Private-Public Space conditions in San Francisco; image by Rebar

Tension between the private and public realm was a recurring component of last autumn’s news, as the users of public space and the stewards of those spaces, both private and municipal, clashed during the Occupy protests. The protests themselves bore the marks of tense private vs public realities, given the immense and disproportionate stores of wealth in private hands vs the wealth and resources the public has access to through earning potential or provided services.

On Wednesday, 15 February as a pre-conference event for the Social Cities of Tomorrow Conference in Amsterdam, I will be introducing an evening’s exploration of the tensions in private vs public space and services and the role design can play in creating trust instead of tension in these contexts. Joining me will be Premsela’s Tim Vermeulen, Michiel de Lange, co-founder of The Mobile City and a new media lecturer at Utrecht University; and Henry Mentink, co-founder of MyWheels. The evening will also be the public launch for the current issue of the Premsela’s Trust Design and Volume Magazine publication series: Public Trust. More information and booking details can be found here.

I have spent the previous few months researching and working with the relationships between private and public space and services and the correlating connections with trust and design in these areas. Anyone who has gone through a security screening when walking off of the public street to enter a private, ‘secure’ building has experienced the tension that comes when passing through this protective membrane between the public and the private.

In the issue (at left), which I edited and wrote along with some esteemed collaborators, I explore how the rise of the sharing economy has the potential to build trust in a fragmented society and increase, as Robert Putnam termed it, society’s social capital. The first of my articles, The Publicization of Trust explores the breakdown of trust we’ve experienced in political, product, and economic circles, and the ways in which our online behavior and new online systems have enabled new methods of sharing and trust to be created to help diffuse and redress the imbalance. It will be excerpted on this blog soon.

The second essay I wrote for the issue, Public Private Tensions, deals more explicitly with the tensions between private and public space in the city. While projects such as Rebar’s Commonspace intervenes superbly with the Privately Owned Public Spaces of San Francisco to create a balance between the interests of the public and the private owners of the spaces, such balance, as the Occupy protests showed, does not always exist.

That’s a problem, as it is balance – equal and shared mutual interest and its resulting benefit – that builds trust between the private and the public. Tensions between the private and the public are born from an imbalance in these areas – and imbalanced environments are barren of trust. As an opinion piece in the New York Times observed, the Occupy protests brought not only the imbalance of private wealth and public assets into focus, but also “the continued inadequacy of the laws regarding privately owned public spaces”.

Zuccotti Park has become synonymous with both the Occupy movement and the curious hybrid blend of privately owned public spaces promulgating in cities worldwide. Its brief history contains the history of the transference from public to private as well – originally known as Liberty Park, its owners changed the name in honor of one of its chairmen, John E. Zuccotti. Beyond the irony of a park once known as Liberty Park being infamous for a police crackdown on public protest, the longer history of private-public spaces in the city contains equal swaps of public asset for private interest.

Police manning Zuccotti Park. Photo by Seema Krishnakumar, Creative Commons License.

Jerold Kayden, professor and co-chair of the Department of Urban Planning at Harvard University notes that until as recently as 1975, New York’s zoning code seemed to treat public space as a bargaining chip for developers: “…the zoning code offered a simple exchange: one square foot of vacant space at the base of a building for ten square feet of bonus floor area to rent or sell. No mention was made of what to put in the space. The result was a proliferation of forbidding empty places throughout Manhattan.”

The outcome of decades of seemingly disproportionate exchanges with little stipulation for creating benefits for the public is addressed by Kayden in his book Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience, a thorough study of over five hundred of the city’s private-public spaces. Kayden found that the public benefit of these spaces was significantly disproportional to the benefits enjoyed by developers in the exchange of public space for increased building rights.

In effect, the tensions over the disproportionate economics in shared society were being played out in spatial representations of a disproportionate relationship between public benefit and private interests.

