designer in exile

Square Block: Educating Without Walls

2012-01-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

A local art teacher strives to bring down learning barriers with an innovative education model.

Image by S. Bickmore.

By guest blogger Scott Bickmore.

In a climate of budget cutting, plummeting test scores, rising drop-out rates, unemployment, and just general educational malaise, Square Block: Educating Without Walls hopes to provide a low overhead supplement to standard education, which cuts out all the fat and marries home-cooked meals with world renowned careers.

Think home schooling on steroids. The neighbors are teachers too. Local businesses are resources. The park bench, a classroom with experts and academics adding to mom’s lesson, showing practical steps to success, and constantly striving to answer the age-old question students always ask: “When am I going to use this in the real world?”

The model is simple: Take a square block of a neighborhood and designate it as an education area, a school without walls.

Enlist its residents and resources in collaboration with different experts in industry and areas of academia to develop block specific curriculum.

Harness the resources of community initiative and engagement. Crowdsource the block's learning needs. Build a curriculum by consensus based on realizing the aspirations and needs of each neighborhood. I work with the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, which has been a great example internationally of this type of outreach.

Develop a template so others can start their own Square Block school. Square Block schools can start up concurrently across the city, interacting, being a resource and referral with site specific attributes and programs.

Use mentorship. If a child likes to build forts, connect him or her to a complementary industry--an architect at PennDesign, for example, who is willing to foster the creativity of a new generation of minds. If someone has a propensity to work on cars, call on the great engineer schools here in Philadelphia to step up and spark a dream - show a young adult the possibilities of where that mechanical aptitude can lead.

Encourage students to branch out content and develop their own classes. Make it easy for them, starting with a short lesson or workshop at first, and empower them as a teacher. The best way to learn is to teach.

A child's list of of values.

Square Block is kind of like Netflix. Everything is based on a website--scheduling, curriculum, etc. Like your movie membership, the school can be “active” or ‘inactive.” Classes would range in duration, size and scope depending on initiative and demand.

Right now Square Block is in our laboratory. There is space for additional input and concepts. I am an educator and organizer of community projects, and have, with the help of talented minds, seen great things happen when communities come together with innovative ideas to solve issues.

I have seen evidence that this can work. It is a blueprint for successful mentorship, a supplement to an educational system that, I believe, has lost its edge recently in a global context. As evidence builds and calls for the "insourcing" of jobs back to America and as the need grows for a skilled workforce ready to embrace a new era of livelihood and prosperity, this kind of innovative curriculum design is critical.

Image via Wikipedia

University of Pennylvania Campus

Block by block, the Square Block model can spread - from a neighborhood to a city to a nation - and in doing so, ignite a revolution of learning for the enterprise frontiers of our bold new century.

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Scott Bickmore is no stranger to this blog. We've written about his endeavors in a few previous posts and thus gotten to know him well. He is the founder of SSEWARD LLC, a Philadelphia based company, which generates creative projects and offers a variety of tools, products and services, designed to empower groups and individuals.

Cluster Group Philadelphia

Most recently, Scott has partnered with Designer in Exile and a fresh cluster of local artists, writers, educators, and coders, to launch a new community media access start-up designed for real-time, citizen journalism reporting on local arts events, and perhaps more. His Square Block project adds an additional dimension to this effort. Using cutting edge technology, partnerships with non-profit groups, and a "boots on the ground" presence, we intend to engage with our neighborhoods, to serve them by giving greater access to relevant events, thus reinforcing the social fabric that keeps communities healthy, vibrant, and strong.--D.A. DeMers.

The Nature of Design

2012-01-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

A UK design blogger sheds some light on why solar technology is mimicking biology.

Image by DrWurm via Flickr

Organic Solar Cells

By guest blogger Selma Karlsdottir.

I believe that the advanced technology of solar cells that mimic the process of plants to draw energy from the sun, otherwise known as photosynthesis, first came to my attention about one year ago. I had already been doing a thorough study on solar cells, and where and when it makes sense to implement them. And the one dominant downside to solar cells as we know them is clearly that they need sunlight. They can store the energy that is produced to some degree, but not enough to make it a reliable source of energy in a country such as England, which is famous for its fish and chips, Mary Poppins, Oliver Twist and of course, cloudy skies and plenty of rainfall. So I thought to myself that there should be a way for solar cells to be more effective. And one answer lies in biomimicry.

Before I start diving into the amazing world of biomimicry, I’d like to ask one question: Why am I so interested in solar cells? Why not just use wind turbines during those cloudy days?

Image via Wikipedia

Standard rooftop panel

England has plenty of wind so that would make sense. But wind turbines can also make noise and take up a lot of space. So far, solar cells have had the capability of blending in slightly more than wind turbines. And they do look pretty cool as roof tiles, completely replacing any other type of roof material. But solar cells are also fantastic in a smaller scale. Small solar cells have been used for decades in hand calculators. Using solar cells to charge mobile devices rather than plug in electricity is not just beneficial for our beloved blue globe, but it also makes the user mobile and flexible not having to rely on electricity from the grid, never mind spending valuable vacation time figuring out one of those universal plug converters (find your favorite solar chargers here).

Nature has spent billions of years creating and refining its creations. Everything nature has ever created that has been left untouched by the more intelligent species, homo sapiens, exists in perfect harmony. And we have so much to learn from our wisest teacher mother earth. Using what she is teaching us and translating that knowledge into smart technology, simply put, is amazing.

This brings me back to biomimicry. The term is a broad one, as the mimicry or imitation of nature, comes in many forms and many fields of expertise. By the study of nano-scale morphology of living organisms, many applications have been developed through multidisciplinary collaboration between biologists, chemists, bioengineers, nanotechnologists, and material scientists. The imitation of processes, systems and models in nature is used in fields such as architecture, industrial design and engineering to mention a few.

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The Millennium Tech prize, which is awarded each year by Finland’s Technology Academy, was given to the Switzerland based chemist Michael Grätzel in September 2010 for inventing solar cells that mimic photosynthesis.
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Panels are now being manufactured by an Australian company under the name ‘Dyesol Cells’. The panels are low cost and low in energy consumption during the manufacturing process, and can be turned into electricity-generating windows, mobile solar devices and others.

Image via Wikipedia

Solar cell Production

The technology behind the ‘Dyesol Cells’ is inspired directly from the process of plants absorbing sunlight through their green pigment chlorophyll and converting carbon dioxide, gas and water into carbohydrates (glucose) and oxygen, which in turn provides for the energy the plant needs to survive and grow. The solar cells similarly make use of a dye analogous to chlorophyll, for instance dye squeezed from berries, which absorbs sunlight and generates electrons and converts light into energy. And the energy that the cells produce can be used in both micro or macro scale - DC power storage which is integrated into the products, AC power to Smart Meter and the grid, which can be combined with thermal energy, as portable power or distributed power.

The cells are tolerable to partial shading and can be used all day. They can be transparent, rigid or curved and bendable and integrated into glass or metal. The advantages are many and the technology is proven stable. So why is using nature as a source of inspiration such a growing trend? Plainly stated, nature has a tried, tested and approved it all. Nature is the most experienced biologist, scientist and inventor of all times. We can certainly learn one or two things and use the wisdom to make our everyday life even better.

Image via Wikipedia

Dyesol diagram

A company named Semprius, which won a “NextGen” grant from the Department of Energy in 2007, unveiled in July of 2011 an ultra tiny solar cell half the size of a pinhead, that in combination with powerful but inexpensive lenses can concentrate sunlight more than 11,000 times and convert it to electricity. This has nothing to do with imitating nature, but it reveals another trend that has been strong for some time, which is the capability of going smaller and smaller in scale, and thus making technologies easier to produce, distribute, and use, in a wide variety of products. Large scale production is made easy while leaving a small ecological footprint in exchange for a micro scaled product with a multiplied efficiency.

But it is not only micro solar cells that are now making headlines. In my next article I would like to explore some other still unusual energy producers which can become specifically advantageous for mobile devices such as mobile phones and radio transmitters: electromagnetic energy tapped from the air around us or from sound waves that is transmitted into energy to charge our phones as we speak.

Selma Karlsdottir is a design professional based in London who blogs on various aspects of sustainable design, often from a cutting edge technical perspective. This article was originally published on her main blog Eco Tech.

A Public Engagement

2011-12-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

Mural Arts founder Jane Golden discusses public art, community outreach, and why they work so well together.

Colorful mural, 8th and Bainbridge.

Philly murals are more than simply pretty pictures on a wall. They are the brick and mortar of the city’s community outreach and engagement programs. This Fall we've featured posts on the city’s amazing ensemble of people powered art champs. To top it off, Designer In Exile presents this exclusive interview with Jane Golden, founder of the world renowned Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia. Her ideas are compelling, her words inspirational - it's a pleasure and honor to hear her story. The recorder may have run longer than usual, but we think you'll enjoy reading this post from beginning to end and perhaps once over again:

D.A. DeMers: Thank you for spending time with our readers. A quick review: I've run a series of interviews this fall with some of your muralists. I'm not a muralist. I come from a design background, in architecture and product design. My blog covers design as it intersects with community outreach, social justice and environmentalism. That's what led me to Mural Arts. Being a transplant here in Philly, I'd never really seen anything as expansive as your program. I was so impressed that I've tenaciously sought to discover its essence. So this is a perfect summary for the series, and I'll start by asking you to explain your background and how you started Mural Arts.

Jane Golden: Sounds good. First off, I want to thank you for your interest. Your background sounds really interesting. So I really appreciate your reaching out to us.

I went to Stanford for my undergraduate work. I majored in political science and fine art. I've always been a painter. I was only really interested in murals, specifically work done by the Mexican muralists. I became more of a social realist painter. In my years at Stanford I was really interested in that nexus of art and social change. And I moved down to Los Angeles. There were many murals in the city, and I ended up applying to an LA mural organization called SPARC, which was the equivalent of Philly's organization, and got a small grant to do a mural in Santa Monica. The wall was about 20 feet wide and 100 feet long and I think the fee was $300. I just fell in love with mural painting, and I realized, standing on that corner at Ocean Park and Main, how I thought theoretically about murals, murals that were accessible - having conversations with people about politics and community issues.

"You Can Be Stronger Than Diabeties," mural, Fishtown area.

"Angel" mosaic wall motif, Viking Mill, Kensington neighborhood.

I continued to paint murals and then came back to Philadelphia and I read about the Anti-Graffiti Network in the newspaper. I sent my resume to [then] Mayor Wilson Goode's office. I was hired to run an art component for the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network, and between 1985 and 1997 I worked mostly with graffiti writers - I should say "former" graffiti writers.

We did outreach to other kids. We volunteered a new program and we created murals in many neighborhoods in the city, and we were able to see the striking impact that art has in neighborhoods that have histories of behavior issues, so to speak.

I'm a believer in murals as public art, but I have to say that it was astounding to see the murals become catalysts of social change and see their ability to inspire, empower and transform. It was thrilling. It was absolutely thrilling.

And so all those years at Anti-Graffiti gave me a clue that art could serve many purposes - that art for art's sake is wonderful in itself, but if you could align that social power of art and put it to work in a way that was relevant and impactful to the citizens of Philadelphia, how wonderful that would be.

Then in 1996, when we heard that Anti-Graffiti was going to close because the former director had passed away, the mayor at the time, Ed Rendell, wanted to restructure Anti-Graffiti. I went to him and asked if he would reconsider saving [the new] art program. He agreed. And in late 1997 the Mural Arts Program was formed and I was made the director, and we immediately went into high gear because we realized we were a pro art program - not an anti anything program anymore - and we started working with emerging and established artists.

We began working with all kids in the city because so many kids didn't have access to art education. We assembled a wide range of programs, and, in essence, we've never looked back. It's been a real privilege.

It's wonderful what's been done. Was there a model you followed, or did Philadelphia take the lead in terms of the community-building process that goes with creating the murals? Does Philly shine on its own in that regard?

Classical styled mural, North Philly.

Yes. I absolutely think that Philadelphia shines on its own. But I give credit to people who came before me. When I was in LA, I carefully studied their program. I looked at the work being done in Chicago by the Chicago Public Art Group and the Precita Eyes muralists in San Francisco. So there were definitely other cities doing the work. It's not exactly what we do here in Philly, but I do want to acknowledge that there were people who came before that were doing very interesting work with murals, being really connected to people in different neighborhoods and with different community issues.

When I came to Philadelphia I was also aware of the fact that the Philadelphia Museum of Art had a mural program for several years. But the program closed down several years earlier. I knew two muralists, Don Kaiser and Clarence Woods, who worked for the museum. They were terrific and had really contributed to the city. I looked them up and met them and read about their work. So I've always tried to make it a point to study those who did work before us, and I'm very respectful of and thankful for the path that they created.

I think the big break for us and what makes our program unique is really connected to the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. I have a lot of gratitude for Wilson Goode and Tim Spencer for creating a program with opportunities for kids in communities throughout the entire city. They really tried to consult and allow access and equity and participation, and that is something that rings true with Mural Arts to this day.

I think that the groundwork that a city agency like Anti-Graffiti did, with the foresight to build an art component that then went on to accomplish a lot (in that we offered programs to thousands and thousands of young people during those years and we worked in so many different neighborhoods), gave us the ability to hone our craft. We partnered with community organizers, community leaders, activists. We've developed a process where we connect artists and the community in a way that is rigorous, in a way that is sustained and leads to real change.

We ask ourselves everyday: how do we move the needle? How do we use art to change something? What is it we want to accomplish? What are our outcomes? And Anti-Graffiti was a great training ground to figure out how you use art in the most strategic way possible to bring about change in the community.

Uniquely styled mural, Museum area.

And so to get back to your question, I think those years with the Anti-Graffiti Network are what helped us become so unique, in that we had the privilege of working with organizers over a long period of time and then becoming a pro art program, then sort of evolving into the Mural Arts Program.

The other thing that makes us unique is we are part city and we are, in a way, part of the government. 40% of our funding comes from the city and the rest from private sources. It's really meaningful that city government is connected and people are able to see how government dollars can be leveraged and be effective.

From the interviews I've done with muralists, I understand that the program is evolving beyond just murals. I'm curious about events where you've done LED lighting. You seem to be striving to utilize new technologies beyond just painting. Is that the future of Mural Arts? Innovation on many levels?

Yes, that's really a great question because we're really looking at murals in the 21st century - how do you define public space? And that's an open-ended question. So we're working with new technology, in our own way, and we're working with light and sound. I feel like the sky is the limit because we're called the Mural Arts Program, but this is really about creating community-based public art.

Do you think you'll be changing the name because of that?

[laughing] Maybe. Really, it's thrilling to be working with different materials. And we have something now called Mural Lab, which is a new program where we bring groups from around the country to Philadelphia because we're trying to provide the arts community with a different look at what it means to work in the public sphere, and we are also willing to offer job development opportunities.

Sounds very relevant to this era.

Another thing we're doing is called the Innovation Fund, where artists can apply - and it's just a little bit of money - but they can apply to do something that's really innovative and imaginative and work with new materials.

That's really cool. Very encouraging.

Thank you for saying that.

Being from a product design background - specifically lighting design - I'm drawn to the innovation aspect, the experimentation you're doing with light, multimedia and murals and such.

Thank you. That's great. It's really exciting and I loved it when Meg Saligman did the Evolving Face of Nursing mural at Broad and Vine. She did a lot of research in her studio with light and then came to us and said 'I really want to do this.' I think it's really important that Mural Arts be open to the artist's voice and vision.

Do you export your knowledge to other cities?

That's a great question. There are about 100 cities in this country that are replicating our model to different degrees. And it's a lot about the capacity and sometimes we don't have the capacity to physically go to cities and start programs but we have several earned income streams. One is around our consulting services, so we give people handbooks and sell handbooks. People sometimes send delegations to Philadelphia. We sometimes send one or two people to other cities.

But this is really wonderful. I mean, this is not just in the US. There are cities in Canada, all over Europe and more that are calling us. And it's beyond being good for Mural Arts. I think this is good for the city of Philadelphia, because it shows that this is a city that really cares about community and art and young people.

