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Impossibly Starck (Wired)

(link) Philippe Starck's latest creation -- a plastic chair -- earned its name on the first sketch: Mr. Impossible. The French designer said it simply couldn't be made. The challenge? The weld. Polycarbonate chairs are typically formed using a single mold, but Starck's translucent design required two: one for the legs, one for the seat. Fusing the parts using existing methods would mean an unsightly seam, so the engineers at Italian furniture maker Kartell had to forge a new technique. The key was a very big laser. Trained at specially formulated polycarbonate, it left a seam smooth enough to create the illusion Starck had imagined: a chair that appears to levitate. We reached across the ether to elicit the designer's thoughts. Like Starck's design, our conversation seemed to float on air.

Wired: What was the inspiration for Mr. Impossible?

Starck: The speed of evolution of our civilization and the dematerialization that rules all our production. Take the computer: It was the size of a room, then a briefcase. Now it's a credit card. You cannot dematerialize a chair completely, because you must continue to sit on it. But you can make it invisible. That's why I made the Mr. Impossible with a double shell — it's basically made of air.

Wired: Recently, you have begun to look at the environmental impact of your designs. How does a plastic chair fit in?

Starck: The stupidity of the ecological movement is that people kill trees for wood. It's ridiculous. The best ecological strategy is to make products of a very high creative quality, so you can keep them for three generations. I prefer to make a very good chair in the best polycarbonate than make any shit in wood that will be in the trash one year later.

Wired: Why not use recycled plastic?

Starck: It's a little joke of a material. You can do almost nothing with it. And I also refuse bioplastic, which comes from something that people can eat. Scientists agree that we have a real food problem, a famine approaching. It's a crime against humanity to take something you can eat and make a chair — or use it as gas for your SUV.

Wired: How do you reconcile those principles with your position as creative director for Virgin Galactic?

Starck: Every project should fit the big image of evolution. You can consider Virgin Galactic as something only for rich people, but you can also analyze the incredible help that it will give us. The exploration of space is a vital part of our evolution. We don't have any future if we don't go into space. This world will explode in 4 billion years. We have time, but not so much.

Heaven for Hells Angels (Wired)

(link) The Harley-Davidson is more than a two-wheeled miscreant-hauler; it's one of America's most important indigenous technologies. The 45-degree V-twin engine has remained remarkably unchanged since it was introduced in 1909. Now the Harley has its own museum, which opened on July 12 in Milwaukee, the bike's birthplace. Inside the steel-framed compound, you'll find plenty of antique bikes and memorabilia, including the original outlaw: Serial Number One. There's also a "family tree" that shows how engineers modernized the distinctive two-cylinder engine without sacrificing its signature raw rumble.

But confining all that heavy metal thunder indoors would be sacrilege. So Pentagram, the chief design firm on the project, turned 20 acres of industrial land into hog heaven: The three buildings containing galleries, archives, and the obligatory store are arranged around an intersection of 60-foot-wide roads — broad enough for four rows of parking and two traffic lanes, just like at Sturgis — creating an ever-changing exhibit of visitors' bikes. "It's important to have a real museum," Pentagram architect James Biber says, "but also to have a kind of museum on the street." There's car parking as well, but the lots are a bit of a hike from the entrance; this is one stretch of pavement where motorcycles always have the right of way.

Motion Granted (Print Magazine)

Duck into a narrow passageway off a quiet street in New York’s West Village, step down half a flight and over some sandbags, and you’ll find yourself in the looking glass world of Michael Sporn Animation. Last fall, the Museum of Modern Art honored Sporn’s 35 years of work with a retrospective, including his animated versions of the children’s books Lyle the Crocodile and Doctor Desoto, which was nominated for an Oscar. But I stopped by for a representative look at animators’ ongoing struggle with their digital tools. Animators, more than most designers, are caught these days between commercial and fine art, between serving their clients’ workflows and their own creativity.

Sporn knows these divides well, even if he mostly avoids them. The basement studio looks like something out of a Spike Jonze film, with creaky computers, hissing radiators, scanners propped on swivel chairs and inks stacked against the wall. His colleague Matthew Clinton walked me through their hybrid digital/analog process: Sporn’s films begin life as hand drawings on traditional light boxes, before being scanned into Photoshop and stacked (by frame and character) into hundreds of layers. After Effects puts time into the equation, then Final Cut Pro stitches everything together. “But mostly, we’re using the computer as a camera,” says Clinton, who then can’t resist using After Effects to make Rousseau, the philosopher, skit across a beach in his bathing costume towards Gertrude Stein. (Don’t ask.) What’s so striking about his demonstration is the technical simplicity of the process. Sporn explains, “For the moment, what I do works, and there's no real reason to abandon it until I have a true replacement with which I feel completely comfortable.”

