It quotes Rob Faludi, Julian Bleecker, Bruce Sterling, Adam Greenfield and covers devices from the WineM to Botanicalls to the Ambient Orb along with the original online coffee pot.

A variety of other research papers by the same author can be found on this site.

Download report

(via Mike Kuniavsky)

“At its simplest, slow stands for a focus on quality, authenticity, and longevity rather than a mindless adherence to the faster and cheaper ethos.

This issue is about planning not only for tomorrow, but for the next year, and the next generation. Because if progress isn’t permanent, can it even be called progress at all?”

Here are the longer articles:

Hurry up and wait
We asked some of the world’s most prominent futurists — Julian Bleecker (Nokia/Near Future Laboratory), Esther Dyson, Jamais Cascio (Worldchanging), Bruce Sterling, John Maeda (RISD), and Alexander Rose (Long Now Foundation) — to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed.

Slow burn
Money—not the paper stuff in your wallet, but the bits of data that whip around the world in billions of instantaneous transactions each day—moves too fast.

Built to last
Designer/inventor Saul Griffith argues that we need to stop buying things and then throwing them away so quickly. In short, we need more “heirloom design.”

Mass reduction
Welcome to slowLab, a collective of designers applying a cradle-to-cradle philosophy to consumer goods.

Turning the tables
Tracing the slow-food movement back to its feisty Italian roots.

Pushing the limits
In Oregon, radical antisprawl laws aim to save the state’s bucolic paradises. But with land-hungry suburbs on the prowl, can these goats be saved?

The focus of the sandpit is to create ideas for projects that have the potential for commercial value. The five-day sandpit will be held at Bailbrook House near Bath on 15-19 March 2010.

The challenge of reducing the amount of energy used in buildings requires an innovative and multidisciplinary approach. The aim of this sandpit is to bring together a varied group of up to 30 individuals from industry and academia — in particular experts in human factors and user-centred design — to work together to develop collaborative research proposals.

The sandpit will result in the Technology Strategy Board committing funding ‘in principle’ for consortium research projects developed by the participants. The Board has allocated up to £2m to fund industry-led collaborative research arising from the sandpit.

Deadline for application: 17 December 2009

Read more

(via Dan Lockton)

Here is her short report:

Our shoulders feel heavier today: we just learned from Gian Vincenzo Fracastoro, expert in green energy policies and solutions from the Polytechnic of Turin, and vice-director of its Department of Energy, that the average C02 emission of a Turin citizen is 9 tons per year.

The objective of the Turin municipality is to reduce this by 18-20% by 2010. Solutions, Prof. Fracastoro said, range from a larger district heating (“teleriscaldamento”) network — a method that reuses surplus heat generated from the production of electricity — to the development of renewable sources.

Yet his long-term experience studying, researching and teaching renewable energy matters convinced him that “the major source of renewable energy lies in energy saving”.

In other words, more sustainable lifestyles, together with state-of-the-art eco-constructions (like the building-lab that hosts the events of the Environment Park) will be essential in making us both happier and richer.

Massimo Bricocoli from the Polytechnic of Milan and the University of Hamburg, underlined the importance of the social dimension to enhance environmental sustainability: five case studies from all across Europe highlighted the various roles that city administrations can play in leading housing projects.

In the first case, two elderly educated couples (the so called ‘empty nesters’) decided to move from their big family house to a smaller flat in Berlin within a eco-multigenerational project, where a particular amount of square meters were allotted to people of their age. While they have been very happy with their choice, Mrs Millo, in Trieste, Italy, had a worse experience when she moved into a social eco-house building: the house was said to be very advanced with respect to infrastructure, but since she was not taught how to use it properly, she ended up with very high energy bills and eventually had to switch off all the heating and electrical equipment.

Public administrations — summed up Giovanni Magnano, Manager of the Social Housing Department of the City of Turin –- have a crucial role in making the best of social housing projects. How? By focusing on introduction/learning paths, leveraging virtuoso community dynamics and concentrating on cost reduction potential, not only for the developer, but especially for the residents.

CAT-MED, represented and introduced by the general coordinator Pedro Marin Cots, from the City of Malaga, aims at preventing the natural risk related to climate change by leveraging the convergence of metropolitan strategies and actions. The City of Turin is a member of this project, together with the cities of Malaga, Marseilles, Seville, Valencia, Barcelona, Aix, Genova, Rome, Athens and Thessaloniki, all from the Mediterranean region.