I have one last question. You're doing all this project management, managing a whole program, involved in fund raising, public relations and stuff like that. Do you ever miss just being the artist?

Yes, I do, and I think that was difficult to let go of. I think I eventually came to peace because I see the whole program as a creative endeavor, and I derive tremendous satisfaction from all the different aspects of the work, from working with kids to prison work to the community work. And I have to say I really feel thrilled by the fact that we're able to offer employment to so many artists in the Philadelphia area. That makes me feel good. It helps take up that space that used to be immersed in painting murals everyday.

Thank you again for sharing such rich insight into your program.

You're welcome. It's been a pleasure.

(Video). Collaborative Mural Arts multimedia project with PIFA.

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All images by D.A. DeMers, free to use via Creative Commons license CC-SA. Transcription by Jamie Sanders. More info on the Mural Arts Program can be found at www.muralarts.org. There's always a whole lot of movin' and shakin' goin' on there.

Love Thy Neighborhood

2011-11-22T15:26:00.000-08:00

A local web design company demonstrates how to 'be the change' - from the ground floor up.

YIKES web design and development.

We Fishtown people can be nosy neighbors. Maybe it's because we're watchful folk who look out for each other. Or perhaps it's that we have an insatiable and profound curiosity for the world around us that leads us to snoop a bit.

Whichever the case, when YIKES, a sustainable web design business and certified B corporation, hung out their sign on Girard Avenue, I felt that curiosity rise - especially after hearing that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter had attended the grand opening of their eco-fabulous new office.

What is sustainable web design? What is a B corporation? And why does the mayor like them so much? YIKES co-founder Tracy Levesque sat down recently with Designer in Exile to answer these burning questions and more. Her dreams and goals tell of a wonderful story well on its way to coming true:

How long has YIKES been together?

It'll be sixteen years in January. But we've been here on Girard Avenue only since the end of July. For nine years previous to that we were at 3rd and Brown Street in Northern Liberties. Before that we were at our house.

What primarily do you do?

Website design and development. That's pretty much it. I, personally, do front end design, HTML, CSS, and graphic design for the web. I do WordPress development as well.

What makes YIKES a sustainable business?

Well, when we founded the business, there wasn't a lot of terminology for that idea. We didn't have terms like sustainable business, triple bottom line, or B corporation. We just knew that we wanted to be a socially responsible business. That's what people were saying back then. So the way (in which) we did things was always mindful of the environment, our employees, and the community around us.

And how do you do that?

We do things like recycle - it's much easier to recycle now, it was much harder to recycle back then. There was no curbside recycling. You had to take it to a place and you had to find a separate place that recycled plastics.

We also compost everything. All the office materials we use are environmentally friendly, right down to our cleaning supplies. We don't use paper towels, we use real towels in the bathroom and in the kitchen and wash them.

Our electricity is supplied by 100% renewable energy from the Philadelphia Energy Co-op. In addition, we offer our employees things like flex time, paid sick days, and two paid volunteer days per year. We really work hard with people when they have things like babies, crises, get ill, things like that. And we are B corporation certified.

Explain what being B corporation certified means.

B corporation label.

There's a certification process to be a B corporation much like the LEED certification process. It's based on a point system of evaluation. And your overall point score says whether you are certified or not. It's pretty rigorous; they look at all aspects of your business. It's really the only decent 3rd party certification process to measure how green and sustainable your business is. We were a pretty early adapter of the certification process.

We recently won an award for our (green) building project. B Corps recently had a retreat here in Philadelphia and they gave us this award. We were totally surprised.

Tell us more about your building. What makes it sustainable?

Well the office we were in before was nice, but it wasn't energy efficient, it wasn't green at all. That was the one thing that wasn't fitting into our mission. So YIKES began looking for a new building. We came across these two buildings in Fishtown that were a complete mess. They were blighted, vacant - holes all the way from the floor to the roof. They were completely water damaged. Shells. Actually, beyond shells. You can see the pictures of how they looked before.

Yikes Girard office interior before renovation.

Exterior of the building before renovation.

Facade renovation work.

Renovated facade.

And then I just fell in love with these buildings - they were gross, but I loved them. And I had my mind set that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to rehab these buildings, so I'm doing a LEED platinum certified rehab, tenaciously. We're not certified yet, but well on our way.

So did you partner up with some green-building professionals?

Well, as it turned out, I sort of tangentially knew Tim McDonald, one of the Onion Flats guys. And I called him up and asked him if he could come look at the property. We did a walk through and he said, basically, 'it's just a Philly row home - four walls and a roof - anything can be done.' So they became the architects for the project. (See the prior Designer in Exile post, The Tiny House of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for more on Philly row homes and their implications for an energy efficient future).

New life for a building and the community.

Then after going through the whole financing process, finding financing for the project through PIDC, a city program, we found GreenSaw in Northern Liberties, who is our general contractor. Their specialty is using salvaged, recycled materials in building, and doing beautiful work. So I just fell into this, and I really enjoy the process.

How does your business intersect with the surrounding community in terms of purposeful change?

Blight removal. We took on two of the worst buildings on East Girard Avenue. And I'm not just about taking a crappy building, flipping it and moving on. You were talking earlier about your experiences with lamps made in China that went right to the landfill. Buildings are the same way. The home building industry tends to build to code with the crappiest materials from China - you know, (mass market) builder supplied, suburban, gross-looking places, and then they move on. And that's not what we want to do. We want to do justice to the buildings, keep the character of the community, and contribute to this commercial corridor, which is beautiful.

We're here, we love being here. We love being a part of Fishtown events, the Fishtown Business Association. As an example, we're having a local food drive currently with Philabundance.

So what you're saying is that you choose to involve yourself with events that help foster the community. Your outreach is really about being a good business and interacting with the local community.

Yes. Like being involved with NKCDC. Even things like, 'ok, the tree's dead outside', but we're going to take care of it and replace it, and take care of our space.

Aside from making your office greener, how does a web business become more sustainable, specifically in terms of servers, computers and power?

People always talk about the paperless office that's green, but if you looked at the carbon footprint of many internet companies it would be obscene. A lot of electricity goes into keeping servers running, keeping computers up.

Interesting, because that seems like a core issue. Many big internet companies pride themselves on going green because they are, well, internet companies.

Yes. And some of them are investing in amazing wind farms and extensive solar projects. And that's great. They should be doing that because they're burning up a lot of electricity with their servers.

Tracy Levesque

We are powered by renewable energy and my goal in the next year is to get solar panels installed on the roof because this building is a 100% electric. There is no gas. It's just electric and water. With water we have low flow faucets and toilets and such. But our computers use up a lot of electricity, so our goal is to generate as much of our own power as possible. And for our clients we have hosts that use 100% renewable energy. We encourage our clients to use them as well.

And the computers, themselves, how are they energy efficient?

That's pretty much par for the course these days. Most of the computers and monitors are Energy Star compliant.

Well this has been an insightful discussion. Thanks for spending time with our readers. Now let's talk about something less technical. Tell us about your opening night. I heard you had a special guest.

Oh yes, our opening night party was so much fun. And the mayor came - that was awesome. Hundreds of people from the neighborhood came: clients, sponsors. A lot of restaurants sponsored us, Honey's, The Kyber Pass. The Franklin Fountain made a special ice cream flavor for us. It was a very special night.

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Images by D.A. DeMers and free to use via CC license 3.0. Renovation images published with permission from Yikes, inc. Copy-editing assistance, Karl Natanson. More information about YIKES and their services can be found at www.yikesinc.com.

And hey, be sure to stay updated with quick hits from our Designer in Exile Twitter and Tumblr feeds, including an upcoming chat with Mural Arts founder Jane Golden, and soon to be posted snippets from the recent Penn Future Climate Conference. Plus we'll on the job with my friend Mark, who makes a living picking up stinky things from behind Philly groceries and takes them to a compost where mother nature does the rest.--D.A. DeMers.

Making Healthy Homes

2011-10-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

A green building store in the Lone Star State shows how to build a healthy home, and a good business too.

Houston sustainable home project via New Living and the AIA.

Recently, I received a visit from my cousin Amanda DeMers of Houston, who was in Philadelphia to see some of our great historic sites. I've known that she's been involved with the acclaimed store, New Living, which is an eco-smart, green building hub for Houston's sustainability sphere, and a certified B corporation. So after a little family catch-up chat at Johnny Brenda's restaurant and pub here in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philly, we discussed some of the innovative work that she and the store has been doing back in her hometown.

How long have you worked for New Living?

I have been at New living for two months, but New Living has been around for two years. I came in with a background in environmental policy, my Master's was on fisheries management, so completely not to do with design or retail or marketing or anything like that. But I met the owners and we got along. I came on and have been working retail there for the past couple months, but I'll be doing some PR and marketing for them - press releases and such, social media maintenance, and then a lot of events in environmental education.

Tell us about New Living - what they do, their history.

New living is a store in Houston and their niche is healthy green building and home. They sell all kinds of home-building products, like counter-tops, flooring, and they also sell organic mattresses and bedding. And then next door, which is actually part of our store but has a different storefront, is a shop called The Green Painter. That opened up six or seven month ago as a split off from New Living, and they sell no-VOC paints, non-toxic glues, wood stains, and concrete stains.

Passivhaus design. Image: Wikipedia

So all of our products are non-toxic and they're all environmentally friendly. But a lot of the emphasis is on the non-toxic. Much of that, to some degree, is because Houston hasn't necessarily been a very green conscious city, and when New Living moved in they thought they were going to be this sort of green store with a straight environmental message. Houston wasn't as responsive to that message as they envisioned, so they started learning more about indoor air quality and health and promoted those ideas, which sometimes goes along with environmental certifications like LEED, though sometimes it's independent. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite - energy efficient buildings, in some instances, can trap air inside, so they've really embraced the non-toxic banner and it seems to have resonated well.

You bring up an important point. As a trained energy auditor, my focus is often on sealing the "envelope of the home" to improve energy efficiency. We do check for high CO levels in furnaces, mold, lead paint, asbestos, pet dander and other potential indoor air quality threats, but there are a multitude of contaminants to consider. We have to be very conscious of toxins as we tighten up homes. Proper ventilation considerations are essential to the green-building trade.

Sustainable living. Image Wikipedia.

Yes, and we can start that by not bringing as many toxins into the building process, which is the significance for having formaldehyde-free flooring, and surfaces that are antimicrobial and naturally bacterial resistant and don't contain chemical dyes, and wool carpets that don't contain synthetic coatings on them. When you don't bring these toxins into the home to begin with, you start at a much easier place. Then you can begin to manage it with something like an air filter, either for a whole home or maybe just one room. We also sell air filters and water purifying systems.

New Media advocacy and the B Corporation model.

It seems that it takes a bit more than just standard marketing and offering healthy green products to make your business thrive. You've moved into channels of New Media to advocate your concept. Tell us more about the advocacy side.

They've always done pretty well as a business, because, for whatever reasons, Houston as a city is doing well. So we do have customers that have the money to spend on quality home products. The key is making sure we educate people about why our products are the better choice. And there will be a greater role for the educational and advocacy component through time.

We're actually not just a store, we're a certified B corporation or benefit corporation, which is a certain way that we're chartered to serve the long term interests of the shareholders and to help solve social, economic and environmental problems, rather than just immediate returns to investors.

So this falls in line with evolving new business concepts described by some schools an emerging economic model for the future: A business that's sustainable and socially responsible, but profitable too.

Rowhouse sustainability.

Certain states already have programs in place that help certify and encourage B corporations. And hopefully, someday, it would be nice if there was some sort of tax advantage too. So say, instead of being a non-profit, or, well, an oil corporation - somewhere between BP and Oxfam, if you will - we could find a place where we received some government benefit for taking on these issues and problems.

Aside from providing non-toxic home products and educational outreach, what other services does New Living offer? Do you work directly with contractors?

Philly's Big Green Block.

Yes, and that's something that's really cool about our business. Downstairs is the store and showroom, but upstairs is sort of this green business incubator, where we have several green designers, an urban renewal realty program, green architects, a solar company and other related services. It's really a hub of green activity in Houston and we've worked very hard together to help make the green scene flourish.

That's interesting. Houston doesn't come to mind as top on the list of cities with a strong sustainability community, like say here in Philly, where our mayor has been pushing to make this the greenest city in the nation. How would you compare Houston to others?

Some people say that it's behind major cities, but it's caught up pretty fast. Because we have some money here, it's been able to escalate more quickly.

Bill McKibben. Via Wikipedia.

Actually, one of our main customer components is moms. Sometimes even mom's who's husbands work for a big oil company or in the chemical industry, but they've read some of the popular Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben type books and they're saying "you know, I don't want to bring bad things into my home." Just like the local foods and organic foods movement caught on big partly because moms were afraid of what they were feeding their kids, we're hoping that non-toxic mattresses and organic flooring will follow.

I hope so too. Thanks for stopping by and giving a word to our readers about New Living and your great city. Enjoy the rest of your visit to our great city.--D.A DeMers.

Cross-published on our sister site Home Science. For more information about New Living and to read some of Amanda's informative blogs, visit their expansive website at www.newliving.net.

Up next on Designer In Exile: An awesome new mufti-talented sustainable web design service sets up shop in Fishtown, and gets a visit from a very special Philly fan.

Lincoln Line: The New Media Express

2011-10-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia artist and entrepreneur Scott Bickmore shows that the message is the media, and kick-starts a bold new venture to highlight it.

30th Street Station, Philadelphia. Image Wikipedia

By guest blogger Jamie Sanders.

PHILADELPHIA. Starting at 30th Street Station, Lincoln-Line, a band, a fashion line, and empowerment vehicle, will board a cross-country Amtrak train with a cross-disciplinary project and message designed to change America's attitude toward clothes and way of life.

Lincoln-Line began as a "busking act," or street performance, where creator Scott Bickmore hit the streets of Philadelphia to play John Lennon songs dressed as Abraham Lincoln. "I wanted to appeal to the tourists and the historical nature of the city, and also give it a contemporary spin--you know, make it fun," he said, speaking in a sit-down with Designer In Exile. "I thought about doing Ben Frank at first, but there were already two guys doing him in the city. Plus, Lincoln has the ultimate busking hat!"

Scott "Lincoln" Bickmore. (video)

It caught on, and Lincoln-Line (written as "ll Lincoln-Line ll", to emphasize the train track motif), quickly evolved into something more. People started asking Mr. Bickmore to play birthday parties, venues, and even gallery openings. "People just took to it for some reason, on this gut level," he said. "So I kept feeding it. I kept introducing new angles to the concept to see if people would respond."

They seem to have responded. Now Lincoln-Line is positioning itself for an ongoing cross-country tour by train, where members, models, and any willing collaborators can, as he states, "re-purpose music, materials, and history into a diy way of life - making your own clothes, and making your own fun, then showing other people how to do it too." Their moveable fest, if you will, is also a ringing endorsement for trains, public transportation, and environmentalism.

Documenting their experiences in the Lincoln-Log, the band's blog, Lincoln-Line shares their experiences and offers step-by-step How To's on, for instance, turning a tube-top into a Lincoln-Loin, the label's line of men's underwear.


"Pink House" block party, Phila. Image Amber Johnston.

VWVOFFKA Gallery performance, playing with 'Tad/Bowie.

To fund their cross-country tour, Lincoln-Line is using the popular new fundraising and networking site, Kickstarter. Offering quirky rewards like the Tyvek Custom-Button Pet Collar and the Crazy-Beard Cravat, the band hopes to achieve their goal of $1900 to pay for things like Amtrak US Rail passes for band members, food, lodging, and a little extra money for other performers and street artists to "pay it forward," he describes, a term that implies alternative giving.


Custom Tyvek Button Collar.

Lincoln-Line Label

Lincoln-Line is the latest venture of Mr. Bickmore and SSEWARD LLC, an eclectic, multi-media, value driven company he founded in 2008. More recently, he put on his Lincoln-Line top hat and addressed the crowd at Occupy Philly. Delivering a speech he called, "Operating with Autonomy: Be Your Own 1%", he offered a message of personal empowerment to an audience searching for change, and was later interviewed on the spot with the local NBC Philadelphia affiliate.

