Last weekend we visisted Cornerstone Festival of Gardens in Sonoma (part of the wine country, just north of San Francisco). For an admission charge of $9.00, visitors can explore a fascinating range of garden/art exhibit/environment/installations created by landscape architects, design firms, artists, and more.
It's not quite like visiting purty gardens somewhere, nor walking through a gallery or a museum. The installations engage many of the senses in some interesting and powerful ways.
"Break out" is a maze of screen doors in a "room" of hay bales, while Johnny Cash music plays on several speakers (out of sync) - you get the slamming screen doors, tinny music and smell of hay.
"The Lullalby Garden" looks like sand dunes in the distance, playing an interesting game of scale, and as you take your shoes off and stroll on the small hills (covered in many mats of plastic fiber woven by Vietnamese villagers) you may feel as a giant. The visual expectation of texture and scale is confounded by the experience, and the detailed story of handicrafts from far-off lands are jumbled together to create a whole new story.
"Daisy Border" is simply a series of fields of blowing flower pinwheels.
Daisy Border
"Rise" is a corrugated metal sewage tube that separates two zones with contrasting foliage on either side, and as you walk through the tube you experience the world you left behind, and the world ahead of you through the portal of the end of the tube, while sound folds in around you.
Rise
Rise
"Changing Rooms" is a winding path to a curtain covered round space. Along the way are stations where you can use a Sharpie to write a wish on a translucent disc, but it's not until you enter the inner "room" that you understand what the wishes are for - a changing scuplture built from the words and wishes of visitors.
Changing Rooms
Changing Rooms
Changing Rooms
Changing Rooms
Changing Rooms
"Earth Walk" is an incredibly simple concept - a wedge cut into the ground, creating two ramps on either side on which you can descend about 8 feet below ground level. Surrounded by haybales, you feel even deeper. As you walk down the ramp the environmental sound gradually recedes until you feel a moist hush. At the bottom, then is a contemplative water garden.
Earth Walk
"Eucalyptus Soliloquy" takes tree leaves and attaches them with various densities to metal mesh walls, creating different spaces that let pass through in different ways, with the visual texture of the drying leaves behind mesh adding another layer.
Eucalyptus Soliloquy
"A Small Tribute to Migrant Workers" tells a story in literal and symbolic ways - one part of the display dangles printed profiles of immigrants who have come to the US to work, their financial situation, their history, their families and more, putting faces and names to a complex social issue. Elsewhere in the garden you can do some gardening, tending to plants with tools provideded, or briefly recreate a symbolic border crossing across shards of broken plant pots.
A Small Tribute to Migrant Workers
"Blue Tree" is the most iconic of the Cornerstone Gardens - a (dying?) tree is completed covered with plastic blue ornaments - the effect is fantastic, your eye sees a real tree, but almost none of the texture of a real tree is visible, so your brain questions the legitimacy of what you're seeing. A range of perspectives gives many different takes on the tree, from being in a surrealistic painting to playing with a giant molecular modelling kit.
Blue Tree
Blue Tree
It's worth checking out if you are in the area. These are all sensory experiences, and words/photos (click to enlarge, by the way) certainly don't do it justice.
On the way to my rural hideout on the fringes of Kansas City, MO, I came upon three articles all in the New York Times that are bellwethers of the emerging power of integrated, interdisciplinary design. Whats most interesting is the angle of attack differs in each case: from advertising, retail marketing, and urban design.
Because these articles are archived (with the exception of the Arnell Group article) and must be purchased from the New York Times, following is a brief synopsis of each. For more details, acquire the original Time's articles or click to the other online articles I've linked.
ADVERTISING. Stuart Elliott, in an article in his Advertising column,
"Thinking Outside the Marketing Box," spotlights Omnicoms Arnell Group, a former ad agency that's outgrown the parochial boundaries of the ad business to enter, as its website proclaims, the "value creation and enhancement" business. According to the Elliott article, Peter Arnell, the founder and CEO of the Arnell Group, is to oversee a broad effort everything from product design to in-store marketing to traditional advertising to help Electrolux introduce a line of small domestic appliances in Q4 2005. Lars Goran Johannson, SVP for corporate communications at Electroluxs Stockholm HQ, hired Mr. Arnell because of his reputation for thinking beyond the boundaries of conventional advertising and venturing into realms like graphic design, retail marketing, and branded entertainment, reports Elliott. This is a different kind of business, an interesting mixture of design, creativity, and technology, says Johansson.