In addition to the lopsided exchanges of public space for increased building rights, the impact these ‘forbidding, empty places’ have on the surrounding communities are larger than just their visual character. As New York urban planner and architect Alexander Garvin says, “The public realm is what we own and control … the streets, squares, parks, infrastructure and public buildings make up the fundamental element in any community — the framework around which everything else grows.”

With the imbalance in these spaces, their existence as containers of an ambiguous set of rights and relationships between the public and its space – and a history of being created for the public only to increase private interests – extends similar confused priorities into the wider social realm, and erodes the hopes of trust between public and private realms even further. If our social capital is reliant upon our social association, then surely the character and conduct of our public social spaces play a fundamental role in the building of social capital, and its ultimate end product, social trust.

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On Tuesday 7 June I will be in Chicago speaking as part of Future of the City: The Arts Symposium. The symposium is produced by The University of Chicago, who describes the day as “a one-day gathering of leaders who are shaping the cultural landscape of Chicago and beyond”. The event website continues:

Arts and culture are proving their power as economic and social catalysts for the creative transformation of cities. Strategic collaborations between government, businesses, foundations and academic sectors have helped to rejuvenate neighborhoods, inspire civic and community engagement, and incubate the next generation of creative entrepreneurs. We will explore these themes, related research, and public policies as they apply to Chicago and other urban centers.

I love Chicago, partially because my family name is so intertwined with the city’s landscape, but mostly because it’s simply a fantastic city that I don’t get to visit as often as I’d like. If you are at the symposium, please say come say hello, and if you’re not, but you’re in the Chicago area, do get in touch.

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On Thursday 14 April I will be in Milan, talking about the relationship between trust and design during the during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile as part of The Milan Breakfasts series, produced by Premsela and Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE).

The breakfasts will take place at Studio Zeta Milano, Via Friuli 26, Milano (location on Google Maps here). I will be giving a brief introduction to the Trust Design project and an overview of my work exploring the relationship between trust and design. Joining me will be designers Gijs Bakker and Alberto Meda, and Lilet Breddels of Volume magazine, with a Q&A moderated by Tim Vermeullen of Premsela to follow.

The event runs from 9.30-11.00am – come for the free coffee and croissants, stay for the discussion (or vice-versa – your choice).

You can download the press release for the Milan Breakfasts series here (pdf), and read more about it on the Premsela site here.

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Over the next two weeks I will be speaking at two public symposiums which explore important aspects of the future design of our cities, so I wanted to spread the word here and recommend that anyone in the respective cities of London or Linz come along and join in.

On Wednesday 13 October I will be speaking about Urban Play and my “City as Platform” approach to design in the city at the Interactive Architecture symposium, held at Metropolitan Works, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB. Joining me will be Jason Bruges of Jason Bruges Studios, Michael Spencer of Sound Strategies, Usman Haque of Haque Design and research, Alexandros Tsolakis of UnitedVisualArtists, Eva Rucki of Troika and many others. Full details can be found here.

The following week I will be in Linz, Austria, speaking at the SuperStadt2010 symposium on Wednesday, 20 October. I will be delivering a talk titled “Open Strategies for Designing the Urban,” describing, well, I suppose the title says it all. Full Details of my talk can be found on the SuperStadt site here.

Unfortunately, my time in Linz will prevent me from being able to be in Berlin on the same day for the Exchange Radical Moments Congress, at which my Urban Guide for Alternate Use project will be launched. This kills me, but I recommend anyone in Berlin check out the Exchange Radical Moments Congress, and for everyone else, please visit the Urban Guide for Alternate Use site and join my exploration of “re-use and resourcefulness in the city through alternate uses for urban objects and areas.”

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Mader Stublic Wiermann lighting display, Uniqa tower, Vienna. Image from cityofsound.com

On Thursday 24 June 2010 I will be giving a talk at the Interactive Architecture 2010 conference, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.