Sporn’s methodology is neither quick nor cheap, but few others have that luxury, shabby as it may be, of taking things easy. Most animators working in advertising, television or videogames have strict deadlines and budgets. For them, the challenge is deciding whether to buy inexpensive software, often used ad-hoc, or to spend big bucks for specialized programs. And, especially when it comes to 3D, they are still grasping for horsepower and stability. 

But price remains the biggest issue. Anzovin Studio, a small computer graphics shop in western Massachusetts, recently switched its 3-D work from Animation Master to Maya, the powerhouse now owned by Autodesk. On the face of it, their choice was simple: Maya is more broadly used in pipelines for animation and gaming, which was the work they wanted. But going from a program costing $300 “a seat” to one costing $2000-$5000 was a large step. “We had to build up the studio to the point where we could get the software and hardware needed to go after those other jobs,” says David Boutilier, Anzovin’s VP/Production Manager. It’s a classic business scenario, except this isn’t a big piece of equipment, or a new office, but software.

No such choice is perfect, or without consequences. A client’s existing “assets” may demand the use of yet another program, like XSI, by Softimage (itself a subsidiary of Avid). That means another five grand, to start. “Companies have created tools and assets and pipelines structured around how a 3-D program works, and for the animators to change means not only an outlay of costs for the new 3-D program, but they also have to create a whole new set of tools,” explains Phil McNagny, who teaches 3-D animation at New York University and is a founding partner at Kickstand, an animation R&D lab.

The situation is just as volatile in 2-D animation. For most freelancers or small- to mid-range studios, the de facto reigning program is Flash—emphasis on “de facto.” It’s the most inexpensive and accessible choice, and plenty of television shows have been built around it, but Flash was never intended for complex animation jobs, and some artists want more. The simmering discontent in the community bubbled to the surface in January, when influential animation blogger Amid Amidi, of Cartoon Brew, posted the news that Lili Chin and Eddie Mort, creators of ¡Mucha Lucha!, one of the first Flash-based television series, were “truly over” the program and its “buggy filters.” Commenters exploded with angst over Flash’s limitations versus its accessibility. “Flash was never meant to be a tool for character animation,” insisted “Slowtiger.” “That it was used to create lots of, and sometimes really great, character animation, only proves that an animator will use any tool within his or her reach, no matter how awkward it would be.”

Many small-time animators are likely to continue using Flash just as he describes, partly because it’s the only affordable way for them to stay in business. While Chin and Mort have said they are switching to Harmony, the enterprise-level program from Canadian software maker ToonBoom, for their next project, freelancers and up-and-comers can only dream of such an upgrade. “A lot of us would probably like to use Harmony,” said commenter “::smo::,” “But we’re not loaded, or studios.”  I caught up with “::smo::”—real name, Thomas Sebastian Smolenski—while he was touring the country with his band in a biodiesel bus. Smolenski gave up the Pale Force cartoon he had been animating for Conan O'Brien, but he’s still animating from the road, on a tablet PC loaded with Flash. “I couldn’t do that with a light table,” he said. “Flash has helped people like myself put a foot in the door. Before, no one would outsource to some punk kid out of college. There are a lot of small studios springing up because of this.” There may be an Oscar nomination and 30 years of experience separating Smolenski from Sporn, but both animators have learned that when it comes to their industry’s software, there’s only one standard: making do.

Ocean Current (Wired)

Climb aboard the world's first marine-energy test bed (Wired.com)
Giant whirlpools, 100-knot winds, some of Europe's mightiest tides: The icy waters off Scotland's northern tip are no place for pleasure craft. But they're ideal for power-generation systems that harness the restless fury of the sea — which is why the European Marine Energy Centre has set up shop in the Orkney Islands.

Think of it as the Bonneville Salt Flats of hydrokinetics: EMEC offers companies a place to try out their clean tech. The center's remotely operated vehicles film underwater, and microphones will eventually monitor for noise pollution. First in was Dublin-based OpenHydro, which recently began trials on its second turbine (shown here raised for inspection). Carbon-free hydrokinetic power could ultimately provide up to 20 percent of the UK's electricity needs. But environmental concerns may still sink the effort: Critics warn of industrialized coastlines and harm to sea life. The US faces similar challenges — without a testing facility. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has okayed a pilot marine-power project for Makah Bay, off the Washington coast, but environmental approval is still pending. By the time the inevitable court battles are resolved, the waves may be lapping at our doorsteps.