Other experience-design projects Arnell is tackling, according to the article, are:
A midtown Manhattan store for Jacob the Jeweller that evokes the interior of a gem mine
A store in Philadelphia for Reebok that is a showcase for its shoes as well as a place to buy them
A line of fire extinguishers and other home-safety products for Home Hero. According to Arnell, the typical fire extinguisher is so ugly, nobody wants to leave it on a counter. We need a product like what Braun did with coffee makers, i.e., making coffee-making visible, interactive, and entertaining, and the coffee maker a domestic modern art piece.
RETAIL MARKETING. In the Business Section, Robert Levine writes about Starbucks new plan to sell music with the French Roast, Would You Like an Extra Shot of Music With That Macchiato? The chain is altering its mix of in-store purchasables, reducing its line of domestic goods and now promoting burn-it-yourself CDs accessible via the 3,000-store broadband network that many of us use when we bring our laptops to do work in a Starbucks. Provided by T-Mobile, the network was originally derided as not providing Starbucks with sufficient ROI: by encouraging slow sipping while doing real work, the new commerce pundits predicted Starbucks was shooting itself in the foot. Now, with the addition of downloadable music, the broadbank foray is paying off in spades.
The project is headed by Dan MacKinnon, VP of Starbucks Entertainment. Starbucks Entertainment? Ahah, heres the clue. Coffee is still mainly how the chain parts consumers and their dollars, but ambience, long recognized as a key component of the Starbucks brand, is now being elevated to the position of a purchasable. Youll come to a Starbucks to (a) drink coffee, (b) do your work or chit-chat, and (c) interactively create unique musical collections to take home and enjoy later.
What else will be added to the mix? The possibilities arent infinite selling elaborate sandwiches apparently didnt pan out, and watching TV would definitely diminish the experience but everything from audio books and MP3 lectures to on-site or remote game-playing, for a price are definitely within reach. Says Phil Quartataro, president of EMI Music Marketing, quoted in the article, Starbucks is a branding machine. Nobody buys a 40-cent cup of coffee for $4 unless theyre buying a brand.
Thats what marketers always say. But its more than that, Mr. Q: theyre buying an experience. The experience expresses the brand.
A more extensive analysis of the trend toward mixing in-store product offerings and environments is provided in
Richard Siklos' account in the Business.Telegraph, "Starbucks Pushes Limites of What Its Customers Will Swallow." It's an excellent treatment and goes into some depth to explain why this is an industry-wide phenomenon not just limited to cutting-edge companies like Starbucks.
URBAN DESIGN. The new city of Rancho Cucamonga, CA, in the Southern California region known as The Inland Empire, centered on San Bernardino, is preening its feathers with the development of Victoria Gardens, A Different Sort of Mall for a California Town, as reported by Morris Newman. Within an area that encompasses 1.3 million square feet of retail and office space covering 12 blocks of this affluent suburb effectively, most of its budding downtown Victoria Gardens is a super-regional lifestyle center. Despite the novel label, observers may recognize the development, by Clevelands Forest City Enterprises in a joint venture with Lewis Retail Centers, as a neo-Main Street in the Venturi tradition, a Las Vegas casino-style shopping mall, without the casino. But a little different.
Newman describes Victoria Gardens a name somewhat out of keeping with the city's high-desert environment this way:
A turn-of-the-century citrus-packing plant inspired the building that houses the food court. Next door is a replica Craftsman home, of the type built in the region in the early 1900s. Elsewhere are a group of 1940s-style department stores, whose side walls of plain red brick add a note of humility to the elegant faade. (The bricks are actually painted on a stucco surface, in a trompe loeil style.) A freestanding brick fireplace, accented with colored tiles, purports to represent the remnants of a ranchers house long destroyed by fire.