Corporate Values

Calling himself the "Tony Robbins of art," he claims his products are essentially tools to facilitate personal empowerment and life-improvement. "These pieces are like instruction manuals," he said. "I want them to function and help people. I want people to buy them, sure, but really so they can make their own, so they can find the resourcefulness that I'm finding."

For more info on the Lincoln-Line, visit the project's Kickstarter website. Mr.Bickmore will be doing a how-to workshop for Lincoln-Loin at Philly's VWVOFFKA gallery this month for Kensington residents.

Dreaming in Color

2011-09-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

The Magical World of Philly Muralist Emilie Ledieu and Her Enduring Pursuit of People Power.

Emilie Ledieu at work. Image: Emily Wren.

No other arts program in the world quite captures the sense of community like the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia. The vast collection of murals, perhaps greater than any city in the world, is a celebration of the city's diversity as well as its commonality. They tell a colorful story of the Philadelphia experience.

In this second installment of our series, Designer In Exile explores the unique artistry of Emilie Ledieu and her devotion to social causes. The exchange reveals why the program has become a symbol of pride for the city and a model of virtuosity for the world.

How long have you been working with Mural Arts and how did you get started?

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and when I'd come into the city, the murals were always something visible, but I had no idea about the community background of them. Then, when I was attending Villanova University for a degree in Social Justice and minor in Women's Studies, I became very involved in an activist world. A friend of mine who was going to Bryn Mawr was into much of the same stuff and was doing a colossal paper on the Mural Arts Program. I remember helping her with the presentation and being blown away by the stories of the murals. There was an instant correlation.

For a short period, my career led me out west to an apprenticeship in public art where I worked with James Hubbell, a wonderful, sort of renaissance man with an incredible international social vision. I was loving what I was doing, but after a year, I realized that my ultimate goal was to come back to Philly and work with Mural Arts. I had already been working with mosaics out west and noticed that there was this whole community involvement in the projects, so for me it was the perfect intersection of art and social change. I love the idea of something on the street that's available to everybody. You don't have to go to a museum. Just look around the streets of Philadelphia - you have this great outdoor museum.

Mosaic project, The Philippines. Image: Sarah Encabo.

You incorporate glass mosaics in your murals - your work is unique in that regard. Tell us more about that process.

Most of my mosaics with Mural Arts have been made out of stained glass. I was very lucky in that my first job with them happened to be in their headquarters building, where I was commissioned to do some glass-work on a Paul Santoleri mural. Paul was the one who introduced me to the notion of just using stained glass instead of tiles. That project was so eye-opening for me as an artist and eye-opening about the whole organization, because I was working in their headquarters, meeting everybody who worked there, and seeing how much goes into the work behind the scenes.

You were born in the US, but are of French lineage. How has that aspect of your life intersected with your career?

Ledieu's work in Paul Santoleri's mural.

I was born outside Pontiac, Michigan - the only one in my family not born in France. I moved to France with my family when I was two and lived there until six, and then spent many summers there with my grandmother thereafter. So technically, I spoke French before I learned English. My grandmother lived in the 93rd district right outside Paris which had changed quite a bit. She was involved in helping with the Arab immigration; she taught a lot of women who were showing up how to knit sweaters, and taught a lot of incoming immigrants to speak French.

Would you say this broadened your awareness of community issues?

I think so, yes. Early on I lived in an area of Detroit that had definitely seen poverty, but my grandmother lived in a neighborhood that had evolved tremendously in her life. She was born and died in the same room. And by the time she died it was a completely different demographic there. She was way ahead of her time in terms of social power and awareness. She was involved in helping people instead of what's going on now in France with a lot of the anti-immigrant mentality. Rather than the white nationalism that some people are fighting for, she was very open to welcoming people and seeing the beautiful landscape of different cultures coming into her neighborhood. So I think that did make me more aware.

You worked on a special project in France on behalf of Mural Arts. Describe what that was like.

"Angel", Viking Mill. Image: Alex Stolypine

I was fortunate to take part in an exchange program that sent me and two other muralists to France to represent Mural Arts and their community process. And since I speak the language, I ended up being the translator, communicator, and, to some degree, the manager. It was a first taste of project management for me, because I was doing a lot of the community engagement, programming, and background work.

It was interesting because you had a bunch of people there looking around wondering what these Americans were doing putting up art on walls. But then it was funny because I'd tell them of the summers I spent in my grandmother's district - not Paris proper - and all of the sudden I'd get all this street cred, like "oh, then you know 93, cool, so sorry." I didn't feel like a tourist.

What differences or similarities have you encountered between Philly and Paris in terms of the mural experience?

The one thing that's different about working on Murals in Philly, as opposed to other places, is that because we have this immense mural program, people are usually like "you're with the mural program? Great!" Often it's a much different conversation and generally very positive, especially in Philadelphia, which has some tough landscapes. The fact that you're just bringing in some color and something pretty makes people thankful. That is one of the reasons I keep going back for projects.

There's always going to be naysayers. You're putting artwork on a building - you can't expect that every person is going to love it. Thank God every person doesn't love it - that's sort of how art works. But Jane Golden has done a great job resolving those situations.


French exchange artist project in progress, Viking Mill, 2010.

Rendering of the project by A. Stolypine, P. Santoleri, and E. Ledieu.

What sort of behind the scenes work goes into making a community mural?

We do a whole community interaction that involves the design process before and as it's being put up. It's quite a process to engage people - it's not like you just show up and all these people come flocking to your project. I've had parents come up who are worried that it's school district money, that it's money that could be bettering their children's library. So sometimes it's a simple thing like letting people know that funding is coming from elsewhere.

There is some public funding, but most of our support is private money from foundations that are giving to Mural Arts, a lot of grant work, the Independence Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Knight Foundation and groups like that - it's not taking books off of their library shelves. When they hear that, then people turn around instantly and you can begin talking to them about the background and community work needed to put it all together.

Let's rewind a bit. Tell us briefly about the techniques used by Philly muralists, both past and present. Your process is with mosaics, but most people associate murals with paint.

Mural in Kensington.

Yes. And they still are primarily paint. Then the mosaic thing just started to happen. At the time, an artist not affiliated with Mural Arts, Isaiah Zagar, was putting up massive mosaics, which put mosaics in the dialog of public art in Philadelphia. Then it started to be blended in with murals. Mural Arts is making an effort to do projects they call "off the wall." For instance, one of the first lead-artist projects I worked on was at 39th and Lancaster on non-mural objects. I created a fence for an auto-body shop and then decorated some planters which sort of tied together murals that were on nearby walls.

Mural Arts has been expanding what they've been doing beyond murals quite a bit lately, like the recycling trucks and the "Big Belly" solar powered trash cans. They've done some really cool non-mural projects that have an artistic impact, promote great ideas, and generally involve children, which is awesome.

"Off the Wall" recycling truck by Desiree Bender. Image: D.A. DeMers.

That is awesome. Thanks so much for sharing your time with our readers, and good luck on your future creative projects and voyages.

More information on the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia and upcoming October Mural Arts Month events can be found at www.muralarts.org. For a link to more of Emilie Ledieu's work, visit www.emilieledieu.com.

-----------

Up next: What does Philly and Houston have in common? Um, well, not too much, actually... But Designer In Exile does. So we'll check in with friends at a green-building store in the Lone Star State who've built a thriving business selling healthy, sustainable products for the home. They've also helped to enlighten the community along the way.

Oh and just one last thing (Columbo reference). We'll also take a look at local Philly artist/entrepreneur/activist/social therapist Scott Bickmore's newest endeavors. Be sure to see him and other local talent at the VWVOFFKA gallery First Friday event, October 7th. More on that here at Scott's website... Wow. Lots going on. Exciting. Yay... Ok, I'll stop now.

Brutalist Architecture: A Journey Back to Campus

2011-09-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

Brutalism was the prevailing style of design for schools and government buildings in the 1960's and early 70's. Named after Le Corbusier's term beton brut, French for "raw concrete", it was an aberrant and diverse movement, informed by notions of modernity, functionalism, and the cold war.

My wife and I attended two universities with buildings of distinct Brutalist design - the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chicago's DePaul University.

Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. Image: Wikipedia

The student center at DePaul, where I went to school nearly 20 years ago, consisted of all concrete construction and was slightly sunken below street level, conveying the sense of being in a post-apocalyptic bunker.

The school's Schmitt Academic Center was like a battleship of concrete, and its slot windows like gun turrets. It seemed to tell us that we were defending the last bastion of true liberal arts education - and in some ways, thus, prisoners of that Alamo-like purpose. The UIC campus is probably the more famous example, due to its entire east campus being cemented in time with Brutalist architect Walter Netsch's notion of cold, rigid functionalism.

I often wondered how these designs would play out in time. On one hand they simply seemed like odd remnants of an awkward era of design, best to be forgotten. On the other they stood as bold, poignant examples of experimentalism in a pivotal moment in our culture.

UIC's University Hall. Image: Wikipedia

From what I recall, most people who attended UIC abhorred their campus design. City and university officials contemplated numerous ways to soften the hard look of its buildings. DePaul dealt with the flak by erecting unremarkable neo-Victorian style brick buildings alongside to lessen the visual impact of the stark modernist structures. I'm told the bunker-like student center is now gone, apparently unable to withstand a direct hit from the drop of a wrecking ball.

The latest edifice to make architecture's most endangered building list is Bertand Goldberg's futuristic Prentice Hall, which housed the Women's Hospital at Nothwestern University in downtown Chicago. For now, the building has been granted a temporary reprieve from destruction. Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall - the proverbial Brutalist concrete wall, that is.

Meanwhile, back to my old campus - the university may very well have wanted to replace all the modernist architecture that seemed so anachronistic through time; I'm glad they didn't. To me this is the crux - we live in an era that is all about mixing styles. So while Brutalist architecture may seem fascinating to some, or just plain ugly to others, my hope is that it will be preserved to coexist and contrast with other styles, and serve as a historical marker in the complex continuum of design history.

Article updated from an earlier post.

Up next on Designer In Exile: An interview with Philly's acclaimed muralist Emilie Ledieu. Plus get a quick hit from Ignite Philly's innovative start-up pow wow at Johnny Brenda's on our new Tumblr site.

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Innovation Nation

2011-08-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

20th century American product innovators celebrated in recent USPS stamp collection.

Industrial Design stamp collection

If you can't afford to collect modern design objects from an auction at Christie's, you can at least now collect stamps of the items. OK, maybe it's not quite the same thing, but nonetheless, the United States Postal Service recently released a limited-edition set of stamps commemorating some of industrial design's pioneers, including Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, Donald Deskey, Walter Dorwin Teague.

The collection targets the years from the 1930s to 1950s, an exciting period of design, spawned in part by the availability of electricity to consumers, industrialization, and other advances in technologies and materials such as radio, plastics, et cetera.

The Post Office website, which offers a pdf download with related biographical details, says the stamps were created to honor designers who helped shape the look of everyday life in the 20th century:

Teague camera. Wikipedia.

"The colorful stamps feature objects designed by 12 of the nation's most important and influential industrial designers, set against black selvage containing a photograph of the "Airflow" fan designed by Robert Heller around 1937."

The above image of the stamp set was the promotional one used for stamp collectors. It shows the official initial postmark. Because I'm not an avid stamp collector, my set was pretty much a functional purchase, and unusable for presentation because it is missing the stamp of Gilbert Rohde's clock design for Herman Miller in the bottom right corner of the page. That stamp was used to mail the bill payment for internet service just in time for this post to be written!

Go Green Collection

The post office has run numerous collections commemorating innovators, artists, and or promoting energy efficiency and environment - the latter of which was rolled out earlier this Spring with the "Go Green" collection, a wonderfully illustrated set containing helpful eco-themed tips. The effort was coordinated with the Environmental Protection Agency, and featured web links to additional energy saving and earth-friendly advice for the home. Learn more about purchasing these stamps and the postal service's comprehensive array of sustainability products and measures at the USPS website www.usps.com.--D.A. DeMers.

Go Green Collection, released in April.

In the Company of Men

2011-08-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

A Philadelphia woman's quest to excel in a male dominated workforce.

Image via Wikipedia

To be honest, I was hesitant about writing this story. The thought of interviewing a person from a big energy company seemed odd, considering my scribbling is usually about ways to limit energy use. As a clean energy advocate, my rebel impulse has often been to fight the Power, and from all my preconceptions, a city's gas company seemed like the consummate example of, well, The Man.

Or perhaps, The Woman.

Let's stop there, because when I met Marlynn Jannett, a pipe mapping designer from Philadelphia Gas Works, my concerns were essentially set to rest.

Her story is one of guts and determination - the American dream exemplified, and a friendly face for the gas company. She's also my neighbor.

Ms. Janett began her career with Philadelphia Gas Works a couple decades ago. She was the first woman hired to work in field services for the company. Her current position involves creating plotting designs of gas pipes for prudent mains where the risk of breakage is possible, or in the worst case, has already occurred.

Image: Wikipedia

To do this, she works with Autodesk's Synergis software for civil engineers, a comprehensive design management platform for civil infrastructure planning that helps surveyors, designers, and drafters implement projects with impressive precision and speed.

At the core of the platform is AutoCAD Civil 3D software, a powerful building information modeling application that assists in anticipating and creating transportation, land development, and environmental projects.

Synergis states on its website that its software and services "help utilities address specific industry challenges and initiatives, such as a changing workforce, underground projects, and infrastructure renewal for intelligent grid sustainability."

Likewise, PGW is on a constant schedule to replace antiquated pipes, such as those made of cast iron, with newer materials that are less corrosive and more ductile. In a city as old as Philadelphia, upgrading such infrastructure can be extremely challenging, considering the maps provided are often outdated or nonexistent. Their efforts often include exploratory excavation measures such as drilling through cement foundations.

But the biggest initial challenge for Ms Janett's career was to break through the so called glass ceiling.

Her training came by way of a unique outreach program from the Private Industry Council, developed to provide women with engineering skills needed to facilitate their advance into the industrial workforce - a workforce completely dominated by men.

Marlynn Janett

"This all came to me a bit by accident," she said. "I was working in the billing department of a legal firm when I got laid off. Then I heard about the PIC program and thought 'why not?'"

Thus, she was chosen to attend the Community College of Philadelphia on Spring Garden Street for AutoCad classes, technical studies, and some remediation with English and Math.

After showing an exceptional ability to master a variety of computer modeling programs, she was visited by two engineers from PGW. A lengthy recruitment process ensued until the company determined she possessed the necessary aptitude for an internship. She out-competed several male candidates with her sharp skills and ability to grasp concepts quickly, and planted herself firmly in a solid career.

"Some guys weren't too happy at the time," she acknowledged, when asked if she sensed resentment by her male counterparts. "But they got used to it."

Approaching retirement, Ms Janett is now a master of her trade, and she's moved well beyond the issues of those days. To her, they were simply milestones of an evolving culture. The main concern presently at her job, she says, is simply having to work in the middle of busy Frankford Avenue, lifting a manhole cover, and focusing on her detailed work while trying not to get run over by a car.--D.A. DeMers.

A Clean Energy Plan for the Community

PGW recently introduced a number of green energy programs that intersect with various sectors of Philadelphia's business and residential communities. Their EnergySense program is made up of several initiatives that strive to help the company’s residential, commercial and industrial customers conserve energy and save money. It's also expected to create as many as 1,000 new local jobs, reduce the region’s carbon dioxide emissions by 1.24 million tons - the equivalent of taking 200,000 cars off Philadelphia’s streets - and support the Mayor's Office of Sustainability's Greenworks plan to make Philadelphia the greenest city in America.

Clean Energy Investment Trends. Wikipedia.

The plan involves connecting with a consortium of non-profit energy groups, neighborhood organizations, and city departments to provide initiatives such as the The Enhanced Low Income Retrofit Program, Residential Heating Equipment Rebates, Commercial and Industrial Retrofit Incentives, Commercial and Industrial Equipment Rebates, High Efficiency Construction Incentives, and Comprehensive Residential Incentives.

Over the next five years, the company plans to invest $60 million to generate over $110 million in net savings for all of PGW’s customers. Saving money while saving the planet? Sounds like a win-win solution for everybody.--D.A. DeMers.

