Beyond Boundaries

Cigarette machine vending BOOKS via Inhabitat German publishing...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 01:12:48 -0400

Cigarette machine vending BOOKS

German publishing company Hamburger Automatenverlag found a brilliant new use for old cigarette vending machines — instead of icky cigarettes, the re-purposed “machines” carry a series of condensed novels, photo books, graphic novels and collections of poetry by local authors. The new initiative for book distribution is a throwback to the conventional vending machine and promotes literacy in a clever and charming way.

As smoking regulations keep getting stricter and prices continue to soar, the cigarette vending machines that used to be commonly found in convenience stores, restaurants and bars are now things of the past. The machines are valued for their robust mechanics however, and Hamburger Automatenverlag just needed to make a few small adjustments to transform them into book vending machines (a layer of paint, eye-catching graphics and some shiny new hardware).

The machines request 4 euros in coins (approximately 5 US dollars), which is inserted into the front of the unit. Then, after a small tug on a spring-loaded knob, the requested book is dispensed. The restored vending machines are also part of a public art series that will be distributed around they city of Hamburg.

+ Hamburger Automatenverlag

Via COOL HUNTING

Strong Women, Small Movements, Incredible Change In a time and a...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:01:00 -0400

Strong Women, Small Movements, Incredible Change

In a time and a place where women did not have a voice, Wangari Maathai stood sound against the most forceful powers in Kenya to protect the people and environment of her native country. Maathai’s initial small act addressing the needs of women in her village turned into a movement that ultimately helped bring down Kenya’s twenty-four-year dictatorship. Along the way, the movement grew to provided new sources of food and income to rural communities, gave previously impoverished and powerless women a voice and role in creating change within their country, and reclaimed the country’s land from 100 years of deforestation.

As quoted in the New York Times today, “Wangari Maathai was known to speak truth to power,” said John Githongo, an anti-corruption campaigner in Kenya who was forced into exile for several years for his own outspoken views.

Starting with the simple act of planting trees to address the need for water and firewood in her village, Maathai started a movement that resounded throughout her country. Now her institiution that was started in 1977, The Green Belt Movement, has planted over 35 million trees and has greatly contributed to sustainable development in Africa.

At first, Maathai and the women from her village were seen as voiceless nothings. However, no matter the women’s simple agenda, harassment from the government began when they noticed the strength of the organization. An effort to debase womanhood was emphasized. There are clips of Kenya’s President, Daniel arap Moi, laughing and degragating Maathai and the acts of the women who work with her. Maathai’s response to the harassment was simply, “…we are planting trees for our country. A legacy for our children as our ancestors left a legacy for us. So let us not be pushed around.” One of the women from the village stated, “Wangari has given me the strength to know if I fight for something, I can make it happen.”

It’s the people who set their environment. It’s the people that must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in.

Wangari Maathai
(April 1, 1940 – September 25, 2011)

More here:
The Green Belt Movement and the connection between poverty & environmental concerns

“…there are signs within the design community to...

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:52:00 -0400

“…there are signs within the design community to advance service design. One of the issues motivating current research is the idea that service designers create multiple contacts, or touchpoints, between service organizations and their clients, including material artifacts, environments, interpersonal encounters, and more. The identification of touchpoints as an object of service design is a clear step away from the imposition of the goods-centered paradigms of the past.”

The Object of Service Design
Fernando Secomandi, Dirk Snelders

“Wicked Problems” Structuring Social Messes with...

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 13:51:00 -0400

“Wicked Problems”

Structuring Social Messes with Morphological Analysis

via Swedish Morphological Society

“If you work in an organisation that deals with long-term social, commercial or organisational policy planning, then you’ve got wicked problems. You may not call them by this name, but you know what they are. They are those complex, ever changing societal and organisational planning problems that you haven’t been able to treat with much success, because they won’t keep still. They’re messy, devious, and reactive, i.e. they fight back when you try to deal them.”

Introduction
In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, both urban planners at the University of Berkley in California, wrote an article forPolicy Sciences with the astounding title “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”. In this landmark article, the authors observed that there is a whole realm of social planning problems that cannot be successfully treated with traditional linear, analytical (systems-engineering-like) approaches. They called these wicked problems, in contrast to tame problems.

(A year later, in his book “Redesigning the Future”, Russell Ackoff (1974) essentially put forward the same concept — although in less detail — which he called a “social mess” or “unstructured reality”.)

more here

Image from What is “Design thinking for wicked problems?”

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION IN THE HOME - info graphic Kelli...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:28:00 -0400

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION IN THE HOME - info graphic

Kelli Anderson : The Collaborative Home
info graphic (get a closer look here) she created for Collaborative Fund

via designworklife:

“With a lay out and design based on the exploding diagram, the graphic aims to envision ‘how the concept of collaborative consumption could replace traditional consumption in the average home’ — an intrigu ing con cept and design. Be sure to click over to this post on her blog, where she gives plenty of insight into the concept and con struc tion of the piece.”