The development comes loaded with intention, beyond being just a collection of typical retail-chain storefronts. A chief consultant to the developer was San Francisco urban design firm Field Paoli, famous for its eclecticism and comprehensive treatments. Says principal Yann Taylor, We wanted to avoid a formulaic approach in which all the streets have the same width. Instead, each street has a slightly different character and is planted with a different type of tree, to contribute to the sense of the project having been built up over time.
More interesting than this faux historicism, however, is the developers integration of Victoria Gardens streets with Rancho Cucamongas city streets, thus giving Victoria Gardens a real circulatory function. As writer Newman observes, Perhaps the most innovative part of the site planning is that the private development has been designed to blend into the existing street pattern of the city by aligning it with existing streets. Covering a substantial 147 acres in a still relatively small city, the project is not a stand-alone, according to Linda Daniels, the Rancho Cucamongas redevelopment director, Its meant to integrate with the residential neighborhoods that surround it.
Putting aside for a moment serious qualms that the unreal may overwhelm the real in a city as young and in formation as Rancho Cucamonga or perhaps, acceding to the notion that there is no practical difference in a modern suburban development, where the developers, not history, city government, or the residents, call the tune the combination of thought and resources brought together to create Victoria Gardens is impressive. The roster includes the developer, a retail management company, three architectural firms (besides Field Paoli, also Altoon & Poerter, L.A., and KA Inc., Cleveland), and the city itself (not to mention the retailers).
Despite Newmans well-founded qualification, that despite its urban bravura, Victoria Gardens is an amalgam of the regional mall with elements of traditional town planning, from an experience-design viewpoint Victoria Gardens is a strong statement in favor of integrated planning and design. While its overt purpose is to move goods and generate revenues for its tenants, Victoria Gardens is actually having a salutary effect on the citys own development plans, which initially envisioned a traditional shopping mall, all pre-fab and parking lots.
Reluctant to sign on for a nontraditional retail location, retailers were brought onboard when the city agreed to build nearby a public library and a performing arts center, to lure its high-income residents downtown. Says Brian Jones, president of developer Forest City, The last thing we wanted to do was create a theme park. The project is actually a community gathering place. The driver, says Simon Horton, Forest Citys project lead, was that retail has become polarized, in the form of value cheaper locales, traditional mall settings versus experience. Of course, experience wins hands down when people, as in Rancho Cucamonga, are affluent and can vote with their dollars.
Which begs the revolutionary question: if youre not wealthy, must you have a bad shopping experience? Is commercial purgatory class-based? Whose purpose does that serve?
A more florid, less critical, description of Victoria Gardens can be found in the Daily Bulletin article, "Victoria Gardens a Shoppers Shangri-La," by La Rue Novick.
Kudos to the New York Times staff for its continuing insightful examinations of the experience design paradigm emerging in practice.
Last week in Toronto I made a quick trip to the Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up some of those great chocolate bars I can't get at home in California, and I noticed a point-of-purchase display (right near the checkout, as if to suggest impulse buying) for Life Experiences - gift cards with a range of experience gifts (a weekend getaway, a romantic dinner) priced at $199 or $299. Their site lists the complete set of offerings, including several spa packages, a resort weekend, a Jaguar rental, a home cleaning, a sky diving experience and more.
It's a perfect business for a large metropolitan area like Toronto (the GTAA as it's known now) since the end-customer and the bundled-providers need to be local to each other. I wonder how it can scale?
Why do the names of military simulations always sound like Steven Segal movie titles?
Wired Online today reports on "Urban Resolve," a military simulation intended to deal with the new/old reality of urban warfare. "The old crusade days when you go into a city with catapults and rubble everything are over," said Joint Forces Command's Jim Blank, modeling and simulation division chief for the project. "We know now that you can take down a city by isolating different nodes in the city.... This lets us look at each one of the nodes and decide how best to go after the adversary....