More info regarding PGW's programs can be found at www.pgworks.com. Plans administered by the Mayor's Office of Sustainability can be found at www.phila.gov/green.

This article was previously published on our sister site Home Science.

Blessed are the Artmakers

2011-07-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

A look at Philadelphia's inspiring 'city of murals' and the artists who've created it.

Image by Zepfanman.com via Flickr

Philadelphia Mural

Philadelphia is mighty among the world's bustling art centers. It's the host of several acclaimed university art programs, has a world-class museum, and has spawned a new generation of artists - many of whom are locals, but also those who have left New York City and nearby regions in search of a fresh, innovative experience, and more affordable work-spaces.

One fact about Philadelphia's connection to art is indisputable - it has more murals than any city anywhere, essentially crowning it the mural capital of the world. The city's murals can be certainly stunning to the eye, but they are much more than just beautiful paintings on a wall. They are powerful and enriching projects for the city, rituals through which Philadelphians come together to show the world their unique sense of community and commitment to a greater good.

This summer, Designer in Exile is featuring insightful interviews with a few of the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia's many talented artists. Below is the first installment in this tribute, featuring an exclusive chat with distinguished muralist and teacher Harvey Weinreich, a veteran of the city's monumental program.

Philadelphia mural. Image: Lisa Krieger.

Designer In Exile: How long have you been with Mural Arts Program and how did you get started with the organization?

Harvey Weinreich: I knew of Mural Arts before I worked there and it was just a curiosity for me because I had never done any public art. In 2001, I left my job with the University of Pennsylvania where I managed a building, I had a friend that I had gone to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with who said ‘oh, we have job openings.’ At that point I joined what we called ‘the crew’ which built the scaffolding and prepared the walls for murals. That’s how I first started there. I am now a staff artist at Mural Arts.

In school, what were you studying? Painting?

The focus Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is strictly fine arts and you are either doing drawing, painting, or sculpture and my area was painting.

What projects with the Mural Arts Program have you worked on recently?

We do a lot of projects with the public school system where we interact with the kids and have some lessons on mural painting and how we do a mural. We execute murals in the schools. Sometimes on material so the kids can work on tables and then we apply the mural to the wall. I’ve also recently put up the mural that’s on the front of the Hawthorne Cultural Center and the design on the inside, along with another artist, Mike Smash.

Mosaic detail.

The process of making murals is fascinating, though I think a lot of people outside the mural arts community are unaware of the techniques or technology involved. Could you elaborate on that, especially on how the community participates?

Sure. First of all, the old school method - and it’s mostly what Mural Arts did and it’s been going on before Mural Arts - was the grid system, which is basically where the wall was broken up in measured squares and there’s a drawing that represents the mural. The drawing would be on a 2 x 3 foot piece of paper, but it has a grid on it and everything is just gridded up to a larger size when you draw it out on the wall.

That was the old method, the most traditional method of reproducing a small image to make a larger version of the design. But since then, the use of Photoshop and computers makes some of that process a lot easier—you could do it on the computer instead of it being on the wall, which limited the amount of time we could paint because we could only paint when the weather was fair enough and it had to be above freezing, of course.

But now that we work with this non-woven material we call parachute cloth. It’s not really parachute cloth, per se, it’s a very light material and we prepare that material and paint on it, usually in 5 X 5 foot squares. People think we’re putting up wallpaper because the mural’s not there and then one day it’s just being pasted up. It’s still being painted just as it used to be, it’s just that instead of painting directly on the wall, we paint on the cloth and then apply the cloth to wall.

And who does the painting?

Primarily, the artists are either commissioned or hired to do the painting, or staff artists do the painting. Usually, almost all of our murals involve the community on one level or another. Most murals have a least one community paint day. But, first of all, if I could back up a little, before it is even started there are community meetings and conversations with people who live in the area about what they would like to see on a wall. Often it’s someone in a community who have the wall who has requested the mural in the first place, but we still involve other neighbors to put in their thoughts and ideas because we’re not doing a mural just for one person, it’s public art. My attitude is to just give people what they want as much as I can. I don’t really think of it in the realm of art as I would pursue it as a painter, it’s a whole different baby.


Philadelphia mural. Image: Lisa Krieger

Philadelphia mural, Fishtown. Image D.A. DeMers.

That leads to my next question; my blog focuses on art and design that is connected to community outreach, social justice, and environmentalism. Can you tell us some related themes that the Mural Arts promotes?

We do a tremendous amount of work about social justice and with within the prison systems with adjudicated and at-risk youth. Our art education program is all oriented towards working with people in those arenas.

I recently spoke with Katherine Gajewski, Director of the Mayor's Office of Sustainability, who explained that some murals were coordinated with the city's Big Green Block program, an innovative project aimed to develop green infrastructure and foster water reclamation by utilizing mostly existing resources, rather than overhauling entire sewer systems. Here in Fishtown we see evidence of that collaboration by environmental murals with phrases like "take me to the river." This community has suffered much from the loss of heavy industry and jobs, but also from soil contamination and brown-fields left from that boom.

You are in South Philly, and since each area has its own needs and perspective, what do you see is the greatest benefit of the Mural Arts Program from your view?

I see it on a couple different levels and it’s hard for me to fully put myself in someone else’s shoes, but I think that it must be a lot of fun to walk around the city to see all of these ideas and all of these colors. I feel kind of proud that I’m part of that. At the same time, we have people who think there are too many murals and that we're preaching messages, and I can understand that as well. I’ve advocated for more murals that are just art for art’s sake but that’s a hard sell when there’s public money involved.

Philadelphia mural.

That brings up some complex philosophical notions about art and what art is for.

Yes, and I have some conflicting ideas when it comes to being an artist, and being an artist that simply caters to the community. Being an artist is deeply personal and the whole spirit of art comes from thinking outside the box and discovering things. If all that's taken away, I don't know what's left. On the the other hand, I enjoy working with the community and I'm glad to have a job that involves art. There’s a dialogue that's running within Mural Arts in recent years that's been more engaging about these notions - not just in the protective mode, but actually interacting, inviting people to talk about these things, so I think the organization is really growing in a good direction.

Going back to the pride aspect, I was walking my dog this morning and looked around at all the great wall art. I felt that same feeling you mentioned, it really makes me want to show the world what we do here, what you do.

We actually have groupies now that come to every dedication, there’s like a fan base and it’s very interesting to me. Of course anyone can get involved in Mural Arts, we have volunteer programs; there’s always something, some way for people to participate. We’re considered the capital of murals of the world. I believe we are negotiating and having conversations with other cities about helping them set up programs modeled after our program. Of course, there’s there been a lot of growth to get where we’re at. Things have changed a lot as we became more professional in our approach.

Thank you for sharing your time with our readers and thanks for giving so much back to our great city.--D.A. DeMers.

Remembering Nest

2011-07-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

A reflection on Joseph Holtzman's legendary innovative publication.

Photo of page from Nest Quarterly.

Karl Lagerfeld once said, "I am inspired by everything. There is only one rule: eyes open!" And while Karl has been a longtime creative inspiration, my true eye opener to the design world was the moment I opened my first copy of Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors.

Begun by fledgling publisher and art director Joseph Holtzman, a self-taught interior designer and decorator, Nest Quarterly (unrelated to current monthly, The Nest) was a shelter magazine which featured nontraditional architecture, landscaping, and interior design. Its lens took us to unlikely places of wonder, focusing on found sites and spaces people really lived in as opposed to the ubiquitous, vacant interpretations of beauty that filled the pages most interior design magazines.

Fall 2000 cover.

Now defunct, due mostly to its commercially viable improbabilities, it published 26 issues and ran from 1997 until winter 2004, spurring this somber epitaph from the AIGA upon notice of cease: "A truly great magazine has come to pass. Despite its amateur beginnings, Nest has become one of the most daringly innovative and audaciously progressive new publications to hit the newsstands."

Likewise, it often evoked compelling reactions from much of the design establishment. Architect Rem Koolhaas called it "an anti-materialistic, idealistic magazine about the hyper-specific in a world that is undergoing radical leveling, an 'interior design' magazine hostile to the cosmetic." And design columnist Fred A. Bernstein, writing in the New York Times, declared that publisher Joseph Holtzman "believed that an igloo, a prison cell or a child's attic room (adorned with Farrah Fawcett posters) could be as compelling as a room by a famous designer."

Photo of pages from Nest Quarterly.

Photos of pages from Nest Quarterly.

Julian Schnabel's Montuak House feature.

During its tenure it examined everything from dusty mod bus depots of the Sixties, to offbeat traditional dwellings such as filmmaker Julian Schnabel's Montuak House, to the fascinating geometric adobe huts of Africa's lost tribes of the Dogon. It was the crossroad of design and anthropology, a document of truth and fearless honesty. It drew reverence from top designers such as Todd Oldham and pop-culture anti-hero John Waters. It almost never relied on repeated, redundant formats or regular features, and experimented playfully with graphic design, seeking to make each issue a treasured work of art. In essence, Nest Quarterly challenged the meaning of interior design, consumerism, and the very nature of the magazine publishing world.

Sustainable Publishing for the Book Arts.

Although Joseph Holtzman has chosen a somewhat less visible public profile these days, Designer In Exile reports that his former literary editor, Matthew Stadler, has been collaborating recently with a new enterprise called Publication Studio. A note on their website describes the project as follows:

"Publication Studio is an experiment in sustainable publication. We print and bind books on demand, creating original work with artists and writers we admire, books that both respond to the conversation of the moment and can endure. We attend to the social life of the book, cultivating a public that cares and is engaged. Publication Studio is a laboratory for publication in its fullest sense — not just the production of books, but the production of a public. This public, which is more than a market, is created through deliberate acts: the circulation of texts; discussions and gatherings in physical space; and the maintenance of a digital commons. Together these construct a space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being.”

Old issues of Nest sell on Ebay for as much as $150. But if you happen to be one of the lucky enthusiasts who held on to their original issues, I recommend keeping them. Times are tough, I know. Sell your car, furniture, plumbing fixtures, house, whatever. But don't sell your copies of Nest - they're priceless!--D.A. DeMers.

Coming Friday: Designer In Exile's exclusive chat with distinguished muralist and teacher Harvey Weinreich, a veteran of the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia.

Color Splash

2011-07-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

Section of mural along Columbia Ave., Phila PA

A simple walk to a park in Philadelphia offers one a chance to see the colorful works by Philadelphia's world renowned muralists. I recently encountered these vibrant designs at an underpass while strolling with my dog Betsy to Fishtown's Penn Treaty Park, located along the banks of the Delaware River. The images brought to life an otherwise blank cement wall, and helped highlight our excitement for a romp in the park and a cool summer breeze from our great river.

Betsy at PennTreaty.

Next week, Designer In Exile is featuring some insightful interviews with a few of the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia's many talented artists. The city's murals are certainly fun to look at, but there's a whole lot more to them than just being paintings on a wall. You'll find out why the program is so powerful and enriching for the city, and why it's the toast of the world. These images along Columbia Avenue are not official works of the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, but they express a good sense of summer holiday fun, nonetheless.

Likewise, for a special Fourth of July tribute to American architecture, see my previous article The Architecture of Democracy. It's about the great legacy and eventful life of Philly spawned designer Benjamin Latrobe, one of our nation's first architects and the man who bravely saved our capital from near aesthetic disaster.--D.A. DeMers.

Utopian Cities

2011-06-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

Peter Cook's Kunsthaus. Image: Wikipedia

In periods of great stress, whether personal or out in the world, my wandering mind tends to wander a bit more than usual. Lately, it's been wandering away back to an exhibit I attended several years ago at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, featuring the works of Peter Cook and his wondrous Archigram projects. The imaginative rigor of Archigram's ideas were impressive, if not mind-boggling. Concepts such as walking cities, plug-in design, and instant homes were showcased, and most of the installations embraced a near post-apocalyptic mission for humanity, but embraced that mission with extraordinary enthusiasm, energy, and obsessive detail. It was a zest perhaps equal to how present-day Dutch engineers have begun drumming up bold, dramatic plans to mitigate the imminent coming of global warming and its related issues, i.e., floating subdivisions of houses linked together in chains, adaptable levees, docks, and floodgates.

But I recall one installation at the MCA exhibit that took the ideas seemingly far beyond the reach of reality. The concept was centered around a 1970's era theory of building a high-tech nomadic existence for western civilization. In this scenario, families no longer needed to crowd into communities or edifices - they would live and travel throughout nature in Bedouin-style, portable, high-tech, inflatable homes that would plug into circuitry built amidst the natural surroundings and then disconnect and deflate to a back-pack size for transport. The bearded, caveman-like figures in the exhibit's accompanying film evoked vivid impressions of a 1970's Planet of the Apes stylization.

Walking City Archigram, 1964. Image: Westminster.AC.

Utopian architectural ideas are fascinating worlds through which to navigate. I especially enjoy perusing a variety of presentation media created to communicate the concepts, from the bold drawings of the Italian Futurists to the the models of Le Corbusier to Peter Cook's colorful mix of contemporary advertising graphics and architectural conceptualization.

Unfortunately, the few utopian projects that have made it from the drawing board to construction have not always fared so well - many of Le Corbusier's best attempts at urban planning have resulted in dismal Parisian slums.

Linear City, Arturo Soria, 1913. Image: Wikipedia.

The brief film below nicely documents some of the most renowned utopian cities drawn up over the past few centuries.--D.A. DeMers.

Included above: Robert Owen's New Harmony, Charles Fourier's Phalanstère, Etienne Cabet's Icarie (1848), Tony Garnier's Industrial City (1901-1904), E. Chambless' Roadtown (1910), Arturo Soria's Linear City (1913), Sant'Elia and Chiattone's futurist cities (1914), Le Corbusier's Contemporary City (1922), Ludwig Hilberseimer's Vertical City (1924). Paolo Soleri's Arcology and Peter Cook's Archigram projects. Music by Brian Eno, from Music for Films.

Exile from Main Street: Reconstructing Urban Renewal

2011-06-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

Chicago mural. Image Wikipedia

In Chicago, where I grew up, people often said that because they had no mountains, they built their own. The city is undoubtedly one of the world's great architectural metropolises. Its mountain-like skyline of structures is the envy of the world. And for a long time, their notion urban renewal was typical of any modern city: When buildings got old, they tore them down and put up new ones. This was the definition of progress, and it gave the city an opportunity to show the world the depth of its innovation.

But for a few dissenters, it was a nightmare.

A book published not long ago, titled Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City, highlighted the tragic aspects of that era. Against the prevailing currents of modernity, many architectural historians fought hard to stop the destruction of Chicago's masterfully designed structures. At the apex of the period, Mr. Nickel, a photographer and preservation activist, died while trying to document architectural elements in Louis Sullivan's breathtaking Stock Exchange building as it was demolished to make way for a new edifice. The tragedy was not in vain - in the wake of the incident, a comprehensive preservationist movement took hold in the city. Some say the decision to re-create the trading floor of the Stock Exchange in a wing of Chicago's Art Institute was a result of the deep-felt guilt for the city's relentless swings of the wrecking ball.

As the movement grew, the city's historic groups took back and restored numerous buildings, such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House, which had been leased as a college dorm. (Preservationists eventually were able to track down and buy back many of the original priceless chairs and such that had gone missing during the dorm usage stage).

Philadelphia anew, Image Wikipedia

When I moved to Philadelphia, especially to its Fishtown neighborhood, I quickly learned that not all cities followed the wrecking ball approach to urban development. One thing in particular that seemed different here was something called the gentleman's agreement, a longstanding rule among developers that they would construct no building taller than William Penn's statue atop City Hall. That rule was eventually surpassed to grant Philadelphia membership to the 20th century, and thus allow it a marketable skyline. Thus, it's no irony that Liberty Place One and Two, Philadelphia's first modern skyscrapers, were designed by Helmut Jahn, one of Chicago's premier modern architects. Nor is it odd that Louis Sullivan, a master of finite detail, started his journey here in traditional Philadelphia before moving to the Midwest.