Out of this field work, conducted in the Situationist tradition, there developed a three-year urban project that produced an enormous archive comprising tens of thousands of photographs, case studies, movement profiles, and statistic data.

In this archive, Venice, the place of longing at the junction of three migration corridors, emerges as a front-line European city and an exemplary prototype of the increasingly globalized city in which a decimated inner-city population meets armies of tourists and a parallel economy supported by illegal immigrants.

In a map cleverly branching out into essays, visual arguments, data visualizations, and interviews, the globalized territory of Venice is microscopically dissected and defined as an urban metaphor: the city becomes an “atlas of a global situation.”

Migropolis is two things in one: A survey on the global city using the urban territory of Venice as an exemplary paradigm that makes it possible to anticipate urban escalations to come. And: An experimental investigation of the means and measures of the spectacle to find out if visual media allow an understanding of society.

Migropolis is a book consisting of two volumes, a series of exhibitions and this webpage as a tool that will continuously be updated.

The book

Migropolis
Venice / Atlas of a Global Situation
Wolfgang Scheppe & the IUAV Class on Politics of Representation

Essays by Giorgio Agamben, Valeria Burgio and Wolfgang Scheppe
Foreword by Angela Vettese

1,344 pp., 2078 ills., 17 x 24 cm, hardcover, 2 volumes in slipcase
2009, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern

Buy the book: from the publisher / on Amazon

The exhibition

Migropolis
Venice / Atlas of a Global Situation
Wolfgang Scheppe & the IUAV Class on Politics of Representation

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa
Comune di Venezia

Galleria di Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy
October 8 – December 6, 2009
10:30 – 17:30
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

Available as a print-on-demand book from lulu.com. Click here to order.
Available as a free download here.

The Situated Technologies Pamphlets series, published by the Architectural League, explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism. How are our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics and other “situated” technologies? How will the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the way architects conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing and what do technologists need to know about cities?

In the last five years, the urban computing field has featured an impressive emphasis on the so-called “real-time, database-enabled city” with its synchronized Internet of Things. In Situated Technologies Pamphlets 5, Julian Bleecker and Nicholas Nova argue to invert this common perspective and speculate on the existence of an “asynchronous city.” Through a discussion of objects that blog, they forecast situated technologies based on weak signals that show the importance of time on human practices. They imagine the emergence of truly social technologies that through thoughtful provocation can invert and disrupt common perspective.

Situated Technologies Pamphlets will be published in nine issues over three years and will be edited by a rotating list of leading researchers and practitioners from architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media studies, performance studies, and engineering.

“This show does nothing less than delineate a possible future trajectory for architecture, in which it remains relevant in the development of ’sentient cities’, put frankly. It also implicitly indicates how far architecture has to go to do so. [...] [The show] hint[s] at the new possibilities for architecture enabled by urban informatics, or the increasing impact of networked, real-time, data-driven and responsive/interactive systems on physical objects and spaces.”

The review is now available on the ‘…Sentient City’ site (without links and illustrations however), but I would recommend to read it on Dan Hill’s own blog (where the links and illustrations are present).

Hill points out that “for those who aren’t a subway ride from Madison Avenue, the League’s website smartly and straightforwardly organises more details on the commissions themselves in the context of other writers’ responses, of which this is one, curatorial statements, an open archive, public programs, tweets etc. Interviews are distributed via Urban Omnibus, another fine initiative from the League.”

Also read the review by Mimi Zeiger.

Words on the street
by Adam Greenfield
Ubiquitous, networked information will reshape our cities.

‘Sense-able’ urban design
by Carlo Ratti
Digital elements blanket our environment: transforming our cities, informing their citizens and improving economic, social and environmental sustainability.

London after the great 2047 flu outbreak
by Geoff Manaugh
After the Dutch flu outbreak of 2047 decimated greater London, the politics of the city began to change: everything turned medical.

Your neighbourhood is now Facebook Live
by Andrew Blum
When it comes to technology and cities, today’s thrilling development is that social networking is enhancing urban places [and this is] significant for the future of our cities.

The transport of tomorrow is already here
by Joe Simpson
The main impact on city planning will be mediated through transport infrastructures, freeing up road space as it does so.