Life is a typographic sculpture by Joonho Kwon about female...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:14:00 -0400

Life is a typographic sculpture by Joonho Kwon about female North Korean refugees.

Link to video of sculpture: http://vimeo.com/25717077

via iamtibo

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 07:37:07 -0400

““It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting...

Creating a Local Food System in Abandoned Buildings “The...

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:45:11 -0500

Creating a Local Food System in Abandoned Buildings

“The Plant is a project combining adaptive industrial reuse and aquaponics to create Chicago’s first vertical farm.”

The plan is to use abandoned buildings to create a local food system in Chicago… moving the food production to where the food is consumed in the city.

Innovated techniques are being tested to create less waste. “The whole project is about closing waste loops. So that nothing that leaves this facility, but food.”

Changing Education Paradigms Here is a brilliant illustration...

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:55:22 -0500

Changing Education Paradigms

Here is a brilliant illustration that suggests some of the reasons why today’s public education in America is failing.

Conflict Kitchen Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that...

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:15:47 -0400

Conflict Kitchen

Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States government is in conflict. Please help us to realize the next stage of the project, “Bolani Pazi”, an Afghan take-out restaurant.

It is easy to forget that behind all of the government conflicts there are people and a culture. When this personal connection is lost, things become dangerous.

It is easy to forget that behind all of the government conflicts there are people and a culture. When this personal connection is lost, things become dangerous. Conflict Kitchen creates a public forum and space for discussions that might not normally take place, mediated by food.

Conflict Kitchen also programs public events to more directly connect everyday Americans with everyday people from the country of focus. For example, Kubideh Kitchen brought together members of the public for a live Skype meal between Tehran and Pittsburgh, during which groups in both countries shared the same meal on a virtually connected table: an inter-continental dinner party.

“SocialDesignSite.com is a non-profit organisation that...

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:56:00 -0400

“SocialDesignSite.com is a non-profit organisation that aims to foster a discourse on social design through our international online platform and the organization of and participation in projects, exhibitions, conferences, lectures, etc.”

The Geneographic Project-Human Migration, Population Genetics,...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:51:06 -0400

The Geneographic Project-Human Migration,

Population Genetics, Maps, DNA

The Geneographic Project is a study of our human ancestry. As Geonographic Project Director states, “I want it to draw people together to make people realize that we are all part of an extended family and that our DNA connects all of us into a very tight-knit group”.

The Power of Conversation via The Interaction Institute for...

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0400

The Power of Conversation

via The Interaction Institute for Social Change

Here Jack Ricchiuto, talks about building community and collaboration through conversatoin, and he mentions the “shadow conversations” that keep us from success.

Ricchiuto names the following four conversations with power:

Dream Space Conversation – this is the possibility conversation, and many of us are familiar with vision exercises. He says it is a conversation that takes us 20 years out, one generation. He reminds us that the depth of our vision correlates with the depth of our passion, and he invites us to create spaces that facilitate the alignment of our dreams

Small Acts Conversation – I find this one to be a great corollary to the dream space conversation because it gets us talking about what we can do. Given where we want to go, what is it that we can do right now? I also like it because it gets us out of the trap of big plans, the fantasy games that we play when we try to project every step into an uncertain future. This conversation gets us started, it allows for the early prototype.

Gifts Conversation – This one is the asset based conversation, the conversation that finds out what it is that each one of us brings to the table, what is it that we already have in our hands and how is it that we put it to work for our dreams?

Invitation Conversation – This is where we look around, we appreciate who we are and what we have and we decide who else to invite, who are the people that might want to be a part of this dream?

Learning Landscape by Jill Yoe Graves Posted here are pictures...

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:38:00 -0400

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Via The Institute For Figuring

Via Project H Design's Photostream*

Learning Landscape

by Jill Yoe Graves

Posted here are pictures of Project H’s pilot program for Learning Landscape at Kutamba School for AIDS Orphans in Uganda. The Learning Landscape uses a grid-based design in an outdoor space to elementary math (“including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as spatial and logical reasoning through individual and team-based competition”). However, in the four installed Learning Landscape projects that followed, teachers adapted the system for geography, language arts, and science material. In fact, the design itself encouraged teachers and students to work and develop their own games. When the game is not in use, benches can be placed over the tires (old, unused and found locally) to create an outdoor classroom.

What I think is so special about this project is that it makes more aware of how we can learn from the spaces and objects around us.