But the preservation of Philadelphia's old historic neighborhoods is often regarded by urban planners as a pivotal time for many American cities. By renovating its dilapidated housing stock, the city challenged the demolition impulse of modernity, and proved that historic preservation could be essential for economic-development, a guiding principle that has kept Philadelphia on a disciplined, measured pace of revival for several decades. It's a likely reason the city remained high on the list of cities with good real-estate investment ratings during the worst of our nation's the economic downturn, when a multitude of overbuilt urban centers faced unprecedented levels of vacancies.

Yet there are always those who will pose challenging theories when it comes to issues as complex as urban renewal. This is nothing new, evidenced by this archaically worded article dated as early as 1965 in The Carolina Times, which calls out the socioeconomic downside of preserving main street. Recently, though, as spelled out in a feature titled History vs. high-risies: An urban debate by Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron, the concept of historic preservation is now being reconsidered by some of the least likely minds of the design world, including Rem Koolhaas and Edward Glaeser. Their contention is that rather than helping our cities become rejuvenated, historic preservation is strangling them. They essentially blame our sentimental affection for old buildings for everything from sky-high rents to the economic imbalance developed between the US and China.

Rem Koolhaas's Beijing Skyscrapers. Image: Wikipedia

McCormick Tribune Campus, Chicago. Image: Wikipedia

"The problem is the darn preservationists won't let American cities behave like Shenzhen," says Ms Saffron, satirically summarizing the contrarian view. "Places like Philadelphia are so irrationally attached to their old, low-rise, inefficient row-houses that they protect them with a Byzantine web of preservation laws. The occupants of those fine Society Hill houses are effectively keeping prices high for everyone else, forcing people to seek housing and work in less expensive places."

Her rebuttal puts a gaping hole in their shiny stainless steel argument:

"Even as they decry totalitarian preservationists, both Koolhaas and Glaeser seek to impose a one-size-fits-all approach to cities. Skyscrapers have their place, and Philadelphia could do with a few more. But tall buildings aren't the only way to achieve high density. With 11 people to the acre, Philadelphia holds its own with parts of New York. A neighborhood of tightly packed rowhouses is a far more attractive place to live than one made up of widely spaced high-rises - like Koolhaas' CCTV tower in Beijing, almost a mile from its nearest neighbor."

"I also wonder if Glaeser knows that most of the Philadelphia condo towers built in the boom decade now sit half empty," she contends, "while individual row-houses continue to be built and sold. Or that the city has no shortage of vacant land for affordable new housing."

Philadelphia's greatest asset is its historic ribbon of neighborhoods. The city's revival has been built on solid foundations - form and function, brick and mortar, a true identity. The shiny modern high rises may seem impressive to the eyes of an architect, but are they really the things that make people want to live here? Not in my neighborhood--D.A. DeMers.

City Sanatorium

2011-06-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

New exhibits "Sanatorium" and "Stillspotting" from the curators of the Guggenheim Museum offer insights and theories on managing stimulation overload... Sourced from the Museum's Website:

Image by Emilie Ogez via Flickr

Poster depicting information overload.

While the vitality and stimulation of the urban environment can be pleasant, those living in or visiting densely populated areas, such as New York, can have wildly different experiences. The ever-present cacophony of traffic, construction, and commerce; the struggle for mental and physical space; and the anxious need for constant communication in person or via technology are relentless assaults on the senses. One wonders how locals and visitors can escape, find respite, and make peace with their space in this “city that never sleeps.”

The Guggenheim Museum responds with stillspotting nyc, a two-year multidisciplinary project that takes the museum’s Architecture and Urban Studies programming out into the streets of the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. Every three to five months, “stillspots” are identified, created, or transformed by architects, artists, designers, composers, and philosophers into public tours, events, or installations. In conjunction to these site-specific commissions around the city, students from Columbia University and the School of Visual Arts are visualizing, reflecting, and responding to everyday issues of visual noise, anxiety, and stillness through interactive maps and videos that will be presented on an exhibition microsite launching in June. Together, these works weave an unexpected and cross-disciplinary web of tranquility throughout the city.

Stillspotting nyc is organized by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban Studies, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

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Image via Wikipedia

Guggenheim, NYC.

A View Inside the Clinic

New Yorkers are notably fascinated with a variety of therapies that help them cope with their hectic schedules, demanding lifestyle choices, and often complicated relationships that the city stimulates. As a result, New York counts a disproportionate number of psychotherapists, self-improvement instructors, life coaches, and the like that host intriguing sessions in equally fascinating spaces around the city.

In his temporary clinic, Sanatorium (installed as the first edition of stillspotting nyc in Brooklyn), artist Pedro Reyes combines the best of New York’s existing therapy landscape with unexpected, short, experimental treatments. In two-hour windows, Sanatorium visitors experience up to three sessions from a roster of sixteen special “urban therapies.” Upon arrival, visitors will meet a receptionist who will assign a series of “therapies” to each person. Balancing reality and parody, Sanatorium draws from Gestalt psychology, theater warm-up exercises, Fluxus events, conflict resolution techniques, trust-building games, corporate coaching, psychodrama, and hypnosis. While some of the sessions should be experienced alone, others are specifically catered to couples and larger groups. Special sessions on Sundays available for children.

More info can be found at www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/upcoming/stillspotting-nyc.

Outsourced Pollution

2011-05-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

The crisis of design in an age of hyper-consumption.

As a design professional who formerly designed, inspected, and sourced goods manufactured in overseas factories, I witnessed firsthand many of the lessor-promoted, inglorious aspects of our globalized economy. In terms of pollution, carbon emissions, and issues related to energy efficiency, the view was not very good, literally. Too often forces of the marketplace brought out the worst in companies. Vendors seemed constantly locked in a quest solely for the lowest price and a race to the bottom tiers of nobility, driven predominantly by the relentless demands of US consumers.

Guangzhou factory, PRC. Image: D.A. DeMers

Dongguan factory, PRC. Image: D.A. DeMers

The "back side" of China's rise. Image: D.A. DeMers

An overwhelming majority of consumer goods we own today come from places like China. Our society has relinquished manufacturing jobs in return for astonishingly affordable products. In doing so, we've accelerated the wheels of a hyper-consumerist, disposable economy, which has created challenges to our planet, to human rights, and to our domestic labor force.

It would be unfair to place blame for this solely on importers or overseas manufacturers - after all, we had our own great industrial boom nearly a century ago in Upton Sinclair's America. At one point, the waste in Chicago was said to be so horrid that its river could be crossed by walking on the backs of rotting, discarded carcasses of hogs.

There are no simple answers to the problem of finding a mutually beneficial trade balance. Former presidential contender Donald Trump's talk of a 25 percent tax on all Chinese imports seemed an effective means to settle the score, until one realizes that the result would cause an instant 25 percent spike of inflation amidst an already fragile economic recovery.

Chinese lamp factory. Image: D.A. DeMers.

One thing we should not do is reverse advances made in clean manufacturing practices. A roll-back of our clean air and water laws is argued by some as a way to get sluggish industrial sectors moving again. This view is short-sighted and unsustainable in terms of reducing overall life-cycle costs of human health, worker productivity, and the depletion of natural resources. Likewise, a recent study by researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found that the US already spends a staggering $76.6 billion each year to cover the health expenses of children who get ill because of exposure to toxic chemicals and air pollution. A better way by far is to set a new example for the world by utilizing cutting-edge advances we've made in green technologies and disseminating those innovations assiduously.

Recently, the Department of Energy announced an initiative to begin training energy assessors who will assist manufacturing facilities in China and India to reduce their energy use. Stated in a notice calling for applicants, the program is described as follows:

"Competitively selected energy efficiency experts will work with engineers and energy managers abroad to provide technical assistance, share best practices, and create opportunities to deploy state-of-the-art, U.S.-made energy efficiency technologies and services.

"Accelerating the international demand for energy-efficient products, especially in rapidly developing countries like China and India, will open up new markets for American clean energy technologies and services. Industrial facilities account for almost 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions and one third of global energy use. This program will grow the market for industrial efficiency products, creating new opportunities for American workers and helping to bolster U.S. leadership in a growing global industry."

Such a program may not be the sole solution for uniting both economic and environmental sustainability, but it's a step toward making the global economic race one that aims for a higher plateau rather than listlessly spiraling downward into a toxic pit of values.--D.A. DeMers.

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Study: Imports of Carbon Nations Nix Cuts from Developed World.

Carbon emission reductions achieved since 1990 by the world’s developed nations were canceled out many times over by the increase of imported goods from nations without binding emissions targets, including China, according to a new report. While climate policies, including the Kyoto Protocol, stabilized carbon emissions in many wealthy nations from 1990 to 2008, most of these nations increased their “consumption-based” emissions significantly during this period because of large imports, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

US idea, China made.

The study, which the authors call the first global assessment of how international trade affected national carbon footprints since Kyoto, says that while developed nations reduced their CO2 emissions by 2 percent from 1990 to 2008, those emissions actually increased by 7 percent when imports were factored in. “This suggests that the current focus on territorial emissions in a subset of countries may be ineffective at reducing global emissions without some mechanisms to monitor and report emissions from the production of imported goods and services,” said Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research and lead author of the study.

Republished with permission from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Room 101 Revisited

2011-05-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

The architecture of interrogation - past and present.

The brief film below is an exposition on the psychology of confined space. Among other things, it references information regarding the use of specially designed rooms by British military engineers for sensory deprivation and mind control tactics against communist insurgent detainees during the Malaysian Emergency, 1948-1960. The rooms built to house the detainees contained no horizontal or vertical surfaces, in order to create a sense of disorientation and illusion. The overall psychological warfare operations utilized during this campaign were considered very effective in quelling the insurgency.

Extra Room from Bernd Hopfengaertner on Vimeo.

Documents disclosed in 2009 suggested that interrogation tactics utilized by the Bush Administration may have been inspired by British author George Orwell's writings of dystopia. As stated in a Harper's article regarding the findings, "Here, we discover that Room 101 of the Ministry of Love (was) faithfully recreated by the Bush Team. In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Room 101 contained whatever a prisoner feared most, which would be let loose against him in an act calculated to inspire pure terror in the victim, to break him as an individual and to produce human material suitable for reconditioning."

Orwell's society. Via wikipedia

These revelations of Bush's Orwellian methods of interrogation and torture caused a rebuke within various sectors the Mass Society. Dissent eventually cycled into the greater stratosphere of the national collective mind until a general consensus of condemnation of the methods evolved.

Recent events have brought the debate to the forefront once again. At the core of this schism is the question of which methods of torture and abuse, if any, have led to the desired result. To some degree, the debate, itself, is a model of Orwellian mind control tactics, evidenced by Mass Media's euphemistic relabeling of torture and abuse as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT). This attempt at re-engineering the mass consensus via contemporary forms of Thinkpol and Newspeak has led to instances of cognitive dissonance in individuals, and widespread occurrences of societal doublethink, groupthink, and on some occasions, mass hysteria.

Effectiveness of methodology questioned.

A statement issued by four former interrogators and intelligence officials last week downplays the effectiveness of EIT:

"Reports say that Khalid Sheik Muhammed and Abu Faraq al-Libi did not divulge the nom de guerre of a courier during torture, but rather several months later, when they were questioned by interrogators who did not use abusive techniques.

This is not surprising. Our experience is that torture is a poor way to develop useful, accurate information.

We know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find a way to elicit useful information.

We believe that the U.S. would have learned more from Khalid Sheik Muhammed and other high value detainees if, from the beginning, professional interrogators had a chance to question them using the sophisticated, yet humane, approaches approved by U.S. law." (Huffington Post 5/4/11).

This notion implies that substantive detective work by the current government and military apparatus was more significant than methods employed through EIT (formerly known as torture and abuse). If that indication prevails, it marks a possible leveraging of civility and universal human rights, and signals the realization of a more effective and efficient means in the fight against global terror.--D.A. DeMers.

The Bluebird of Happiness

2011-04-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

A passionate Philly artist takes flight into the fashion world with a keen eye for design and a strong sense of purpose.

"Birds" backstage at Wonderland Fashion Show.

By guest blogger Tony Rossi.

In a former textile factory warehouse in the city once called “The Workshop of the World,” Philadelphia based company, SSEWARD LLC, seeks to revolutionize production approaches with its latest project, The Bluebird of Happiness.

Starting out with an idea for a t-shirt, project founder, Scott Bickmore, quickly realized there was something more to be made with this concept. “Thinking about the bluebird as a species and a mythology - this idea of optimism and being the bluebird - I started to see how empowering it was, maybe in ways I didn’t understand," said the artist in an interview for Designer In Exile. "People were criticizing me for being cryptic. Still, I kept it loose.”

Addie Delph models Yarn Fringed Top, Frankford Ave.

But when event promoter, Rhina Ju, called him out of the blue looking for designers for a Rittenhouse fashion show, the project finally took form. “I just said yes even though I had nothing," he said. "I had two days to design and make six pieces for three models.” With the goal of being resourceful and making a spectacle, Mr. Bickmore teamed up with artists Nate Gertner and Rebecca Kolodziejczak to turn out designs like the stitchless “Barbed Field Gown,” and the “Brooding Skirt,” made from a fleece blanket.

Barbed Field Gown display

Not surprising, the project caught the eye of New York City Fashion Week superwoman, Melani Von Alexandria. Experimenting with a new egg-membrane derived fabric developed in Japan, Von Alexandria wanted to collaborate with “the bird guy” on a VIP gift bag for PIFA 2011 at the Kimmel Center.

This became an opportunity for the Bluebird of Happiness to test out its new business model: Incorporate therapeutic activities and programs into the production of a fashion line. After working with the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush making a "Green Monochrome" for 3rd Federal Bank as a part of the Monochromes Project, another SSEWARD endeavor that uses all second hand or recycled material to make a work of art of a designated color, Mr. Bickmore approached an autistic classroom at the school to help design and make “nests” and “eggs” for PIFA.

Healing Eggs More info.

What resulted was something extraordinary. Using foraged sticks, twigs, and Melani Von Alexandria fabric scraps, these autistic children started making bluebird nests with hardly any direction. “I was inspired by Temple Grandin," he said, referring to the acclaimed autistic author and subject of a recent HBO film starring Claire Danes. "She talks about autistics having a visual and kinesthetic intelligence. I thought this could work.”

When teacher’s aid, Rose Somers, pulled Mr. Bickmore aside and told him that a sixteen-year-old student just tied the first knot of his life, he knew it was working. Teacher, Candace Dare, agreed and now wants to team up with her colleague in New Jersey, along with other schools and programs in the city to set up more bluebird programs and activities.

“This is the antithesis of the sweat-shop,” said Mr. Bickmore, “This is the idea. Work doesn’t have to be brutal, tolerable, obligatory or any of those things. It can actually reward and exhilarate. You can whistle while you work.”

To learn more about “The Bluebird of Happiness” and to get involved, visit: www.thebluebirdofhappiness.com.

Soil Kitchen

2011-04-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

Soil Kitchen art project

While on a stroll down our street last week I came across what looked like just another new hipster food joint. Restaurants seem to be popping up like spring daisies in our Fishtown/Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, and sometimes I don't even notice.

But this one caught my attention.

A quick wander inside brought me through a colorful, classroom-like environment, with diagrammed chalkboard walls and racks made to hold test tubes and other science related items. There I met a couple of young artists who gave me the scoop.

Learning area.

Soil Kitchen, located on the corner of Second and Girard, is actually not the latest Philly diner, but a remarkable art project, environmental advocacy center, and, well, soup kitchen - at least until Wednesday. It's the first temporary public art project to be commissioned by the City of Philadelphia’s innovative Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy. In fact, the city’s own Mayor Michael A. Nutter was on hand on opening day April 1st.

Soil Kitchen's concept is simple: Philadelphians can enjoy free soup made from locally-sourced food while they wait the twenty minutes it takes to test the soil samples they bring from their neighborhoods. The project is being executed by the artist group FutureFarmers using a grant from the William Penn Foundation.

Image via Wikipedia

The project was planned to coincide with the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Brownfields Conference that will run April 3rd through the 5th at the Philadelphia Convention Center.