"If you take down a sewer plant, you're going to cause a great deal of discomfort to the city's inhabitants," said Blank. "A lot of these things have gone on in previous conflicts but the result has been collateral damage that's not acceptable." It's not clear from the interview whether Blank approves or disapproves of disabling vital sanitation services. It's not his job to decide, only tto highlight the possibility. Do virtual dysentery and cholera come with the package?
"Urban Resolve" reportedly cost $195,000 to develop. For a videogame that deals with a million virtual entities, that's really something. That comes down to less than two cents per entity. You can't beat that on Everquest.
However, the quoted price doesn't include the cost of years of previously developed software (lots of AI) and two massive Linux clusters in Hawaii and Ohio that support the simulation, or the time that referees and developers spend tweaking.
Urban Resolve is an odd mix of strategy and tactical street combat. Already its creators are talking about law enforcement agencies using it for crowd control. But what about the bigger picture? What's to prevent Urban Resolve from being used to test 24/7 universal surveillance of a city -- even a friendly city? Even one here at home? Ah hah, maybe that's what all the cameras on streetlight stanchions are all about!
Now we need software from the military that portrays what to do when a military base closes down, leaving unemployment and toxic wastes behind. That also would be a valuable game to play. I couldn't find it online, but it must be somewhere in the $500B defense budget.
Images: USC Institute for Information Science via Wired
When the Gate 3 WorkClub opened its doors this week in Emeryville, CA, it dramatically redefined my notion of a "workplace," combining modernitywith the expert community character of a guild hall. Work may be work, but for WorkClub proprietor Neil Goldberg, an award-winning industrial designer who once worked for Herman Miller and led the influential Praxis Design, work can be a medium for personal growth and expression. Work that occurs in a designed environment can itself be a desirable experience.
Earlier this year I partnered with Neil, Gate 3 director Amy Catalano, Drs. Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware from The Future of Work Foundation, and Garrett Choi, now VP Engineering at BeHere, Inc. At the time, Neil was coming to grips with the reality that when he shut down his design firm, he became the owner of a large, empty building. Within a few weeks, however, led by Neil, we managed to come up with the rough outlines of what would become the Best Place in the World to Work.
What makes WorkClub such a likely success? Design. Design of space. Design of functions. Design of process. Every aspect of the Gate 3 experience has been intentionally crafted to enhance the quality of worktime spent at Gate 3.
For example, as a "WorkClub," Gate 3 has Members (rather than renters) who can adjust their use of the facilities to suit their working style and requirements. The building is divided vertically and laterally to create varied functional and physical properties for each "region" within the Gate 3 building. For example, on the second floor where most work takes place, baffles, telephone booths, and various wall design make for a quieter ambience, the further one walks from front to back. Silence is the property at the end. Lighting, too, is handled with aplomb.
Gate 3 has three environmental layers that correspond with each other and which serve to satisfy WorkClub members' multiple requirements.
The Infrastructure. Building, lighting, acoustics, furniture. It helps
that Herman Miller is Neil's former employer and a sponsor of Gate 3.
IT Services, the "Virtual Office." Telecommunications, technology,
networks, wireless, computer and video applications.
Human Milieu. A constant stream of facilitated activities: workshops,
lectures, presentations, brainstorms, guest speakers, the Cafe. A Gate 3
facilitator arranges and manages these interactions.
It's the interaction of these three experiential strata that makes Gate 3 such an intriguing experiment in redesigning the workplace and the experience of work, perhaps the most significant advance since the invention of the assembly line. The challenge now is for Neil and Amy to spread the word and attract the necessary critical mass that will determine Gate 3's viability. If WorkClub Emeryville succeeds, expect to see others elsewhere, put together quickly and with a clear vision of an unbounded, global work environment that serves the people who labor within.
I'm meeting with Gate 3 innovator Neil Goldberg later this month for a full report. Send your questions for Neil and his team to me now.
I'm still in San Diego, looking for distinctive landmarks that set it apart from other regions in California. So far, my impressions are that this "big small town" exists in a literal desert bounded by Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, and that it's main unique features are aircraft carriers, old and new.
An exception is the Birch Aquarium operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a unit of the University of California. Scripps, now celebrating its 100th anniversary, has long been synonymous with oceanography. Like Woods Hole in MA, Scripps is one of the places that the discipline was invented.