7 Days Later (Wired)

(Wired.com) Green subdivisions are the vaporware of the home-building industry. But northwest of London, British developers are pulling one off on a scale that Americans are still only mocking up in Photoshop. The site, dubbed Oxley Woods, already features 90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres. The factory-made dwellings make good on prefab's promise of low cost and quick construction. They take as little as $118,000 and seven days to erect: five in the plant and a day and a half onsite, where crews slide and screw together the modular pieces. (Electrical, plumbing, and other finishing work takes another four weeks.) Manufacturing the major components offsite reduces waste and makes it easier to use green materials, like insulation from recycled paper and lumber harvested from sustainably managed forests.

But the biggest advantage is improved build quality. The same precision manufacturing that makes an Ikea bookshelf easy to assemble makes the Oxley Woods homes nearly airtight. But that doesn't mean they aren't well-ventilated. Each abode has an environmentally responsible cherry on top: A self-contained unit called an EcoHat controls circulation with a tiny 10-watt fan, pushing out stale air and drawing in fresh stuff, which is then solar-heated to warm the house. Maybe they could ship some of these gems over the pond — the US housing market could use a breath of fresh air.

Work With Me (Print Mag)

A look at new technology that could change your desk-jockey ways (PrintMag.com)

In February 2006, a New York University research scientist named Jeff Han took the stage at TED, the big-ideas conference in Monterey, California. Standing behind a sort of glass easel, wearing a black turtleneck and jeans, he could barely contain his excitement. “I really, really think this is going to really change the way we interact with machines from this point on,” he said. As he began to demo his new “multitouch” screen—resizing photographs with a pinch, pawing across digital maps, and tossing documents around like playing cards—the audience gasped in delight. Hyperbole aside, Han was right. After two decades of pointing and clicking, here was the possibility of interacting directly with our data. With the sweep of a hand, he had softened the hard line between the physical and virtual worlds—the line that keeps most of us glued to a keyboard and a mouse day in and day out.

The next part of the story you already know. Last January, another man in a black turtleneck and jeans stood up in front of a bigger audience and announced the iPhone. A few months after that, you could buy one (more than four million of us have) and a new interface settled into everyday life. But we still only use it at a small scale, even if it’s obvious that the Han-style interface would “really really” change the way we work.

Saint Brad (Metropolis)

With his Make It Right project in New Orleans, Pitt may be on his way to becoming architecture’s most important patron. Is architecture up for the challenge? (link)

“So you’re a design junkie too?” Brad Pitt said to me, leaning out the door of an RV parked in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans one evening in December. I was his last interview of the day, and the lines around his blue eyes were thick with fatigue. Outside, a street party was starting up, with a zydeco band and a gumbo truck. There were flashbulbs and Angelina Jolie with Maddox, and Jerry Lee Lewis taking a turn at the piano. But the guests of honor were the people from the neighborhood, dispersed by Hurricane Katrina. Pitt’s new nonprofit, Make It Right, wants to help them “get a house” by providing the difference between their assets and the cost of rebuilding. The catch was that they had to choose one of the sustainable designs by 13 different architects—an amazing list that included Thom Mayne, David Adjaye, Shigeru Ban, and Kieran Timberlake.

“Our idea was, OK, these people need help rebuilding, so let’s bring in the great minds that we can find. And that was really exciting for me, being the fan that I am,” Pitt said, perched on the edge of the RV’s banquette. Are you bringing these architects here, I asked, because you enjoy working with them? “That’s one of the benefits certainly, but it’s not the driving factor.” So why do it? Why bring not just architects here but some of the world’s best? “I’ll tell you why,” Pitt said, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. “Because these people suffered a horrific event, and truthfully great injustice in the aftermath, and they’re still suffering that injustice.

So what are you going to follow that injustice with? Crap houses with toxic materials and appliances that run up their electricity bills and may lead to a foreclosure? I mean, really. This to me is a social-justice issue. And to create something that’s equitable and fair and has respect and provides dignity for the family within is absolutely essential to rebuilding here.”

Since when do movie stars have a better sense of architecture’s possibility than most architects? Post-Katrina New Orleans—like post-9/11 Ground Zero—was supposed to be a moment when architecture would prove its relevance. Instead, architects and planners came in like the cavalry, full of expert opinions about what New Orleans should look like and where it should (or more to the point, shouldn’t) be rebuilt. The result was that rather than providing houses, they seemed—in the name of good planning—to be taking them away. “It felt to me that architecture was trying too hard to make its point,” remembers Steven Bingler, founder of Concordia Architecture & Planning, in New Orleans. And was anyone really surprised? Architecture has always had trouble connecting with the masses. There’s that famous, perhaps apocryphal, statistic—architects design two percent of American homes—and the bald fact of the contemporary American landscape, with its big-box stores, chain restaurants, and bland condominiums.