Brownfields essentially are lands that have been previously contaminated by industry, and are being detoxified for reuse. The EPA has been involved in a longstanding, comprehensive effort with communities to promote and foster brownfield redevelopment. The Liberty Lands park, only blocks away from Soil Kitchen, is a good example of this partnership. (See the prior post The Good Lands of Liberty for more information).

The windmill-powered building will house the project until April 6th and Soil Kitchen will offer cooking lessons plus free workshops on wind turbine construction, urban agriculture, soil remediation, composting as well as lectures by soil scientists. In addition, they will be creating a Philadelphia brownfields map and soil archive.--D.A. DeMers.

The Good Lands of Liberty

2011-03-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Childrens garden at Liberty Lands Park

It’s hard to tell that the two acre parcel that is now Liberty Lands Park was once an industrial brownfield. And it's hard to believe that the surrounding Northern Liberties community used to be one of the only neighborhoods in Philadelphia without a public green space. Liberty Lands is now a vibrant, essential part of that community, and a symbol of what resourceful neighbors can do with a few shovels, some environmental know-how, and a commitment to making their community a better place.

What is now a park, community garden, playground and state-of-the-art model for water management was once the Burk Brothers Tannery. This former brownfield or contaminated land was made safe and usable after the hazardous materials were removed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987.

Image via Wikipedia

After the pollution from the tannery was cleaned up and the contaminated materials were subtracted, biosolids, or nutrient-rich organic materials that are a bi-product from treatment of sewage at water treatment facilities, were used to improve the quality of the land. Biosolids act as a natural fertilizer, enabling the soil to retain more water and nutrients and made it possible for the growth of a community garden, an herb garden, and the more than 180 trees that the park now features.

In 1995, a development company planned to convert the land into loft apartments. When the deal fell through, the land was donated to Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association (NLNA). Since the community didn’t have a green space, neighbors envisioned and created designs for a park. In 1996, the NLNA and the project received funding from the Philadelphia Urban Resources Project.

A world of fun for kids and adults at Liberty Lands.

Our dog Betsy explores the park on a winter day.

By the spring of 1997, with the help of other generous donations and volunteer labor, Liberty Lands was born. The park now has partnerships with Philadelphia Urban Resources Project, the Philadelphia Horticulture Society (PHS), Philadelphia Water Department, PA-DEP, TreeVitalize, and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

More recently, the park was selected for a storm water management project. The PHS designed the project and was funded by Philadelphia Water Department/PA-DEP with the aim of easing loads on local waste water systems. Additional community support has funded the instillation of a cistern that will allow for water efficiency and conservation as water will be diverted towards irrigation.

The storm water management system establishes methods that could be utilized across the city and once again demonstrates how Liberty Lands is a model of a sustainable green space and an excellent example of grassroots community building.--A.C. Johnson.

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A Few Words with Liberty Lands Park Coordinator Liz Reed

Many people have pitched in to turn the Northern Liberties lots into a green space. Among them is park coordinator Liz Long Reed. She and her husband William Reed, co-owner of the popular restaurant, pub, and entertainment venues The Standard Tap and Johnny Brenda's, have a great history putting together fun events at the park. Designer In Exile recently chatted with Liz about her related experiences:

What do you think is the single most significant function of Liberty Lands?

I think the thing that makes Liberty Lands special is that it is versatile. It's lots of things to lots of people. Even with the addition of the stage and rain garden, we purposely thought about how it would be used when there wasn't a major music or rain event going on. We want people to explore and hang out in that area.

What, if anything, has been the biggest hindrance in making Liberty Lands what it is today?

I suppose that would be lack of funds. Regardless, I think we make the most of our time and our volunteers to keep the park safe and looking its best.

What is your favorite part of the park?

That would have to be where I get to sit back and just enjoy it with my neighbors. A close second is that we own it. If we find the ways and the means to make stuff happen, we can do what we want. Like today, my husband/dedicated park volunteer went out with three extension cords and a giant drill to fix a planter that some enthusiastic bunch tipped over and broke last year. Our neighbor will meet him later in the week with his bobcat to pick the heavy top up and place it so it can be re-cemented in place. It's our park, so we can be as creative with our time and energies as we see fit. It's like a big common back yard.

Does the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association have any new plans in store for the park or any other other green spaces in the area?

Yes to both. We hope to build a "potty shed." A neighbor designed it to house a port-a-potty on one side and a tool shed on the other. The idea is that people then can pay an annual fee to get the combo to use the toilet, and the fees cover the maintenance contract. If, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out, then we end up with one big shed.

In addition, the NLNA got a grant to green the area from 2nd Street to Delaware Avenue along Spring Garden Street. This includes planting 50 trees on April 17th. And the Philadelphia Water Department and Philadelphia Horticulture Society have started revamping the Dough-boy pocket park at 2nd and Spring Garden as we speak. It will include new storm-water amenities.

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The Community Gardens of Fishtown
A guerrilla photo essay of guerrilla gardens.

Last summer I took a little stroll with my camera in search of community gardens in our Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Fishtown is one of the city's oldest areas, and is located only blocks away from the Northern Liberties community mentioned in the articles above. Residents here help beautify their surroundings by taking part in various community diy or guerrilla gardening efforts. Below are pictures of cool stuff I found.--D.A. DeMers.


Neighbors turned this vacant lot into something special.


A local church group put a handy green thumb to this space.

Artisans and gardeners worked together to make this spot extraordinary.

And where there are no green spaces available, we create murals of them!

The Tiny House of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost Revisited

2011-01-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

Being from a sprawling mid-western city, I had never seen anything quite like this before. It was as if I'd walked into a mini doll house. The ground floor had one tiny room. A steep, twisting staircase led up one floor to another tiny room and bathroom, and the staircase led up again to a bedroom. Metal pulls had been installed to help hoist oneself up to each level, as if aboard a submarine. "It's your basic trinity house,” the realtor said. Apparently, this was a uniquely Philadelphia invention.

The locals also call them Father, Son, and Holy Ghost houses.

Philadelphia of the mid-18th century was in an age of an economic boom. As noted on the website of the Independence Hall Association, "artisans and small manufacturers were needed to supply goods and services to a growing population. Those considered to be artisans included cabinetmakers, silversmiths, pewterers, glass blowers, and wagon builders. As the dwellings in center city were owned by prosperous merchants and land speculators, the artisan middle class congregated in enclaves to the north by the (Delaware) river. They prospered with the growth of the city." Read More...

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Home Energy: A Turning Point

Image via Wikipedia

The need to save energy is a notion everyone seems to agree is important these days. Whether you're short, tall, wealthy, poor, liberal, conservative, pink, green, or purple - the idea that you might be burning up dollars for no reason strikes a common nerve.

That's why it's comforting to know that professional guidance for the power to save has come to the Philadelphia region in the form of EnergyWorks, a comprehensive energy solutions program for home and commercial or industrial building owners. EnergyWorks experts help owners find ways to reduce their building’s energy use, and EnergyWorks’ low-interest loans help them pay for the upgrade.

At Energywise PA, a site sponsored by the new Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance, Deputy Philadelphia Mayor Alan Greenberger describes the program as follows:

"EnergyWorks pays to send auditors to a home or business to pinpoint specific changes that can save energy and money. I have a big house in Mount Airy and, even though I'm an architect, I can actually think of 10 things to do, but I don't know which one is the most bang for the buck."

Many homeowners can get a $400 energy audit and only pay $100 for it. Likewise, low-interest loans are available for improvements. The $25 million program is available in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties.

Last month Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Campus Apartments CEO David Adelman announced the first full commercial application of EnergyWorks in the launching of an impressive $50 million hotel project in Philadelphia's University City community.

A press release by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation quotes the Mayor as saying "The city was able to pull levers in a difficult economic climate to obtain financing and make this project happen. By making a smart economic and environmental investment in Philadelphia, this project will bring new, quality jobs for our citizens and a brand-new, environmentally-friendly hotel for visitors. It’s a win for everyone involved.”

An energy auditor trainee examines an ECA house model.

The project is the largest of its kind to utilize EnergyWorks trained contractors, an aspect that helps guarantee the investment will be fostered by an energy efficient, green-building methodology. That way, the city's money is less likely to simply go up the chimney, literally.

In essence, we are at a real turning point in the building trades and with society in general regarding energy conservation. Notions of saving the environment and saving money have begun to merge at a mainstream level; they are seen as one and the same.

For Energy Coordinating Agency Director Liz Robinson, the two were never far apart. Her 26 year old organization sprouted from the need for a local community resource to help mitigate issues related to some of the less attuned policies of utility companies and their often unhindered rate hikes.

Describing the ECA's beginnings in an interview with me, Ms. Robinson said "There was a necessity for community outreach and a comprehensive approach to solving energy solutions, and to get utility companies engaged in those solutions."

Utility worker. GNU image

Some of those solutions are evidenced by the initiation of utility caps at the end of the 1990's, and the current transformation of the utility marketplace through deregulation and a more open market. But most notably it's seen in the growing commitment to energy conservation through various sectors of the local economy.

The evolving possibility of a genuine democratization of energy resources points to a great future for clean energy and the green-building trades. Even now, these sectors show signs of rapid growth in an otherwise stagnant economy. Ms. Robinson emphasized the importance of "helping to elevate the energy literacy" of both energy consumers and contractors during this period.

"In the past," she said, "utility companies made it easy - the public hasn't had to understand everything. Now with more choices at hand, there is a great need for education on the issues for consumers as well as training and other resources for contractors involved in programs such as EnergyWorks."

Throughout previous decades, the ECA has worked amidst the numerous stages of this transformation. Now the organization serves as a virtual lynch-pin for the Philadelphia region's vast array of exciting new energy conservation initiatives - a position they well deserve, and one from which we all can surely benefit.--D.A. DeMers.

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A Heated Debate
Gas fracking in the Marcellus Shale

Energy conservation and green-building methods are key to advancing our nation's clean energy future. Equally important is the need to examine issues of where our energy comes from or how it is extracted before it's delivered for use in our homes, schools, and office buildings. With regard to natural gas, an increasingly popular energy source, nothing is burning hotter than the issue of hydraulic fracturing or gas fracking, the drilling technology being employed in the expansive, resource rich region of the Marcellus Shale.

Recently I spoke about this topic with Pennsylvania State Senator Larry Farnese, fresh from his return from a fact finding mission at the Atlas Energy gas drilling site in Fayette County. The senator took part in the tour to get a better understanding of the industry and its issues, as talk continues about a natural gas extraction tax or fee. He hopes to include safety and environmental concerns as an important part of that discussion.

"I have extreme concern for the safety of the men and women involved in this work," he said. "The entire process of extracting gas from the shale is one that is done under extreme high pressure from fluids, and it's important we ensure safeguards are properly in place to protect workers."

Marcellus Shale drilling. GNU image.

The technology essentially involves pumping liquids into the ground to break up the bedrock and thus release gas trapped inside. Some environmentalists claim the method is inherently destructive to the ecosystem because chemicals utilized are said to be volatile and have been known to seep into the waterways. Similarly, questions over uncertain disposal methods continually plague the industry. Gas drillers are protected from full disclosure of their patented chemical recipes, or the amounts utilized, due to a loophole carved in the 2005 US Energy Act that circumvents the landmark Clean Water Act of 1972. The EPA is currently attempting to close the loophole in recent court battles.

Also contentious, at least on the local level, is the issue of a gas severance tax. Pennsylvania is currently the largest state without a drilling extraction fee to recoup possible environmental and oversight costs, or to help fund educational programs needed to ensure that its own citizens benefit from the well paying jobs promised by the boom - not simply professionals brought in from other locations. Reports from the Shale region claim that Texas license plates are present at many drilling sites. Likewise, international oil giant ChevronTexaco recently bought Atlas for an estimated $4.3 billion, making it the largest investment in the area to date. At the same time, Pennsylvania is facing budget shortfalls, especially in areas of job training and education needed to keep pace with these newer drilling methods.

But some have made a fierce argument that a gas severance tax would scare away investment, that it is essential to forgo such a fee in order to keep the state competitive in these fragile economic times. I proffered that position to the senator during the interview, but was quickly challenged.

"Absolute hogwash," he declared, displaying his sometimes outspoken, yet personable demeanor. "I talked to experts in top levels of the industry who say this is it. We have one of the nation's greatest energy resources, and the industry is coming here whether there is a fee or not." He emphasized that it is especially crucial to pass the bill now, because the greatest amount of the gas is predicted to be extracted from the region in the first 5-7 years. "We will simply lose out," he said. "It is just absurd."

Sen. Farnese. GNU image.

Despite the decision last October by the state's republican controlled senate to put off a vote on the tax, Senator Farnese feels there is still strong support on both sides of the aisle for such legislation. "To punt on this issue now is simply irresponsible," he said.

He may be right about support for the measure - desire for a tax appears to be rapidly cutting across political boundaries. A poll published this month in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review shows that more than half of registered republicans in the commonwealth now favor of some sort of severance fee. Likewise, more than two-thirds of all Pennsylvania voters say they are for it.

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that gas fracking has become an increasingly visible issue on the national level. This awareness was advanced greatly by the recent award winning HBO documentary Gasland, by Pennsylvania native Josh Fox, which stunningly highlights many of the practice's potential environmental hazards.

In addition, a plethora of national and local clean water groups, such as the National Resource Defense Council, and Penn Future, and the diligent protest organization Protecting Our Waters, seem unrelenting. With a new administration in Harrisburg and budget deadline due by Spring, debate on the topic is certain to remain forefront. Stay Tuned.--D.A. DeMers.

"Home Energy: A Turning Point" and "A Heated Debate," were previously published on the associated site Home Science.

Memphis Redux

2010-11-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

Image by Mario Seekr via Flickr

Bookshelf, Ettore Sottsass, 1981

The holiday season tends to bring out the kid in most people. And when I think of kids and design, I'm most reminded historically of one of design's more unusual and whimsical periods - that of the Memphis style movement.

Primarily begun in the 1980's as a product design statement by a group of avant-garde Italian visionaries, including the acclaimed industrial designer Ettore Sottsass, Memphis style went from being shockingly esoteric to the mode du jour in less than a decade. In doing so, it challenged many of the long-standing rules of design, and brought with it a new era of post-modern experimentation and vitality.

The New York Times documented the beginnings of the movement in a related MoMA exhibit review a few years back:

Typwriter, (Valentine), Sottsass, 1969.

"Memphis was cooked up in Ettore Sottsass's Milan apartment one night in December 1980, when the host, then in his sixties and a grandee of Italian design, invited a group of younger designers to develop a furniture collection to show at the following year's Milan Furniture Fair. It was to be a protest against the dry modernist style that had dominated design for decades, and they called it "Memphis" because Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" was on the record player, and the needle kept sticking (a common problem back in ye olden days of the 1980s) on the last three words of the title."

Some say that Memphis design also put an imaginative spin on Art Deco style of the 1920's, the later of which derived much of its initial influence from Egyptian motifs made popular at the time by the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb. Hence, the name may play on that foundation as well.

Whatever the case, the movement's bold use of bright primary colors and expressive zig-zag patterns seeped into everyday 1980's fashion and can be traced essentially to Sottsass's vision. The colorful triangular shapes on the pop singer El Debarge's jackets, or the the striking yellow outfits Mick Jagger wore at the time come forefront to memory. The movie Ruthless People, with Jagger's voice commanding the animated intro, gives one a good glimpse of the true playfulness of the style, as shown in the clip below:

But it was more than just color and wit that comprised the sensibilities inherent in Memphis design. There was a clear repudiation of standard assumptions of proportion and shape that stretched a new canvas for creative possibilities. Many of these overturned notions are present in product designs of items such as Apple computers and iPods, giving them an almost perennially futuristic appearance.

Sottsass also experimented heavily on a "utopian" concept of living space. He was an opinionated anti-consumerist, declaring at one point that "I didn’t want to do any more consumerist products, because it was clear that the consumerist attitude was quite dangerous."

"Living Environment" Exhibit, 1972.

Thus he often detoured from furniture design to explore concepts of interior and architecture. His forward-minded "Living Environment" exhibit, consisted of a series of nine compact, modular living compartments, each meant to be easily personalized and pleasant. One compartment contained a kitchen, another a seat/bed, a wardrobe, a toilet, a desk system and even a jukebox. His compartments were all connected to provide water and electricity to each unit.

