Brooklyn Hip to Sustainable Scene

When I conduct my continual search for designs that succeed and inspire, I have come to develop a certain criteria. In my view, a successful design must embody the spirit, needs, and desires of the user. Through creativity, its form should also communicate its function. The design should innovate in favor of the natural environment and finally, the design should reflect a care for esthetic beauty and detail.

Brooklyn's children's museum expansion designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects, is the latest installment in my search. The museum's expansion opens this fall, and it provides a lovely example of incorporating human factors and sustainable design, without sacrificing esthetic beauty. The museum's whimsical facade creates an inviting entry and reflects its young patrons. Inside the structure, the architects have further integrated their users by employing children's ergonomics to develop handrails and installing porthole windows at different heights, accommodating their various sized clients. The architects have thoughtfully communicated the purpose of the building through its functional, and esthetic details. But perhaps most importantly, they have also made it New York's first LEED Silver Certified museum.

Here is an example of designers who have taken a holistic approach to design. They have succeeded in creating something beautiful, fun, user centered, and sustainable. I hope to do the same!

Comfort and food are meant to be together!

I work for a company that has recently opened a new restaurant. It is high-end sushi. It is a beautiful space, built to awe guests, and to offer the best. In the lounge, they went with low, round tables, with swivel lounge chairs. They look fantastic. The chairs in their own right are very comfortable, but try sitting in them and eating off the table and they all of a sudden seem so wrong! The table hits just below knee height for most, and so eating requires leaning forward to reach the food. Or, as I did, bringing the plate onto your lap. Needless to say it is very uncomfortable! It definitely took away from my dining experience. It makes me think that not one person considered how it would feel to eat at these tables. This blows me away because the restaurant was designed by a respected designer in Winnipeg. In terms of all of the emphasis we are receiving on the body, and its connection to our designs, I can't figure out what goes wrong in these types of situations. Is it that you can just get lost in the aesthetic aspect of the design? Do they not care? Do they not know? It scares me to think about inadvertently overlooking details like this in my design career. It disappoints me that there are designers who don't care! One of the things that I am learning very quickly is how much the built environment really affects people. And still, something seemingly so simple is over-looked by an experienced designer. In the book Townscape(yes the one we all paid $40 for and never used!)Gordon Cullen said "The speed of change prevents the environment organizers from settling down and learning by experience how to humanize the raw material thrown at them. In consequence the environment is ill-digested." In a design gone wrong, people seem to have gotten lost in the business of it all, working within budgets etc.. Also, I think specifically in this case, everything was designed, and then the tables added in. It seems that a customer's comfort would be second only to the quality of what is served. In that case, it may have been wise to create an enjoyable space to dine, and DESIGN around that. After all, you can awe people all you like, but the experience, and how they FEEL is what they will remember most.

suburban slum

A few months back (March to be precise) I read an article in the Atlantic about suburban neighborhoods in the United States that are quite literally turning into the “slums”. Graffiti is becoming rampant, vacancy is skyrocketing and homeless drug users are moving in. Thanks in large part to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, banks are foreclosing on people’s homes and the properties are remaining vacant. With the economic boom developers all over North America have greatly exceeded demand, and with the bust that seems to be following few will be in the position to purchase new real estate. The same individuals that are lacking the extra cash to purchase over-priced homes are also feeling the strain on their wallets from rising gas costs; hour long commutes are simply no longer justifiable.

Having lived central all my life I have never quite understood the magnetic attraction people have to the suburbs. The only sense that I have been able to make out of the whole situation is the stability and security that suburban communities offer. After reading this article I can only imagine what might happen if the drug users that call Main Street their home took up shop in Linden Woods… mayhem would ensue. The article suggests that the ladder may not be as far-fetched a notion as some may think, and frankly it makes sense. Like everything in life things can only be pushed so far, and cities have allowed developers to go too far in creating these suburban ‘Pleasantville’s’.

However, some developers are taking this notion quite seriously and switching their focus from designing suburban communities to creating life-style centers. Life-style centers encompass important elements of a capitalist society while at the same time focusing on pedestrian usage. Malls are no longer being built; instead commercial development is going in the direction of mixed-use walk able lifestyle centers that often include housing, office space and retail space.

The future of the suburb is very bleak. Although this is a positive for the urban context it does raise concerns about what will happen to houses that already stand. If more and more affluent individuals and families re-locate to city centers will they push out the vagabonds and drug users who call downtown streets home, forcing them into the suburbs? Or will the cheaply mass-produced houses simply decay over time? Both options guarantee a whole new slew of problems and issues that city planners and designers will have to deal with in the coming years.