The Birch originally was a simple affair, a collection of ocean-water tanks containing bright marine flora and fauna: mainly, fish. And that's how it remained until relatively recently, when the Birch finally acquired an executive director, Dr. Nigella Hillgarth, capable of formulating a vision for the Birch other than just showing off local fin folk. In fact, the Birch's newly expanded mission, accompanying a four-fold increase in its floorspace, is complex: describing and visualizing for the public the hundreds of research projects ongoing within Scripps, most of which are abstruse but many of which are relevant to the general public.
"The challenge we face," said David Krimmell, a designer and Manager of Exhibits whom I interviewed on a recent visit to the Birch, "is portraying the full range of exciting science taking place within Scripps to a visitor population that's largely parents with seven-year-olds in tow." David, an artist who joined the Birch after earlier stints with other local exhibitions, faces a few other challenges that exhibition designers elsewhere will recognize: limited floorspace, limited access to technology, and a budget that shows no signs of imminent expansion, other than whatever new revenues the Birch can itself generate via visits.
Continue reading "The Birch Aquarium: Interview with David Krimmel, Designer"
In Virtual Design: As clay fades, GM shifts toward digital imagery, Auto News, July 21, 2004, writer Dave Guilford reports that GM is finally getting on the virtual reality (VR) bandwagon. It may be big news in Detroit, but elsewhere, VR as the principal tool for vehicle design is fast approaching the way things are done. DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Toyota, Renault, Peugeot, and Fiat all use VR in major ways to produce their new cars. In the U.S., leading independent truckmaker PACCAR is also experimenting with VR as a way of reducing design cycles and product time to market.
Guilford credits GMs getting off the dime to design chief Ed Wellburn, formerly head of GMs brand character studio, now in his first year as GM North America VP for design and global design leader. GM subsidiaries Opel, GM Brasil, and GM Daewoo have all built or are building VR design studios. Wellburn offers a caution: Design executives can evaluate concepts but not final executions. Evaluations of vehicles in VR is challenging and can only be done by those who spend a lot of time in that environment."
Well really, no, its not that mysterious.
Continue reading "GM Finally Climbs on the Virtual Reality Bandwagon"
Chris Thompson reports in the NYT ("Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon,"July 29) on a wonderful, wonky return to the 50s: impromptu drive-in theaters, organized on the spot. Reports Thompson from Santa Cruz, CA:
"For three years, cult-movie buffs have been organizing "guerrilla drive-ins" in a number of cities, rigging together a nest of digital projectors, DVD players, and radio transmitters or stereo speakers, spreading the word online, and assembling on parking lots or fields to watch obscure films beneath the stars.
They project the image onto warehouses or bridge pillars, tune their car stereos to a designated FM frequency, and sit back and enjoy the show. The only thing they do not do is ask for permission."
Talk about the design as the experience. I'll see if I can get the heroes of the piece, from SC, Florida, and Pennsylvania -- this thing is happening so fast and so big, it's scary! -- to comment. Stay tuned...or rather, don't miss the next installment....
Here's a list of notable experience design projects (among others) on which I'll be reporting during the coming weeks. Please let me know the projects that you think are deserving of mention and commentary.
The Lincoln Presidential Library, BRC Imagination Arts
Las Vegas "Fashion Show" State-of-the-Art shopping mall, Rouse Co.
Sound Design for the film, Master and Commander
Linden Labs/Second Life Online Virtual Environment
"Occasio," A Redesigned Consumer Banking Environment, Washington Mutual, Inc.
Passenger Experience in Future Fused Wing Aircraft (flying wings), Boeing
The Rose Center/Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History
The Apple iPod User Experience
The Gensler Education Environment
Amplified Collaboration Environments, Electronic Visualization Laboratory, UI-C
Integrated Onboard Driver Information Systems, DaimlerChrysler PARC
VR Applications Center, Iowa State University
US Joint Forces Command Theater Simulation System
About Us |
Advertise |
Contact Us |
Privacy Policy |
Terms of Use