As we move along into the twenty-first century, our living space is shrinking. In big cities such as Tokyo and Shanghai, his concepts already exist. At the rate we are depleting natural resources and contaminating the earth environment, there may well be a need for all of humanity to live in separate, small, sealed rooms that share power and water.

Totem Vase.

But in terms of mere aesthetics, some claim that we are in the midst of a Memphis style renaissance. As stated nicely by the Times reviewer, recent style is "rebelling against the slickness of megabranding to chase the 'emotional and expressive' qualities in the original Memphis pieces," and design also seems to be "searching for alternatives to the delicate neo-romantic style, which was fashionable in the early 2000s." What could be more suited for that than a reinterpretation of kitschy, flashy Memphis?

Love it or hate it, Memphis style remains one of the more peculiar and startling moments in design history. It was an eruption of modernity, as if modern style were looking back and re-imagining itself as a vibrant, amusing, radical, self-aware, contemplative other face. And as Sottsass said in a 1986 Chicago Tribune interview, "Memphis is like a very strong drug. You cannot take too much. I don't think anyone should put only Memphis around - it's like eating only cake."--D.A. DeMers.

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The Origins of Flight

2010-11-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

A young man's unlikely ascent into the world of design

Not long ago I was looking through an old magazine and out plopped some photos of lamps I thought were long lost. There's a story linked to them worth telling, so here goes...

Wicker Park Chicago in the 90's was not unlike Greenwich Village in the 60's. The cafes, lounges, and parties resonated with the constant chatter of creative ideas. Music, art, literature, and youth culture had converged on this locale, and in the air was a tremendous zeitgeist shared by everyone, a sense that something quite amazing was happening...and things did.

That's all over now. And I have exiled myself to Philly, where that same spirit of creativity is beginning to burn brightly (and likewise so does the spirit of championship baseball team). Wicker Park now seems nothing but a faraway planet of unauthentic-looking chain bars, ubiquitous trendy restaurants, and stretches of hastily slapped together yuppie condos. Dorothy Parker's famous quote is fitting: "there's no there there."

But for one particular moment in time, it was a special place. And being one who experienced the apex of that moment, I was motivated to do many artistic endeavors. Playing music and being in a variety of bands was one, but more offbeat, perhaps, was the compulsion to make things, especially lamps.

It started with an odd curiosity and study of the "birdmen" who built flying machines in the early 1900s. They seemed particularly fascinating, since many of them had no prior experience with such engineering, yet risked death to see if their contraptions would succeed. The human desire to fly is a legacy steeped in mythology, linked back to humankind's first ambitions. It's the consummate metaphor for freedom on many levels - the dream to defy the shackles of gravity, whatever that may represent...I often felt that gravity profoundly.

When electricity became usable to consumers, many designers, engineers, and architects found an alluring new technology with which to work. From the Arts and Crafts era to Art Deco, a plethora of imaginative lighting designs were created, designs that greatly influenced my flight into this enticing realm.

The French-based Desny design group and lamp artists such as Kola Moser of the Austrian Weiner Werkstaette offered some of the more compelling lighting treasures, utilizing crome and glass in ways that explored their dazzling reflective and refractive properties. There's a magical sense working with an object that emits light that one doesn't quite feel when making a chair or table.

I was drawn to that magic with a child's sense of wonder. I did everything possible to learn how to make such fascinating objects. I learned welding, silver-smithing and jewelry-making, studied design from every aspect, and in 1995 opened an art metalwork and lamp shop called Birdman Studios in the flat-iron arts building at the corners of Milwaukee Ave., North, and Damen - the heart of Wicker Park.

I used whatever materials I could find - reclaimed gas pipes, old cast-iron fittings, discarded sheets of copper, steel, or aluminum. I experimented with all types of glass, then mica, plastic, whatever. So obsessed had I become with these luminous creations that friends seemed more than a bit concerned. I had transformed into, well, a "birdman".

It was difficult to explain how personal these projects had become - they were like my offspring. I recall one crowning moment, an exhaustive late night when I sat back in that little urban studio, sweat and grease smeared across my brow, and gazed at the warm, glowing spectacle of my family of little lamps. I gave so much of myself to making them, and they gave back such a satiable sense of fulfillment and magic...yes magic. I never wanted to let them go.

However, economics is often a buzzkill for artistic passion, and so my wife Anne and I eventually schlepped the creations to gift shows, art fairs, community events, held open studios, did anything and everything to make a living selling those things. Finally I was picked up by an artisan rep who schlepped them for me, and to some very prominent home furnishings and gift shows in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. Soon enough the lamps found proper homes in museum shops, including New York's MoMa, the Walker Center in Minneapolis, and Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

It was quite an unlikely roll of events from there on. One day I got an offer from a major international men's lifestyle magazine to be featured in their series on "cool" lamps. It's still a mystery as to whether my studio was the original intended destination for the reporter's inquiry or whether the lead was actually meant to be for somebody more notable down the hall from me. So be it, fate is a funny thing.

In any case, I was the lucky benefactor, and they chose my sculptural hand-forged aluminum "Moonstation" lamp to be featured in the magazine, juxtaposed with an assortment of non-alike creations by other makers. That exposure, along with a linked mention on NBC's Today Show, would change everything. I received an influx of calls for orders - more than I could possibly execute on my own. Desperate for resolution, I approached a local lamp manufacturer about the possibility of getting them mass-produced.

Instead, I wound up becoming a product designer for the lamp company and for the next decade designed lamps and furniture for some very big retail stores, including Lowes, Target, and Pottery Barn, and in doing so, traveled the world like Marco Polo from China to India to Paris - a mission this humble, small-time lampmaker who began from a tiny studio in Chicago found impossible not to undertake.

I never returned to making one-of-a-kind lamps by hand, something I regret as the years roll by... Perhaps someday, though, the Birdman will fly again.

Above is a page from the March 1999 issue Maxim Magazine that featured one of my lamps. Below are pics I recently found of some of the handmade lamps of the Birdman Studio years 1995-1999. I believe friends still own a few of the firsts. I sure would love to see a snapshot or two of those, if at all possible.

The Oilmen Cometh

2010-10-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

There are lies, and there is the big lie. I think I've figured out how they are different.

Last week I was about to be very late getting to a customer's home, due to an embarrassing scheduling oversight at my office. When I asked my boss what to say, he looked at me straight and said "do you not know how to lie?"

I was hesitant, and laughed a bit nervously.

He was serious. "Do you not know how to bend the truth a bit to say stuff like 'traffic was a complete mess,' or 'we had an emergency situation that needed fixing,' or 'we are a little short-handed due to the bug that's going around?'"

I thought about it and replied, "well yes, I suppose so." After all, doesn't everyone do that to some degree?

So at that moment, the reason I was late to the customer's home was because it seemed like there was a big accident on the highway and traffic was really backed up. I wasn't entirely comfortable saying that, but it eased a sticky situation, and nobody was hurt by it.

But then there's the big lie.

The big lie is when somebody misleads a people's entire sense of reality or purpose. It's when a little man behind a curtain cons folks into believing that what they're seeing is the ultimate truth. Throughout history we've seen the big lie used to keep the great majority in fear, and the greedy few in power.

Outdated coal plant put to rest.

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled the curtain away from a couple of extremely powerful little men in the oil industry who are seeking to repeal some of the state's landmark environmental achievements.

California Proposition 23, which is a ballot showdown come this November, is a repeal initiative financially sponsored by Tea Party allied oil baron billionaires, the Koch brothers. It aims to dismantle pollution regulations and laws that were enacted to defend the planet from decades of industry abuse. Their reasoning for the repeal? To save jobs.

Governor Schwarzenegger

If that were the truth, then the vast array of small business associations across California surely would be in full step with the repeal.

They are not.

As it turns out, over the past 20-30 years a lot of folks have spent industrious hours researching, testing, and implementing alternative energy business ideas and wondrous new methods of saving energy. Hardworking middle-class Joe the plumber entrepreneurs have planted a green tech economy that is blooming into a new era of American ingenuity. Their work may eventually siphon, sift, and shovel away the filthy, ghastly mess of our fossil fuel world.

The end game? No more BP deep-water drilling disasters, no more Marcellus Shale poison drinking water atrocities, no more Coal River Mountain health tragedies, and most relevant - create an expansive wealth of good, ethical, new jobs.

Clean energy wind turbine.

Contrary to conventional thought, it's been the clean energy business world that has endlessly competed against a heavily government subsidized, tax-dodging, oil industry. Only recently has the US Department of Energy begun to seriously explore and fund clean energy alternatives, and only recently has it looked like green business models might finally succeed, despite the fact that the fossilized dirty fuel dynasties are bankrolled nearly 20-1 by both the federal government and Wall Street compared with clean energy. Oil money comes from a deep, dark well. Now that they feel threatened, their stormtroopers have come in full force to put down the competition, to obliterate our new green world for once and for all.

Oil-soaked river bank.

Enter Governor Schwarzenegger, the Terminator, a moderate conservative who is bucking the far right Tea Party trending GOP. His rebukes of the oilmen pull no punches. He said at a recent rally that proponents of Prop 23 are attempting to subvert the democratic process by using scare tactics. He likened the campaign to a shell game, hiding what he said was the real purpose - "self-serving greed."

"They are creating a shell argument that they are doing this to protect jobs," the governor said. "Does anybody really believe they are doing this out of the goodness of their black oil hearts - spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?"

Prop 23 might very well be about jobs. But jobs for whom? The Koch brothers?--D.A. DeMers.

11/10/10 Update - Proposition 23 was soundly defeated by the voters. It's a great victory for green-building design, green jobs, and the environment. Hats off to my colleagues in California.

Hanging Around: Imaginative Lighting Designs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

2010-08-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

An exhibition of modern and contemporary lighting from the Permanent Collection, runs until October 10th at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Image via Wikipedia

Birdie by Ingo Maurer

In the early twentieth century, with the introduction of electric light, designers began to focus on lighting fixtures, hanging lamps among them. Interest in lighting design experienced a particular surge in the decades after World War II, when many young artists, the American George Nelson among them, responded to a demand for fixtures that were both functional and modern in their aesthetic.

In the 1950s, Poul Henningsen, a Danish industrial designer and architect, created a series of hanging lamps that explored a variety of ways of diffusing and reflecting light. His 1958 PH Artichoke lamp is composed of staggered and stacked reflectors in a configuration that resembles, as its name suggests, an artichoke.
Throughout the late twentieth century, designers worked with a range of materials, some of them new, like plastic, and some of them merely low-tech materials adapted to a new purpose. The Italian artist Bruno Munari’s Falkland lamp, conceived in 1964, is an elegant undulating column of elasticized fabric.

In more recent years, designers—most notably Ingo Maurer, of Germany—have experimented with new lighting technologies. One of Maurer’s most technically advanced creations is the 2003 “Wo bist du, Edison?” (“Where Are You, Edison?”) lamp. A 360-degree holographic image of a light bulb projects onto a transparent cylindrical shade, while the actual source of the lamp’s light is a halogen bulb hanging above the shade, hidden in a socket in the shape of Thomas Edison’s profile.

Hanging Around, drawn from the Museum’s extensive collection of modern and contemporary design, features some twenty hanging lamps. It is currently on exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until October 10th.

Above content per the Philadelphia Museum of Art. See www.philamuseum.org for more exhibit details, or other information about the artists and designers represented.

For professional home energy saving advice please visit our other site Home Science, and for features and information about pet rescues please visit Forever Home.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2010-08-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a lot of blog mileage from a recent visit back to my hometown of Chicago, so why stop now? Chicago has always been known for great design, architecture, and near miraculous engineering feats - when the river became a bit too stinky, they simply reversed the direction of its flow so it fed to the Mississippi.
Below are a few images I took to capture the city's creative, progressive and dramatic design essence. Some are a bit abstract. Can you identify their origin?

Images from top: (1 and 2) Helmut Jahn's colorful corridor installation at Ohare International Airport. (3) Rooftop of trainport at Union Station. (4) Glass window high-rise along Wacker drive. (5) Drawbridge along the South Loop section of the Chicago River. (6) Steps to the "El" train in the South Loop at Harrison Lasalle Street. (7) Design pattern on ceiling inside Union Station. (8) Great Hall at Union Station. (9) Union Station's grand Art Deco entrance-way. (10) Cars underneath the "El" tracks along Harrison Street.

All images by Douglas DeMers, free to use via cc license 1.0.

Paradise Preserved: The Magnificence of Chicago's Botanic Garden

2010-07-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Chicago's greatest urban planner, Daniel Burnham, is famous for saying "make no little plans." And on a recent trip back to the city where I was born and a visit to its world renowned botanic gardens, I realized exactly what he meant.

Located about 20 minutes outside the city, in the north shore suburb of Glencoe, Illinois, the Chicago Botanic Garden is a 385-acre living plant museum situated on nine islands featuring 23 display gardens surrounded by lakes, as well as a prairie and woodlands.

And while Burnham had no connection with its origin, the garden is by no means a "little plan." In fact it is one of the United States' most visited public gardens and a center for learning and scientific research. Each year it has 760,000 visitors. The membership, currently at 50,000, the largest of any U.S. public garden. More than 1,000 volunteers assist with all aspects of the Garden’s mission, from planting and propagating natural areas, to teaching educational programs and staffing public programs and exhibitions. The Chicago Botanic Garden is only one of 10 public gardens accredited by the American Association of Museums, recognizing its living collection of 2.4 million plants.

Daniel Burnham's work with Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exhibition.

Owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and managed by the Chicago Horticultural Society, the Chicago Botanic Garden opened to the public in 1972 and is home to the Joseph Regenstein, Jr. School of the Chicago Botanic Garden, offering a classes in plant science, landscape design and gardening arts. The Center for Teaching and Learning brings information on nature and plants to children, teens and teachers. Horticultural Therapy and Community Gardening provide community outreach and service programs. Through the Institutes of Plant Conservation and Ornamental Plant Research, Garden scientists work on plant conservation, research and environmental initiatives.

Specifically, 200 such scientists address threats to endangered flora, train plant conservation leaders and research plant conservation policy. Programs and research focus on the collection, evaluation, introduction and preservation of plants within the context of threats such as climate change, global warming and human impacts.

In 2007, the Chicago Botanic Garden announced plans for a three-phased initiative that would create a 15-acre science campus located at the south end of the Garden. In 2008, the Garden broke ground for a 38,000-square-foot Plant Conservation Science Center, named for Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice. The Rice Center has a sustainable design, with certification at the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold level.

Fountain alongside a lake.

Roses and an Illinois style prairie.

The Center includes a green roof-top garden, seven research labs, an expanded herbarium, a new seed bank area, new classrooms and seminar rooms, twenty offices for research scientists and a public gallery that allows visitors to see behind-the-scenes conservation science at work. A bridge from Evening Island connects the main garden to this new campus.

Visitors are able to see scientists at work in labs, walk to the green roof top garden, and observe the Tall Grass Prairie millennium seed bank. The Rice Plant Conservation Science Center opened in Fall of 2009.

Likewise, the Chicago Botanic Garden was chosen by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as the sole North American host for World Environment Day 2008 with the theme, "CO₂—Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy."

The English Garden.

Japanese House on the Japanese garden's grounds.

On June 5 of each year the Garden and other venues around the world, highlight resources and initiatives that promote low carbon economies and lifestyles, such as improved energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, forest conservation, and eco-friendly consumption.

Over thirty non-profit, academic, cultural and environmental organizations participated in the Knowledge and Action Marketplace on the Garden's Esplanade. Displays and representatives discussed products to help green homes, local carpools, volunteer and community conservation programs, classes on green gardening, the use of CFL light bulbs, vehicles that run on used vegetable oil and even appliances that pop popcorn using solar energy.

My sister, Becky, ponders art at the Garden

Organizations participating in the event included the Center for Neighborhood Technology, offering car-sharing information; CNT Energy, working with ComEd to provide information about Watt Spot, a program to assist homeowners who want to pay market price for electricity. Northern Illinois Energy Project, provided free CFL bulbs. Chicago Wilderness and Openlands, provided information about local conservation and restoration programs and Horrigan Urban Forest Products highlighted the best uses for reclaimed wood from urban trees.