Carbon Neutral U (Metropolis)

In the age of global warming, the greening of the American college campus is a largely grassroots effort driven by students, faculty, and in-house staff dedicated to sustainable thinking. (link)
In late 2005 Yale University president Richard Levin exercised the considerable prerogative of his office and announced that his institution—with its 5,500 residents, 21,000 commuters, and 1.7 million square feet of office space—would slash its greenhouse-gas emissions. His chosen target seemed attainable enough: a 43 percent reduction by 2020, which would bring the university ten percent below 1990 levels, thereby exceeding Kyoto Protocol goals. More than two years later Yale’s carbon graph is a beautiful site in an otherwise Sisyphean struggle. The university has already cut emissions 17 percent, with projects under way expected to cut another 17 percent by 2009—putting Yale a decade ahead of schedule in reaching its target. The even better news is that Yale is far from alone among universities: nearly 500 schools have signed the American College & University Presidents Cli mate Commitment, which sets them toward climate neu trality by a specified date (although it’s toothier than it sounds).

But Levin isn’t smug. An economist by training, if anything he’s frustrated by the wide view. “We’re showing it can be done, but our carbon savings are miniscule compared to what needs to happen,” he says on the telephone one morning. “And even if you put all the educational institutions in the world together, it still doesn’t add up to much. The answer has to come from governments, and I think the major reason for doing this is to enlighten the public so that ultimately governments will get serious about it.”

Yale and other schools are being spurred to action by a catch-22: the environmental moves they make on campus matter far less than what they teach their students—and what their students teach the world. But presidents and professors realize that the best way to teach students is through what they do on campus. Today’s campus sustainability movement is balanced be-tween nuts and bolts and big ideas. Local action has replaced global symbolism.

The Accidental Environmentalists (Metropolis)

A chronic problem with employee retention led this pragmatic client to building green. (link)

NAVY FEDERAL CREDIT UNION
Pensacola, Florida
Client: Navy Federal Credit Union
Architect: ASD

When Ebb Ebbesen began work six and a half years ago on a call center for 250 telephone operators, he never imagined it would transform into a green corporate campus with 3,000 employees and more than half a million square feet of office space—all of it LEED rated. In fact, he had never even heard of LEED. “There was no sustainability road map at the time,” recalls Ebbesen, senior vice president of construction and process improvements at Navy Federal Credit Union, which is the largest member-owned credit union in the world, with more than $30 billion in assets. “But I knew what we were looking for: a building where employees are pleased to come to work in the morning and still smiling when they leave at night.”

This wasn’t just kindness but corporate necessity. At the time, Navy Federal’s turnover rate for telephone operators surpassed 60 percent annually. Ebbesen’s primary task for the new building was to turn that around. But he had no corporate checklist for environmental happiness—until he realized that LEED would be close enough. “Once we started going down through the point structure, it helped us make decisions that would continually reflect on this idea of ‘employee focus,’” Ebbesen explains. “We used the LEED template for discipline.” Today Navy Federal’s Heritage Oaks campus, in Pensa cola, Florida, has a turnover rate of 17 percent and is expanding so fast that Ebbesen has his superiors eyeing the property next door.

When did this become the story of green? Architects and corporate facilities managers will often look across a table and—garnishing their declarations with an anecdote about a trip to the rain forests or something desperate their teenage daughter said—proclaim that green is the right thing to do, that green will pay for itself in energy savings, that green will serve as a highly visible symbol of their organization’s commitment to an optimistic future (and their shareholders too). All are undoubtedly valid motivations. But the confounding surprise of Navy Federal’s Heritage Oaks campus—designed by Atlanta’s ASD—is that they are saying none of those things while doing all of them.

Hard Focus (Print Mag)

Digital technology is transforming photojournalism in hot spots around the world. (link) (photo by Riccardo Gangale)

What does conflict look like? Some people are fortunate enough to know only from the photographs they see in newspapers and on the web. But between the moment a picture is taken and its appearance on our computer screen or in our morning paper there exists a technologically remarkable chain of communication. Gone are the days when photojournalists lugged a chunky Rolleiflex TLR into the field and sent film home on planes. Digital technology has streamlined the process—while adding a few of its own complications. To find out more about how technology is changing photojournalism, I tracked down a few of the conflict photographers who travel around the world from hot spot to hot spot, snapping images and sending them back to their editors at home.