Cities have always been about providing frameworks of services to improve the quality of life for residents and businesses. How will social networks, mobile devices, reactive environments, and cloud-based data services transform the experiences of living in cities in the coming years? What new municipal infrastructure will evolve to meet the needs of citizens looking for the type of real time information and configurability they have come to expect from Internet applications?

In his blog, de Waal writes that “first Ben Cerveny of Vurb sketched an optimistic view of the ‘cloud city’ – a future scenario in which citizens could get easy access to urban informatics and use those as the foundation for a blossoming civil society. Greg Skibiski of Sense Networks provided another optimist vision – be it based on a different paradigm – in which urban computing is used as the base of offering ever more personalized information and localization services for urbanites. Adam Greenfield however argued that when taken up in a certain way, the rise of urban computing might do urban culture more harm than good. What is at stake, he argued, are some of the essences of urban culture.”

Read full story

The tool, now called Panoremo, is meant to collect feedback from users in order to evaluate their emotional reaction towards any sort of physical spaces.

This opens up the door to a plethora of possibilities and applications: evaluating an urban environment to know how people feel about their surroundings (emotions in architecture and urbanism), finding out how people feel about that new interior design that you are developing for a new store (emotions in retail design) or identifying the critical emotional points of a restaurant or of a hotel lobby (emotions in experiential services) are but a few of the examples to think of.

“This piece,” Sterling says, “is doing the same futuristic thing that Archigram did decades ago, except for us, for now, in our idiom, with our techniques. It’s far-out, it’s edgy, it’s visionary, it’s truly violative of the given norm, and yet there’s nothing merely cheap and sensational here. These are ground-breaking concepts dressed in a Pop Art battlesuit, and beneath that guise lies profundity. Time is going to be kind to this.”

A small excerpt:

“I’d contend cities are not just engines of invention in stories, they themselves are powerful engines of culture and re-invention. [...]

Cities are the best battlesuits we have.

It seem to me that as we better learn how to design, use and live in cities – we all have a future.”

Read full story

Sitra, the Finnish innovation agency, revealed that the winning team of the Low2No development design competition was made up of Arup, Sauerbruch Hutton , Experientia and Galley Eco Capital — selected out of 74 initial entries — for their C_life – City as living factory of ecology project.

Experientia bring their unique perspective as an innovative experience design company to the project. With a focus on people-centred design, and people’s real needs, behaviours and experiences, Experientia provides a balance to the architectural and financial parts of the project, and considers the impact of sustainability on people’s day-to-day lifestyles.

The competition jury stated that the multinational team leveraged a particularly promising consumer/behavioural framework to empower citizens in meeting the goal of sustainability.

Marco Steinberg, director of strategic design at Sitra and chairman of the competition jury said “A well developed holistic proposal, the strategy highlighted two important insights: the creation of a carbon neutral district dovetailed with consumer oriented planning, thus supporting Sitra’s objective of empowering citizens.”

While other team members devised the architectural and financial strategies for the project, Experientia’s responsibility was to address the delicate theme of how to initiate behavioural change to support a sustainable style of living in this completely renewed urban district. Starting with the concept that people, their contexts, social networks, habits and beliefs are crucial tools for creating sustainable change in behaviour, Experientia explored ways to offer people control over their consumption and to see the effects of their actions on the environment.

Using their expertise in designing valuable user experiences, Experientia’s strategies to empower people’s change include: developing engagement and awareness programs, through services aimed at creating social actions based on green values; using technology to assist people in making decisions, such as energy metres and dynamic pricing systems; producing positive reinforcement loops (with incentives and benefits) for people who live, work and visit Jätkäsaari; and using the community as a knowledge network to share best practices.

Over the next 6 years, the Jätkäsaari district will be designed, constructed and opened to people. From there, the sustainable ideals that govern its day-to-day life will act as a model and example for the rest of Helsinki, Finland and the world. Through Experientia, Turin will be a vital part of this journey.

See also this earlier post on Putting People First.

Locast is an innovative platform for sharing and discovering location-based user-generated videos and production quality multimedia content provided by RAI New media. It consists of a combination of Mobile and Wearable Computing elements supported by a distributed Web application.

Locast seeks to shift the innovation from the wide-spread concept of Web 2.0 to the promising framework of Space 2.0 that keeps the physical and social characteristics of the Italian cities and augment them with the potential offered by pervasive computing.

MIT MEL ran a user test in Venice (Italy) during the days between July 2 and July 10, 2009.

Following the success of drivers of change 2006 publication, Arup Foresight recently published an update.