Make no little plans? Indeed!--D.A. DeMers

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Images credits: CBG images by Douglas A. DeMers, free to use under CC license 1.0. Other CBG images via Wikipedia share alike license. Columbian Exhibition image via share alike public domain license.

Also, please visit our other sites, Home Science, for advice on home energy efficiency tips, and forever home..., for info about animal rescue services.

Splendor in the Grass

2010-07-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

A few of my recent posts have been a tad bleak, noted by grim topics about tough economic times and pressing environmental issues. A friend mentioned that even listening to Joy Division songs cheered him up after the reads...

So let's take a little summer break. Let's take our minds to a soft, fuzzy place. I'm imagining a 70's style movie clip - a close-up of a sun drenched daisy field, followed by a zoom to a mod-styled Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg strolling gently in the distance to the sounds of easy grooves. Then later in the evening, glasses of Riunti are clinking in front of a glowing fireplace, shag rug and all.

Grasshopper Boutique

Fast-forward a few decades and you'll get that same hip, fuzzy feeling at Grasshopper, a fabulous chic boutique near Philadelphia's Old City area, with all the latest fashions for the new generation of Jane Birkins and Serge Gainsbourgs. The stylish apparel and accessory shop, which is in its 4th year of operation, is the creation of Tracy Lutz and Regina Louise, two young ladies with an amazingly keen and playful fashion sense.

In addition to offering forefront designs from labels around the globe, the shop also features items from local designers and fashion artists, such as Magic Outlaw apparel by a team of young entrepreneurs at Philly's own Outlaw Printing Company.

Buying from area vendors, or being a locasumer, not only helps the local economy, but can be another small way to cut down on carbon emissions and help the planet (see my post The Art and Soul of Philly). It also puts you at ease knowing that your clothing wasn't the output of some slavish sweat-shop somewhere overseas.

Both Tracy and Regina met at a design company here in Philadelphia, and though neither were of formal fashion design education - albeit Tracy was previously a fashion model, and Regina worked in the design department at Philly-headquartered Urban Outfitters - they shared an intuition for style and love of clothes, and decided that opening their own "supertique" would be an ultimate dream come true. Much of their inspiration can be found at their visually dazzling blog Come Spy With Me. But be careful, you may be forever lured into an intriguing world of fashion espionage.

The two ladies also seem to have an uncanny eye for interior design, especially 70's style, evidenced by the hard work they've done on the store's great decor. The walls are decorated with colorful mylar floral and photo prints, the crystal lighting fixtures give a neo-baroque sense of elegance, and the lipstick red metal fireplace and bearskin rug near the dressing rooms adds sexiness and warmth, literally - the wood-burner is their main heat source.

Tracy says she loves to collect items from the '70's because it reminds her of childhood and that she feels like it was a fun decade. She's put up many of the era's paintings and drawings that she's collected throughout the years on the walls of the store.

"I didn't want this to be just another vanilla box," she says, referring to standard white-walled boutiques and galleries that house clothes and art. "I wanted the space itself to be art."

Based on the looks of Grasshopper, they've made that happen in a fun and beautiful way.--D.A. DeMers.

Ballade de Melody Nelson. Classic hit song by Serge Gainsbourg.

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Grasshopper co-owner Tracy Lutz.

Grasshopper's interior with vintage owl wall art.

Grasshopper's interior - vintage photo wallpaper

Accessorize yourself!

A celebration last year at Grasshopper's 3'd anniversary.

Note: This article is an update from my earlier post last September.

Coming soon to designer in exile - the magnificent landscape design of Chicago's Botanic Gardens. Would Daniel Burnham be proud?

And be sure to visit my new site, Home Science, for professional energy saving advice on your digs.

Dwelling On Sprucing Your Dwelling? Thrifty Tips.

2010-07-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

The conventional wisdom that apartments should be minimal, temporary-looking spaces is in no way an absolute - they can easily be made to have the feel of a well lived-in home. Apartment living is a great way to save money and allow for freedom of mobility. Sprucing up your abode cheaply will brighten your mood when you have guests, or simply let you enjoy it better on your own. Here are some ideas and resources to help decorate your apartment nicely on a budget, while also reducing your negative impact on the environment.

Sales and collecting: Yard, garage, and discount stores are the best place to find home furnishings for cheap. Furniture, wall art, and storage items don’t need to be bought brand new. You can find beds and couches and revive them with mattress covers and slip covers. Décor doesn’t even have to be purchased. Do you collect classic vinyl records, movie posters or have a collection of vintage bottles? Why not use them as décor in your apartment? Put them on display walls, in shadow boxes, or on a shelf to bring instant personalized home furnishings to your apartment. You will be surprised how collections can be an innovative focal point for a room.

A friend of my wife was on the Today Show this morning because she represents ranks of people called "hoarders." A lot of Americans seem to be holding on to sentimental things more today than ever, and not necessarily as the result of some newly declared nationwide neurosis. I use more sensitive sounding terms like "enthusiast," or "preservationist," or "collector" to describe them, especially since I'm married to one.

Websites and classifieds: Websites like Craigslist, Backpages, and other free online classifieds are a great resource for finding home furnishings. Not everybody can hold on to belongings these days. People are often moving out of their homes and need to get rid of items fast and cheaply. Here in Philly, one can find online "swap" groups like Philly Freecycle, which is part of a nationwide Freecycle Network started in Tucson in 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson's downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills.

Other resources such as Estate sales are published in online classifieds as well. Estate sales often sell items from someone who has passed away, but they can also be from those who can no longer financially afford their belongings. Take advantage of these because you may discover one of a kind bargains.

The diy planet: It's quite likely that you and some friends may be able to assemble anything you put your mind to. Do it yourself tables, chairs, and entertainment centers can save you money. Ikea, for example, has décor and storage ideas for every budget, and every assembly skill level. They also claim to be eco-friendly because they use a certain amount of recycled materials and less toxic binding agents.

But if you're truly interested in saving the planet's dwindling resources, keep in mind that it requires energy to recycle, so the idea that a cheap, toss-away, recycling culture will get us all off the hook from further degradation of our environment is somewhat misleading. Recycling is good, but Re-use, re-appropriation, and swap is my recommendation, whenever possible. I often shop for antiques, vintage pieces or go to thrift stores, I bring my own re-usable cup to the coffee shop, and use an aluminum water bottle over recyclable/disposable plastic ones... Perhaps, someday, we'll see the return of the milkman and his refilled glass bottles at our doorstep, just like on Leave It To Beaver.

Above: nicely balanced palette of blues, browns, and neutrals.

To acquire pre-owned furniture, vintage shops like Vintage Modern here in Philadelphia offer a great assortment of quality home furnishings that haven't hit the often pricey 100-year antique mark.

If you prefer something new and can afford more than the Ikea variety, consider investing in furniture that will last for generations - I still utilize my father's beautifully crafted, hand-me-down Eames era desk from the 1950's. Places like Pompanoosuc Mills with its local showroom in Manayunk are great examples of new, built-to-last furniture - and their prices are not off the charts. They make good solid wood pieces, custom made from Vermont Forest Stewardship Council wood sources. They've been at it since 1973, and green before the term was ever conceived as a marketing ploy.

Add and coordinate color: A fresh, nicely thought out color scheme is likely to give to the most prominent indication that you've done a makeover. Adding color to your apartment with bed and bath accessories can change the atmosphere immediately. Coordinating bed linens, curtains, and an area rug can pull together a dull space with minimal effort and expense. Matching towels, bath rugs, and shower curtains will help you feel and look good in your bathroom.

Efficient use of space: If you're downsizing from a larger space, or taking on guests - a reality of these tough economic times - there are several ways to help make the best use of those spaces. Loft beds are a cheap way to accommodate several people in a small space. Loft beds are reminiscent of bunk beds, which take advantage of vertical space. The items can be bought at furniture stores, garage sales, or check college dorm and apartment bulletin boards for quick sales. Even if you don’t have a lot of people in your apartment, the beds can be utilized to straddle a desk area beneath to save valuable space in your bedroom.

Under-bed storage and multi-purpose furniture, such as sofa-beds, or coffee tables that expand and convert into office desks, with filing chambers and more, are great for small space situations. And many of these can be found at affordable stores such as Ikea. A nice series of convertible coffee table/desks is sold through local American Signature Furniture stores.

Likewise, while visiting my mother recently in Chicago at her quaint, efficient condo, she demonstrated how her sunlit kitchen table could easily become an improvised office desk, when needed. This I found especially beneficial because it allows natural light onto the workspace, and brings the office into a generally uplifting environment - the hearth. It also solves the problem of her traditional office desk, as beautiful a piece of Chippendale style furniture you could imagine, from facing a blank wall. She prefers the kitchen table instead because it allows for a variety of seating focal points from which to choose.

There was a time when designers often drew distinct boundaries between eating, sleeping, and work environments. To some degree, events of the last few years have made us rethink those psychological aspects of space planning and proxemics - at least I have.

With the use of the right resources for quality items one can decorate an apartment without having to peel off a lot of Ben Franklins. There is always someone moving in and out of apartments and homes, perhaps more so than ever. These tough times have created many money saving opportunities and resources, as ironic as that might sound. You might as well make use of them to help your wallet and help the environment at the same time.--D.A. DeMers

Coming soon to designer in exile - the magnificent landscape design of Chicago's Botanic Gardens. Would Daniel Burnham be proud?

And be sure to visit my new site, Home Science, for professional energy saving advice on your digs.

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Image credits: Top dining room, share alike license, owner does not necessarily share opinions on this page. Classifieds, share alike license. Craft room, share alike license, owner does not necessarily share opinions on this page. Contemporary room, share alike license. Loft bed, share alike license. Ikea, share alike license. Eco-smart dining table, share alike license.

America's Greenest Ballpark

2010-07-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

I've often wondered which major league baseball team has the most environmentally friendly ballpark. When it comes to being green, a stadium like the Cub's Wrigley Field seems like the most vividly environmental-looking, with its vast wall of vines.

I grew up in Chicago, but was a fan of the White Sox, a team, incidentally, that tied the Yankees for having the best post season record in history during their amazing 2005 World Series run. The vines of Wrigley mean little more to me than an overly manicured quaint North Side hedge.

Real ecologically minded stadium design, of course, runs much deeper. It involves lighting, recycling, water usage and eco-smart building materials, as well as good access to mass transit.

So which team gets the vote for having America's greenest ballpark? The winner is, to my surprise, the White Sox's division arch rivals the Minnesota Twins. According to an article in the Star Tribune and the green-building blog Suite 101, Target Field, the Minnesota Twins' new baseball stadium, received a LEED silver rating, certifying it as the greenest ballpark in America.

LEED (Leaders in Energy and Environmental Design) is a certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The rating levels include certified, silver, gold, and platinum. The certification is based on many facets of sustainability, including energy saving, carbon dioxide emission reduction, water saving, and indoor air quality.

Above: Phillies Jayson Werth tracks a foul.

Specifically, the designers of Target Field worked to create water saving features in the park. Target Field's grass can be irrigated with recycled rainwater. An underground system collects and treats rainwater and prepares it for use on the field. This system will save over two million gallons of water annually. All urinals and toilets in the stadium are low flow. Restroom fixtures at the park use 30 percent less water than traditional fixtures.

Target Field saves energy by capturing waste energy from the Hennepin Energy Resource Center to heat most of its indoor spaces and the field. The park uses energy-efficient lighting to illuminate the field and has a power purchase agreement to offset 70 percent of its energy consumption over a two-year period. The stadium also provides many recycling receptacles.

Not only is the finished product green, but also many of the construction methods used to build the stadium. Contaminated soil on the construction site was removed and treated, with some of it returned to the ground. Waterway contamination, soil erosion, and airborne dust were all controlled during the construction process.

Most construction waste was diverted or recycled, and many materials used in construction were made from recycled content. Many of the resources used came from local or nearby sources, including the Mankato, Minnesota limestone which makes up most of the stadium's exterior.

The Twins organization has also teamed up with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Every time a Twins pitcher breaks an opponent's bat, 100 trees are planted in Minnesota parks. Minnesota's baseball team has set a new precedent for baseball stadiums across the country by showing dedication to preserving the environment.

These achievements all indicate a tremendous leap forward for the green-building movement. But the Twins aren't the only team that's seeing the benefits of sustainable stadium design.

Since I moved to Philadelphia in 2007, it was only a matter of time before I'd be swept by Phillies fever as the team slugged away like Rocky through the miraculous 2008 championship season and beyond. Thus, I've grown increasingly curious - how green is my newly adopted team?

As it turns out, they are very green - in fact, they're near the top of the list.

Above: Recycling crew at Citizens Bank Park.

The Phillies are the first Major League Baseball team to join the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership Program which motivates organizations across the world to purchase green power in order to minimize environmental impact. They announced on April 30, 2008 that their home field, Citizens Bank Park, would be powered with 20 million kilowatt hours of green energy purchased in Green-e Energy Certified Renewable Certificates.

The EPA stated that this purchase holds the record in professional sports for the largest purchase of 100% renewable energy. Likewise, the Phils are among the top three purchasers of green power in Philadelphia.

Aramark Corporation is the Phillies food and beverage provider at Citizens Bank Park and they are taking major actions in improving the environmental impact of the Phillies stadium. Glass, cardboard, and plastics used during game day are recycled; frying oil is being recycled to produce bio-diesel fuel, and biodegradable, recyclable, and compostable products, serviceware, and plastics have been introduced.

Above: My dog Betsy - a typical dedicated Phils fan.

So if you ask me, my vote goes to the Phils for scoring big on every measure. Not only do they have one one of the nation's most environmentally friendly ballparks, it's architecturally pleasant and comfortable (voted 4th best by MLB in 2007), and very accessible for suburban and city folks alike.

They also have a great team.--D.A. DeMers.

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Image credits: Target Field, cc license 2.0, owner does not necessarily share opinions expressed on this page. All others by D.A. DeMers, and free to use under cc license 2.0. Read more at Suite101: Target Field: Greenest Baseball Field in America http://major-league-baseball.suite101.com/article.cfm/target-field-greenest-ballpark-in-america#ixzz0taqyyZ1Q. References: Paul Walsh. "Earth-friendly Target Field is certifiably 'green.'" Star Tribune. April 9, 2010.

Dreams of a Mad Scientist

2010-07-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend in Philadelphia, the Tesla Science Foundation is hosting its annual Nikola Tesla Energy Independence Celebration to commemorate the birthday of the influential inventor and his prolific contributions to science and technology. The event, according the foundation's press release, brings together scientists, inventors and enthusiasts for a three-day conference highlighting the need for a new energy paradigm.

Above: Tesla turbine system.

Tesla was a visionary inventor who lived during the turn of the 20th century. His achievements include the the discovery and development of radio, the implementation of alternating current and the AC motor, wireless technology, and many other significant inventions that are commonplace aspects of the modern age.

Though ultimately stymied by jealous competing inventors and tyranical big business adversaries, Tesla's ideas have endured to the present day, perhaps being more relevant now than ever - especially his dream to bring clean, free energy to the world through advanced wireless technologies and similar concepts. His extraordinary discoveries and designs related to this field are currently being utilized and researched by many scientists throughout the world, from electro-magnetic wave energy sources to wind turbine construction. The greatness of his work, done with the betterment of humanity in mind, contrasts starkly with his own tragic personal life story, one of eventual isolation and exile from the world.

Above images: Tesla turbine motor and alternating current motor.

The convention kicked off with a celebration "bash" Friday night at Philadelphia's Independence Center, a fitting site for the conference's "energy independence" theme. Lectures and other activities will be featured throughout the weekend at various locations, including a series of speaker forums at the Free Library of Philadelphia (no charge), a reception and dinner at Arch Street Meeting House ($20), and the official Tesla Foundation Conference at Two Liberty Place ($110 entrance fee). More info can be found at the Tesla Science Foundation website.--D.A. DeMers.

Film short: Nikola Tesla - A Tribute to the Forgotten Wizard.

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