. Sure, let’s not build like this anymore. But what were the criteria we were trying to define? What were the conditions we were trying to meet? What were the questions we were trying to answer?

Cohen finds Jane Jacobs in cyberspace. What have we been missing in urban design? We all know that Jacobs was right. But is Robert Moses wrong? The communities that self-form on Wikipedia are not the sidewalks of the West Village, though that is where they found their sacred birth. The are vocal, self-generated, grass-roots and an oh-so-grown-up urban renewal program sweeping away the past for a vision of the future. Pay attention, people are talking.