This new set of 175 cards investigates leading drivers in greater depth that have particular relevance to the work of Arup. They include energy, waste, climate change, water, demographics, urbanisation and poverty.

The cards can be used for developing business strategy, brainstorming, education and to help the reader to gain greater knowledge of the issues which are driving global change. The publication also encourages us to think holistically and creatively.

Also check out the various Arup Foresight blogs:
* future frequency
* emtech primer (by Duncan Wilson)
* global village
* foresight podcasts
* city of sound (by Dan Hill)

Welcome to Lift!
Lift founder Laurent Haug and Lift France chair Daniel Kaplan will explain the theme and organization of the conference.

Initial and necessary challenge: “Technology & Society: Know your History!”
Is technology liberating us or enslaving us? Hardly a new question, says Dominique Pestre… He will thus challenge us to raise our level of thinking and, in searching for an answer, to embrace dissensus and complexity: How can we welcome techno-skeptics in order to produce more sustainable technologies? Can we really believe that green techs will allow us to avoid drastic (and collective) choices on how we live? How can the interaction between markets, democracy, usage, science, code, become more productive?
Keynote: Dominique Pestre, historian of Science, EHESS, Paris

Changing Things (1) – The Internet of Things is not what you think it is!
If the “Internet of things” was just about adding chips, antennas and interactivity to the things we own, it would be no big deal. Discover a wholly different perspective: Open, unfinished objects which can be transformed and reprogrammed by their users; Objects that document their own components, history, lifecycle; Sensitive and noisy objects that capture, process, mix and publish information. Discover an Internet of Things which intends to transform the industrial world as deeply as the current Internet transformed the world of communication and media.
Keynote: Bruce Sterling, writer, author of Shaping Things
They do it for real: Usman Haque (haque :: design + research / Pachube) and Timo Arnall (Elastic Space)

Video: Timo Arnall: “Making Things Visible” [22:13]
A designer and researcher at Oslo School of Architecture, Timo Arnall offers here his perspective about networked objects and ubiquitous computing. His presentation, and the intriguing design examples he takes, highlights two phenomena. On the one hand, he describes how sensors and RFIDs can enable to “make things visible” as the title of his presentation expresses. On the other hand, he shows the importance of going beyond screen-based interactions.

Changing Things (2) – Fab Labs, towards decentralized design and production of material products
Existing or unheard-of things, designed, modified, exchanged and manufactured by individuals or entrepreneurs anywhere in the world; Local workshops equipped with 3D printers and digital machine-tools, able to produce (almost) anything out of its 3D model; P2P object-sharing networks… Are “Fab Labs” heralding a new age of industrial production?
Keynote: Mike Kuniavsky, designer, ThingM
They do it for real: Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Tinker.it) and Michael Shiloh (OpenMoko / MakingThings)

Changing Innovation (1)- The end of IT
Today, corporate information systems are innovation’s worst enemies. They set organizations and processes in stone. They restrict the enterprise’s horizons and its networks. They distort its view of the world. But ferments of change emerge. Meet those who breathe new air into current organizations, those who design tomorrow’s Innovation Systems.
Keynote: Marc Giget (Cnam)
They do it for real: Euan Semple (Social computing for the business world) and Martin Duval (Bluenove)

Changing Innovation (2) – Innovating with the non-innovators
Innovating used to be a job in itself. It has become a decentralized procès which includes, in no particular order, researchers, entrepreneurs, designers, artists, activists, and users who reinvent the products they were supposed to consume. Why is that important? What does it really change? And where will it stop? WILL it stop somewhere?
Keynote: Catherine Fieschi, Counterpoint/British Council
They do it for real: Marcos Garcia (Madrid’s Medialab-Prado) and Douglas Repetto, artist and founder of Dorkbot

Takeaways: Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet’s thoughts from Lift
“NKM“, 35, is Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning and Development of the Digital Economy. Known as an activist for sustainable development, she was minister in charge of Ecology between 2007 and 2009.