Featuring an impressive lineup of speakers ranging from Duncan Wilson of Arup Foresight to Usman Haque of Haque Design and Research, and chaired by Fiddian Warman of Soda Creative, the conference will be: “A forum for the building design community to gather and share ideas and experiences around exploiting new technologies to enable the built environment to dynamically respond to people in or around it.” Here is an overview of the conference themes and speakers:

• Sensory: Sound and light
  • Michael Spencer of Sound Strategies
  • Usman Haque of Haque Design and Research
  • UVA
• Metaphysical: Materials and structures
  • Armand Terrulli of Vector Foiltec
  • Duncan Wilson of Arup Foresight and
  • Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino of TinkerLondon
• Art and Play: Community and interaction
  • Ghislaine Boddington of B>D>S
  • Matt Adams of Blast Theory
  • Eva Rucki of Troika
  • Scott Burnham of Urban Play
• Experiential architecture
  • Alex Haw of Atmos
  • Andrew Whiting of Hut

For more information and to get tickets for the event, please go here.

For an excellent overview and image resource of Interactive Architecture in general, interactivearchitecture.org is a great starting point. Another excellent angle on expressive, performative and responsive facades and architecture, this article by the prolific and inspiring Dan Hill of cityofsound.com is well worth a visit.

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Break that phrase down more and you have a real jewel: “the authenticity of action”.

As a motivating concept for almost any pursuit, it doesn’t get much better than that. It also resonates strongly with one of my favourite quotes from my business side:

“We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”
- Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

I love the simplicity of that statement, and the no-nonsense reality that the most effective strategies are in fact no more complicated than doing things. It was fitting that the invitation for the piece came on the back of a talk I gave to a conference in Italy called The Nameless City, as from both a design and urbanist point of view, the authenticity of action and the simple strategy of doing things is the most effective techniques we can employ against the sameness of our visual, narrative and physical landscapes.

The piece is a fleshed out version of one of my The City as Platform talks, as delivered in Italy. It’s a gorgeous full colour A3 production, so please search for it at your local international magazine source. For more information on the publication, you can download a PDF of their English press release here (2.8MB), which also has contact information if you want to get in touch to get a copy or help distribute them. At the moment, they don’t have a website.

They went with an Urban Play identity to illustrate my text, so until you can get a copy, here’s a couple spreads from the issue:

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For most people with even a passing interest in innovative urban problem-solving, the words Jaime Lerner and Curitiba, Brazil will hold special reverence. Lerner is the urban planner and three-times mayor of Curitiba who transformed the once traffic-congested, economically and environmentally challenged city into one of the world’s most livable urban spaces. This Wednesday at the British Film Institute, London, a documentary exploring his innovative approaches for “transforming problems into solutions” in the city will be shown, and following the screening I will be joining Jaime Lerner on stage to discuss his approach and visionary techniques.

The talk will be hosted by Peter Jenkinson OBE, an exceptional individual himself for his work with creative solutions in the face of limited resources. For those of you in London Wednesday 4 November, please come join us at the BFI for this exceptional opportunity. More information on the evening can be found here. For those unable to attend, please watch the trailer above and go see the film as soon as you can. It is a game-changer for urban strategies.

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From Left: Paul Thompson, David Godber, Scott Burnham, Colin McDowell, Otto von Busch

For those who weren’t able to attend the launch of my publication and the related debate on design hacking at the RSA on Wednesday (and for those who weren’t even close but still want a copy) I’m pleased to say that “Finding the Truth in Systems: In Praise of Design Hacking” is now available for download here (PDF, 291KB).

It was a fantastic night – the panel was sharp and the audience was on form with questions and debate afterwards. One of the great pleasures when chairing an event is opening questions to the floor and having a sea of hands spring up in front of you. And for that to happen with a packed house in the hallowed Great Room of the RSA is a special pleasure indeed.

Winding down later that eve I was glad to see that some live tweets were taking place during the session. From joannejacobs:

With some dialogue carrying on into the next day. From jasecoop:

Thanks to all who came, and for those of you who are just downloading “Finding the Truth in Systems: In Praise of Design Hacking” now, let me know what you think.

