decision making

graphics

Sustainability

In our field, as in many others, we use this term. It gets regurgitated in our discussions and sanctified through political endorsement. Sustainability is a safe word. It implies we don't need to change, we just need to make sure we don't necessitate change by forcing the acknowledgment of our own wastefulness. This language is terrible, and is so for strategic purposes.
Suppose we choose a new word. Rather than sustainable, perhaps it is the attainable that we should be aiming for in our design choices. This language imposes a trajectory of change. We are not trying to sustain a status quo, we're invoking a newly defined relationship to our environment.

Old News?

Incomplete Manifesto

Map of facebook

http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up-the-us.html

Visual Thesaurus

I mentioned this a while ago in class and wanted to be sure you can all take a look. You can only do a few searches before they start asking you to subscribe, but it's really beautiful while it lasts.

Visual Thesaurus

WolframAlpha

Here is an example of how WolframAlpha can be used to compare information, in this example, comparing species. The last image on the page is a map of the information that can be shown as a tree or a network.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=puma,+lion,+red+fox

Here it is as a network:

Hamlet as a Facebook news feed

I don't know if you all have seen this before, but I think it is one of the greatest things inspired by Facebook, next to Scramble :)

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/7/30schmelling.html

Carbon footprint of Google search

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece

I'm glad manifesto's can be in list form.

Design sets an example.
Restructuring our own values begins a greater discussion.

Design with the life cycle in mind.
This includes everything from trees, to bricks, to hardware and software.

Understand the carbon footprint of the Google search.

Good infrastructure is flexible.
In this instance, flexibility means being able to anticipate and plan for known changes and tactfully adapt when surprises occur.

Expect the unexpected.
I don’t really how to elaborate on this but it sounded cool.

Nobody benefits from hoarding.
Too much information begets too many resources devoted to that housing that information.

Privatization and exclusivity decreases productivity and progress.
The immaterial economy is upon us. Sharing [ideas, immaterial knowledge, codes, images] helps us all.

Technology alone will not save us.
Real change challenges existing institutions.

Re-instate the Common(s) as a resource and a product.
If the model can flourish online, it can be reinstated on the ground and in our planning policies.

Get political. We are the least involved generation politically speaking since it has been recorded.

Our designs do not stop at their physical manifestations.
Just as carefully as we craft our buildings, streets, plazas, and institutions, we must consider crafting the digital infrastructure, and a corresponding language, which supports and interacts with them.

We are where our attention is.
But – the body is still situated in time and space. Understanding this relationship is crucial.

The dignity of making things is important to our [human] livelihood.
Our ability to make art is a strictly human tradition. Take craft seriously. Beauty and use still have a place in a time of algorithmic design.

PS this is a draft :)

Draft Manifesto

With the incessant pull on the human mind toward the virtual it is the architect’s responsibility to ground their work in the physical. While information may be incorporeal and instantaneous, those who access it are still tied to bodies, environment and place. In acknowledging that which is physical we can advance along with technology. Light, air, temperature, sound, touch are the materials with which we must work. It is these that ground the body and mind within the physical world while supporting their forays into the digital.

Similarly, technology thus far must still inhabit a physical body in order to support its reach. These bodies – computers, servers, digital devices – are also grounded in their physical needs. To design for technology we must answer to these physical needs in order to provide space that will withstand evolution.