Video: Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet’s takeaways (FR) [43:52]

Changing the Planet (1)- Sustainable development, the Way of Desire
What if global warming and the exhaustion of natural resources were in fact, initially, design problems? How do we move from bad, unsustainable design to a design – of goods, services, systems – that is sensitive and sustainable, durable and beautiful, sensible and profitable? Could we build sustainable growth on desire as well as reason, on creativity as well as regulation? Short answer: Yes!
Keynote: Dennis Pamlin, WWF, author of “Sustainability @ the Speed of Light”
They do it for real: John Thackara (Doors of Perception) and Elizabeth Goodman (designer, confectious.net)

Video: Dennis Pamlin: Changing the Planet [23:50]
Dennis Pamlin, who is Global Policy Advisor for the WWF, introduces the ecological challenges we face and contrast them with most of the technological progresses. His talk delineates a set of filters to understand how to judge innovation on conjunction with the long-term consequences they might have on the planet.

Video: John Thackara: Changing the Planet [23:14]
John Thackara, who is director of Doors of Perception, gives a provocative talk about the role of design in finding solutions to the ecological crisis. After inviting us to avoid terms such as “future” or “sustainable” as they maintain a certain distance to the problem we face, he shows a rich set of projects he participated in. He makes the important point that the resources to be put in place already exist and that they might not necessitates complex technological developments.

Changing the Planet (2) – Co-producing and sharing environmental consciousness
Planetary climate change is too large a challenge for each individual. It can quickly become abstract, technical, remote. How can we reconnect individual aspirations, personal and daily choices, to global challenges? How can we all become part of environmental measurement, evaluate and compare the impact of our own activities, become parts of our collective environmental consciousness?
Keynote: Gunter Pauli, ZERI (Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives)
They do it for real: Frank Kresin (Waag Society) and François Jegou (SDS-Solutioning / Sustainable Everyday)

Video: Gunter Pauli: Changing the Planet [55:14]
Gunter Pauli, who founded and directs ZERI, the “Zero Emissions Research Initiative” of the United Nations University in Tokyo, spoke about redesigning manufacturing processes into non-polluting clusters of industries.

Conditional Future
“The best way to predict the future, is to invent it”, said Alan Kay (and Buckminster Fuller). That is only true if as many of us as possible are given the opportunity to discuss, build, experiment and reflect upon their present and their future. Three speakers describe the conditions required to make that possible.
Rob van Kranenburg (Fontys Ambient Intelligence, Council) and Jean-Michel Cornu (Fing)

More videos are being posted to LIFT’s Vimeo, DailyMotion, Blip, Metacafe, Revver and Viddler accounts, so you can choose the platform you like.

Breakthrough cities is a groundbreaking report on how cities can mobilise creativity and knowledge to tackle compelling social challenges. The report was commissioned by the British Council from the Young Foundation. Geoff Mulgan and Charles Leadbeater, established international experts in social innovation and creativity, are major contributors.

The Breakthrough cities report is a unique resource for anyone working in the field of city policy – policy makers, consultants, public employees, workers in the arts or education sectors, NGOs, or simply private individuals committed to improving city lives. It provides inspiring ideas, understanding and guidance that can help make cities better places to live in.

- Download report (1.4 mb)
- Transforming Public Spaces – some ideas from the UK (3.1 mb)

“Given the themes of the conference and who else was speaking I decided to steer clear of potential irrelevance, and had fun superficially exploring an area actually at the frontier of the day’s very themes.
When the smart city will come to be – if it has not already – what will it mean for its human inhabitants?
Even more vertically: what will living in such a techno-cultural milieu do to people’s first-life avatar – to their body – and to their very perception of it?
I briefly touched upon “the body as a terminal” and “the body as a node”, and left “the body as a conduit” for a longer timeframe.”

- View presentation notes and slides (alternate link)
- View presentation video (24:59)

You can also watch other Frontiers of Interaction resentations in English (skip the Italian introduction):

• Elements of a networked urbanism, an excellent presentation by Adam Greenfield, Nokia’s head of design direction for service and user-interface design, and author of “Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing” (33:47)
• The Consciousness Panopticon by David Orban, founder of WideTag, Inc. (12:55)
• Two thoughts by Liam Bannon, director of the Interaction Design Centre of the University of Limerick (8:23)
• The Real Time City by Andrea Vaccari of MIT’s Senseable City Lab (13:09)

See also my earlier post on Matt Jones’ talk at the same conference.

It’s the first in a series whose aim is “to stimulate thought and debate about…radical solutions to real-world challenges”. The intended readers are regional economic development professionals and policy makers.

In May-June last year Experientia (in collaboration with Richard Eisermann of Prospect and Tjeu Arits of Arits Consulting) worked intensively with the City of Genk, Belgium, to set out the project vision and prepare all the application documents in order to gain Flemish Government/ERDF funding.