When BLDG BLOG discussed Project H’s Learning Landscape they connected the project to an exhibit at the Institute for Figuring that I feel is worth mentioning here. Here is a section of their write-up:

In an unbelievably interesting exhibition held two years ago in Pasadena, the Institute For Figuring explored the educational system of a now relatively under-known man named Friedrich Froebel and his influence on what we now call kindergarten. To quote from their online exhibition at length:

Most of us today experienced kindergarten as a loose assortment of playful activities – a kind of preparatory ground for school proper. But in its original incarnation kindergarten was a formalized system that drew its inspiration from the science of crystallography. During its early years in the nineteenth century, kindergarten was based around a system of abstract exercises that aimed to instill in young children an understanding of the mathematically generated logic underlying the ebb and flow of creation. This revolutionary system was developed by the German scientist Friedrich Froebel whose vision of childhood education changed the course of our culture laying the grounds for modernist art, architecture and design. Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller are all documented attendees of kindergarten. Other “form-givers” of the modern era – including Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Georges Braque – were educated in an environment permeated with Frobelian influence.

I don’t mean to imply here that Project H’s “math playground” in Uganda is an example of Froebelian education – because, as far as I’m aware, it is not – but I do mean to say that it would be amazingly cool if the spatial environments of modern life were organized more along educational lines.

*Here is a link to Project H Design’s Photostream on Flickr

PLMS6040 Compostable Polymer via National Design TriennialWhy...

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:26:26 -0400

PLMS6040 Compostable Polymer

via National Design Triennial
Why Design Now?

“Kareline’s PLMS is a natural, fiber-reinforced PLA (polylactic acid) that is biodegradable and has applications for consumer electronics, packaging, toys, and other goods. The matrix plastic is PLA, a compostable thermoplastic that is derived from renewable resources such as corn starch and sugar cane. PLA is a sustainable alternative to traditional plastics made from polyethylene, for example, and can be injection-molded and used in the same kind of products as its relative. The fibers that reinforce the PLA are wood-based pulp fibers from a certified forest-stewardship program in Finland, and are manufactured in an environmentally friendly manner. They also improve the technical performance in the injection-molding of the PLA, including the temperature range under which the end products can be used.”

Location: finland

Fascinating Opportunities in the Pacific Garbage Patch!

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:16:11 -0400

Wow. Check this out. We know that there’s a huge pile of garbage in the pacific. A famous...

How’s Your State on Public Education? GOOD Blog >...

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:53:00 -0400

How’s Your State on Public Education?

GOOD Blog > Nikhil Swaminathan on January 14, 2010 at 4:30 pm PST

Education Week released, “Quality Counts 2010,” its annual report card on the state of public education in the U.S. today, praising some states and taking others to task on their stewardship of molding the next generation.

What I find most interesting about the report is that states that score high marks on the metrics bundled under the heading “The Teaching Profession” (pdf) aren’t the states that are topping the list titled “Chance for Success” (pdf).

For the group of measures that include teacher quality and compensation, the top five states are: South Carolina (which earned the survey’s only A grade), Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Maryland. However, that translates into success grades of C, C-, C-, C, and B+. respectively. (The U.S. average for “Chance of Success” was a C+.)

Maryland is the only one of those five states whose teachers are apparently responsible for its students’ success; the others just seem to have “qualified,” but ineffective instructors. (In case you were wondering, the five states that offer students the best chances for future success are: Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Minnesota.)

This disconnect adds further fuel to the fiery conundrum of what makes for a good teacher. It’s a question we’ve discussed on this blog and that is covered in the latest issue of The Atlantic. Clearly, the debate rages on.

The Grand Challenges of Engineering Should Also Be the Grand Challenges of Design

Tue, 18 May 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Post By Elmer Atienza I recently discovered this website and webpage...

A 23-year-old Kenyan’s solar-powered LED lantern helps...

Mon, 17 May 2010 10:00:00 -0400

A 23-year-old Kenyan’s solar-powered LED lantern helps light rural homes

Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) — The villagers’ faces light up as Evans Wadongo arrives. Men, women and children sing and gather around as he shows how his invention — a solar-powered LED lantern — will soon light up their homes.

“These families, they are so poor. They don’t have electricity,” said Wadongo, a native of rural Kenya. “It’s only kerosene and firewood that they use for lighting, cooking.

“The amount of money that every household uses to buy kerosene every day — if they can just save that money, they can be able to buy food.”

Wadongo, 23, not only is giving his country’s rural families a way to replace the smoky kerosene and firelight with solar power, he says he also hopes his invention will ultimately improve education and reduce poverty and hunger. And he’s providing it for free.

Thanks for sharing, Courtney!

Post by: Samantha Morgan Logan Passion….it’s what it’s about-

Sat, 15 May 2010 19:37:00 -0400

Post by: Samantha Morgan Logan Passion….it’s what it’s about-