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Neri Oxman: Design is Truly Alive
Ethan Zuckerman, Worldchanging
Celebrated designer Neri Oxman wonders what is the origin of form? How do we invent form? Is it a preconcieved image of narrative? Intelligent design? Getting rid of the stone in the way, as Michelangelo speculated?

If form is to follow function, how is that function tested and evaluated?

It has been my assumption that design by shift of perspective may be, perhaps, considered a second nature.

I’ve accumulated a set of design research experiments inspired by nature. Pioneers in this approach are few. Like Buckminster Fuller, they are immense in stature, the form finders of the 1970s. They asked not what an object wants to be, but what a material wants to be. They developed a hands-off spirit towards design which has profound implications for how we make things today, and how we perceive sustainability.

Nature offers not forms, but processes to think about forms – recipes that mix material and form together, relationships from which form emerges. She’s been mapping precedents and procedures, using a method she’s invented called computational form finding. A designer can approach these tools and edit within the set of constraints.

What’s a natural way to design that use and utlilize natural principles and embrace technological advancement? What would nature 2.0 look like? Would we be beating nature? Or designing a sustainable way.

She shows a microscoping photograph of the membrane of an eggshell. It looks like an insulative ceiling panel. She explains that, like many things in nature, it’s made from fibers. It allows heat exchange, and also has profound strength. If you understand this image, she tells us, you’ll understand her entire work...
(26 Oct 2009)

The launch of the economical environmentalist
Natalie Bennett, the guardian weekly
Part of my job is to spread the word about the Weekly and to keep up with the latest intellectual and cultural trends. So that means I go to quite a few book launches. I've done grand venues – the British Museum King's Library stands out, although I confess I've now forgotten the book in question; and I've seen some seriously expensive catering – scallops and enormous king prawns float into my memory.

None of those would have been at all appropriate for the launch of Prashant Vaze's The Economical Environmentalist, in which a former government economist records his research into the facts of the greenhouse gas emissions of everyday life and practical efforts to live a low-carbon life. And so, as you'd expect, we didn't get anything like that last night at the book launch, held at the modest but comfortable venue of The Hub, handily close to King's Cross station. Of course, no one would drive to this launch – in fact most had cycled, judging by the enormous collection of Bromptons (clearly public servants' – and Prince Philips' – folding bicycle of choice) stacked behind the reception desk.

The food was simple vegetarian fare of samosas and vegetable crudites (none greenhouse-grown of course - for I'd learnt with surprise from reading the book that British greenhouse-grown tomatoes are "vying with beef and mutton for the title of the most climate-deadly UK food"). Although surely those samosas weren't done in the microwave (they were delightfully crisp), even though I'd learned that microwaving takes only 0.8MJ/kg, as opposed to frying's 7.5MJ/kg.

But then one of the cheering points about the book is that the author is neither proscriptive nor preachy: he's an economist, he's given you what must be the clearest and most accurate data available on every possible lifestyle choice, and with it some surprising facts. If you live in Britain and eat a kilogram of Kenyan beans every week, that's the equivalent of flying yourself to Kenya once a year. And if you cover your windows with cling film, you'll save considerable amounts on heating – but other members of the household are likely to object. But he's not going to tell you what to do – he admits he's going to keep doing some heavy-carbon things, and expects that readers will too...
(21 Oct 2009)

Where Home Is, The Heart Isn't
Bill Kauffman, The Wall Street Journal
The middle of America, so long treated with mirth, mockery and mawkish condescension by coastal smarties, is shrinking. "The Heartland's most valuable export," write husband and wife sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, is not "crops or hogs but its educated young people." This migration has devastating effects. From North Dakota to upstate New York, a youthful exodus is "hollowing out many of the nation's small towns and rural communities."

To study the problem at its source, Mr. Carr and Ms. Kefalas set up shop in Ellis (as they choose to call it), a streetlight-less town of 2,000 souls in northeastern Iowa. After interviewing scores of graduates from the local high school about their decisions to leave—or remain—in the Ellisian fields, the authors sort their subjects into four categories: Achievers, Stayers, Seekers and Returners.

Achievers score well on SATs and imbibe the poisonous assumption that success can be measured by the distance one travels from home. They are prodded to abandon Ellis by a public school system personified by the high-school principal, a stat-besotted No Child Left Behinder who believes, say Mr. Carr and Ms. Kefalas, "that the job of an effective educator was to nurture and send off talented youth, despite the fact that doing so meant the town was slowly committing suicide."

Thus to achieve is to leave—shaking off the dust of a hick town and migrating to exotic locales with "diverse cuisine and more varied shopping." (How rich such a new life must be!) Uprooted, the achievers/leavers "start to see Ellis the way outsiders do: parochial and just a little redneck." How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Chicago's Hard Rock Café?...
(19 Oct 2009)
I totally resonate with this article. The town I grew up in is one of these places. However, I also resonate with Lisa Rayner's sentiments from her article we published on EB a few months ago:

-KS

PopTech's America Reimagined: Bringing Brains Together at the Coolest Conference You've Never Heard Of
Ashwin Seshagiri, planetgreen
Every year, an improbable cast of characters descends upon the sleepy town of Camden, Maine for an often under-hyped, consistently jaw-dropping event--the PopTech Conference.

PopTech's tagline is simply put: world-changing people, projects, and ideas. It's a collaboration of people who are using technology, creativity, and the collective power of storytelling to address some of the most challenging issues facing the world today.

Alex Steffen, the man behind Worldchanging, spoke in 2006 about the sustainable future of the planet. Caleb Chung, the inventor of the Furby toy (remember 1998, anyone?), spoke about the unique intersection of artistry, empathy, and the science of technology.

The highlights of past PopTech conferences are smattered with stories like these--people you may or may not have heard of before, talking about everything from the most complicated scientific stuff to the simplest of childhood toys.

However, what is constant among all of them is that, despite the gloom and doom of world hunger and poverty and climate change, these are all people who are wildly optimistic of the future. They believe that together we can make a big difference.

They are, as some might say, change makers...
(29 Oct 2009)