Meanwhile, the project was evaluated positively and yesterday it was officially launched.

From the launch press release:

Today, the Belgian Ministry of Economy formally inaugurated Humin, a programme developed for Flemish SMEs and start‐ups that creates competitive advantage through people-centred innovation. Sponsored by Limburg/Genk, Design Region Kortrijk, and FlandersInShape, Humin puts design at the heart of every business, enabling Flemish managers to become more effective and more successful. The focus of the programme is on understanding the people who use an organisation’s products and services, using design methods to translate these insights into tangible, bottom line benefits for business.

Over the next two years, Humin will have 1.4 million Euro available to connect businesses and designers, providing innovation tools and methods to SMEs and innovation training to designers. Through intensive workshops and one‐on‐one interventions, designers will coach organisations in the skills necessary to identify opportunities for innovation within their businesses. They will then help their clients to develop these insights into new products and services through design. The goals of Humin will be to:

• Raise the entrepreneurship of 30 Flemish SMEs and start‐ups through the use of people-centred design and innovation methodologies;
• Train 20 persons to become Design Coaches, the experts in people-centred design methods who will support the participating SMEs;
• Create a set of practical tools for both of the above groups that enable innovation and the application of design thinking to business problems;
• Improve the perception of entrepreneurship in Flanders, inspiring individuals and companies to try new methods of innovation;
• Strengthen the international reputation of Flanders as a region focused on innovation;
• Create a community of people-centred innovation practitioners that will prolong the impact of the project beyond its two year running life;
• Develop a body of knowledge (and a means of accessing it) that will provide a legacy for use by the region in the future.

With the generous support of Flanders and Europe, Humin offers an extraordinary opportunity and financial incentive to learn, practice and implement top‐level innovation methods that will provide long lasting benefits to Flemish businesses. Any business or organisation that is trying to meet the challenges of today in more creative ways can sign up as a candidate for the programme. Any designer who feels he/she has the right mix of experience, business understanding and design skill to make a credible impression on managing directors of SMEs should put themselves forth for Humin. But capacity is limited to 30 ‘business seats’ and 20 ‘designer seats’, so please visit www.humin.be for more information and to register your interest today.

The project manager is Dany Snokx, who worked for 11 years at Philips Design in Eindhoven, and for past four years was engaged as creative director for Philips Lighting.

The bilingual (Dutch/English) humin.be website provides plenty of background information.

Recognising the need and opportunity to improve sustainable building practices, the City of Helsinki and Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund are organising a sustainable design competition (rather than just an architecture competition) for a major urban development project.

Called Low2No (implying “low to no carbon emissions”), the competition’s goal is to attract and identify the best teams to design a large mixed-use building complex on a reclaimed harbour at the western edge of Helsinki’s central business district, that would through its exemplary nature set out a sustainable development framework applicable to other contexts.

Despite the short application time frame, a total of 73 applications were submitted. Last week, five teams were selected from a very competitive pool of proposals to proceed to the design phase of the competition.

One of the shortlisted teams is led by the global design and engineering firm Arup, in partnership with the international architecture and urban planning agency Sauerbruch Hutton, and Experientia, the experience design company that this blog is part of.

Arup is highly regarded for its many top-level projects, but also for its philosophy and culture of engineering – and in our field for the many important contributions by Dan Hill at conferences and on his famous cityofsound blog, whereas Sauerbruch Hutton is well-known for the design of the German Federal Environment Agency.

Needless to say that we are very proud to be in such excellent company, and to be the only experience design consultancy in the shortlist.

The five teams are now working on the development of “a design strategy and approach suitable to the challenge, a framework for developing an indicator of sustainability suitable to the challenge, and a vision for the project that will inspire stakeholders to overcome the challenges of systemic change”.

The jury “will be instructed to evaluate the proposals based on evidence of systemic thinking. More than a design, we are look-
ing for a credible strategic framework for change, and the principals upon which the framework was built.”

Experientia will be taking a human-centred angle in its partnership with Arup and Sauerbruch Hutton, emphasising the fundamental impact that people’s behaviours can have on sustainability. Although we cannot disclose too much (the competition is still going on), we will surely be exploring a full plethora of research and design approaches, from ethnographic research to interaction design, and from service design to strategic communications. It will definitely be a great challenge for us to test and prove the fundamental role of a human-centred perspective in this pivotal project.