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Communal Kitchen, IKEA Hacker style

A couple weeks ago I was in Oslo, Norway, following up on an invitation to give a talk about IKEA Hacker there. It was an easy invitation to accept – for one, it was a great opportunity to spend some time in beautiful Oslo, and two, the evening was being sponsored by IKEA, which was a pleasant twist – to talk about Hacking IKEA at an IKEA sponsored event.

One particularly rewarding part of the evening came after the talk, when people were chilling with a few beers. At the periphery of the main seating area were some sample IKEA domestic showroom units still in place from their 2010 catalogue launch, which was held in the same venue. As people began to relax, talk and move around, they rather instinctively began using the mock units as domestic spaces. Conversations were held around kitchen tables (as above), couches were colonised by groups of friends having leisurely conversations – it was fascinating to see these showrooms come to life as people spread out and began using them for their intended “real world” function, set inside the usually make believe world of a showroom. If the stoves had have been hooked up, dinner definitely would have been in the cards. Did the IKEA Hacker spirit break down some barriers? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

On Screen: "Parcours VIKEA" by Daredo

It was a hugely enjoyable time both in and outside of the talk, getting to know Oslo more courtesy of event organiser Paul Amble who gave me a tour of his favourite parts of the city, and also being able to spend time with some great people at IKEA, including Design Director Lars Engsman. Many thanks to everyone at IKEA and in Oslo.

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The reason is that largely, the old model is still at work – huge, expensive institutions are being built as vehicles for regeneration and as catalysts for the ‘creative economy’, but with very little attention being paid to the integration of these institutions into the creative fibre of the city or indeed to the business plans for the years to come. In short: a lot of hardware, and very little software. This isn’t a sustainable approach for the long-term, nor wise in the short-term in light of the global financial slowdown. So my approach, for both good times and bad, is to look in the opposite direction:

Focus on the Micro-Entrepreneur

Famed entrepreneur Mark Cuban said a very interesting thing when asked what his advice would be to President Elect Obama in steering the US out of its financial turmoil:

“Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business…Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. Talk to them.”

The same principles apply to cities and their cultural and creative strategies. This isn’t the time to be investing in the urban macro, when the urban micro, specifically, the urban micro-entrepreneurs, are collectively a far more valid and adaptive force for change and revival in this climate. They are the software that’s needed to run the city’s hardware.

A prime example of how this hardware and software can combine to support the micro-entrepreneur is Sao Paulo’s Endossa.

Endossa is a collaborative store which caters to craftspeople, designers, independent musicians, inventors, foodmakers, and a wide cross-section of creatives “who devote their time to tactile ideas and need assistance to ‘publish’ them.” The principles of Endossa are as follows:

• Rent empty shelf boxes to every micro-entrepreneur who wants some space to sell products, without asking for sales commission.
• Any product can be sold in Endossa from bottles of chilies to handmade notebooks and its time on the shelf depends on demand: high sales means high visibility.
• Create a micro-community of young entrepreneurs and curious people who visit Endossa to get fresh inspiration from the creative pieces inside the store.

In addition to its “real world” benefits, an interesting side effect of the store is its ability to cross-over with online culture.

As shown in A Cor do Brasil’s flickr photo above, people have begun to promote not only their work, but their physical positioning in Endossa online, promoting both their work and the store, and enabling a comments thread online that feeds back to the physical store. The integration with Web 2.0 philosophies is intentional, as Endossa explains:

“Endossa works more like blogger or digg than as a search engine. The store allows everyone to “publish” their products and then lets customers “sort and rank” them through sales… There´s an algorithm. We call it the ‘Every Purchase is an endorsement’ mechanism. Basically it compares the size and location of a rented space with its revenue, and decides if the space can be rented again by the same brand next month.”

Cementing Endossa as a model of a software sensibility within the Sao Paulo creative economy is the reality that within their retail system, “new modules are being added all the time, depending upon the necessities identified by the user.”

Endossa is an exceptional example of the Focus on the Micro-Entrepreneur strategy. Stay tuned or get in touch for more.

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