Perception

Rory Sutherland makes the assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value. Can we extract more value from existing situations and places through a change in perception?

LP

00:/ go travelling…first stop Istanbul

00:/ are this week participating in the Architecture Foundation exchange to Istanbul as well as the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona starting tonight wtih a presentation at the Istanbul Technical University. Istanbul is of particular relevance as a research ground as it has not undergone the degree of atomisation of societal structures that we have seen in London and by consequence Istanbul presents an opportunity to forensically examine the strengths and weaknesses of a living civic economy.

We see this as an opportunity to further investigate and discover emerging development models that leapfrog next-practice such as in Uganda, where banking infrastructure leapfrogged past high street banks and straight to mobile banking; or the energy leapfrogging as seen at a city level in Rizhao, China, where 99 percent of households in the central district use solar water heaters and most of the lighting and traffic signals are powered by photovoltaics.

The exchange should provide some fertile ground for such conversations….watch this space for updates over the next few days.

AF

Locational micro-blogging

http://foursquare.com/
http://gowalla.com/

A couple of neat smart-phone apps helping to socialise the process of submitting place-based reviews (mainly restaurants and bars) and building a gaming environment for people to drop and collect ‘gifts’, and be rewarded for their loyalty to particular shops/restaurants/places. A cool way of building a shared database of local knowledge about stuff… perhaps a platform for dropping location-based community news and pledges…?

Site Inter-use

Stalled development site behind Ruston tower turned into 5 aside football pitches.

Did you know?

AF

Digital Neighbourhoods

Indy and I went to an event organised by Kevin Harris at Local Level along with Networked Neighbourhoods and Capital Ambition yesterday. It was a really useful event seeking to figure out the research questions we need to get into as neighbourhood and local community websites are increasingly becoming a pervasive model of how local people communicate with each other and create a dialogue [progressive or otherwise] about the places in which we live.

What became apparent was that the these platforms are effectively creating the ‘agoras’ / public squares of the 21st Century, the places where local people are coming together and being discursive about their neighbourhoods in a way we haven’t seen physically happen for at least the last 30 years and the world seems a far messier place these days. This is simultaneously exciting and somewhat terrifying because it has triggered a whole bunch of bigger questions:

> how can and should Local Authorities and local service providers engage in a real-time emergent discourse about Place?
> is this an officer level communication or a corporate communication?
> the need for radical shift in the desicion making architecture of Local Authorities and councillors to respond to new social media and how they are organising the civic economy of neighbourhoods
> does an essentially 19th Century institution and governance model have the capacity to govern emergent real time discourse and innovation?
> where does legitimacy come from for online communities given that only about 1% of wiki users [for example] are actually creators of content?
> what are the limits of crowdsourcing and when do some decisions just need to be made [we went to representation democracy for a reason - every time another person joins a group the decision making time period increases]
> what can a community realistically change i.e. what is local value – what is the role of the state as an agent of public value – where do these things come together and how?

Its an absolute fascinating set of questions – because they are fundamental to the redefination of the state as an enabler, to the citizen as a civic actor and to all the questions of inclusiveness, accountability, legitimacy, roles, rules and responsibilities that this infers. What seems to be the key is the system itself – the transparency of roles and culture. There is some research coming out of this and I can’t wait to have a read.

Indy @ RUDI

Indy recently gave this talk at a RUDI event on Socio-technologies and analysing use. A useful insight into our approach to design and regeneration – one that concentrates on use values and place – not urban and architectural form. He asks questions about the information and communication structures designers employ with their clients that  have concentrated on matter to tackle socio-economic issues. He talks about how 00:/’s methodologies challenge this modus operandi in our understanding of behavioural logic together with technological solutions, and of the  social logics of design in time and use – not just space. Fundamentally, we have realised that it is no longer viable form of practice to rely on concept drawings and design as a form of art to stay relevant. We are finding that we need to engage on many levels, from service design to financial modelling, and how those elements “behave in space” because this is what is relevant to our clients, and more importantly to our communities and places. Architects and designers need to reassess the tools that they use to analyse, understand, communicate and design.

AF

Retrofit for the future : 00 wins contract for low carbon social housing refit

00:/ was recently awarded a contract with the Technology Standards Board as part of the £3.5m Retrofit for the Future competition.

Iain Gray Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board said:

“Housing in the UK accounts for 27% of carbon emissions and more than 60% of the houses that we will be living in by 2050 have already been built. To meet the UK’s target of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, we must dramatically improve the performance of our existing housing stock.

“The social housing sector includes over 4.5m homes and the challenge is to come up with innovative and well tested solutions so that when these buildings are refurbished, they are done so in a sustainable manner that is sure to make significant cuts in carbon emissions. “

“This is an opportunity to ‘kick-start’ the social housing retrofit market by connecting the organisations that will be refitting housing, such as social landlords and local councils, with innovative and capable suppliers so that together they can develop a range of high performance and cost effective solutions.”

AF

00:/ Changing Practice_ RIBA Research Symposium 2009

Last Thursday Indy spoke at the RIBA Research Symposium 2009 Changing Practice, along with an interdisciplinary mix of practitioners, theoreticians and researchers including Anne Lacaton, Keith Bradley, Stephen Hill, Liza Fior and Jonathan Charley. The symposium aimed to provide a context to present the challenges and opportunities to architectural practice – to look at and question the ways in which we operate. Amongst the talks there were some inspiring examples of how architects have strategically challenged the status quo, along with passionate rallying calls for us all to take responsibility for changing the profession.

It will be well worth downloading the papers from the RIBA Research website when they become available.

10:10 Age of Stupid

Back in April a few of us went to see this film by the makers of the McLibel documentary. In a similar vein, The Age of Stupid tells the story of human kind looking back on itself from the future (2055) and asking how we could have saved ourselves from a climate apocalypse. Its an insightful documentary, which really emphasises the critical crossroads that we are at – in how blinkered our society is to the damage that is being done by a small percentage of the worlds population to the world, and our inability to believe that there is a real problem. I’m sure there will be a lot of debate by climate change experts, climate change non-believers, etc … but the really provocative moment for me was the live Q&A session after the film. Having been shocked into the urgency of the need for pro-active change in our consumption patterns, the post film momentum launched straight into a cornering of Ed Miliband, putting pressure squarely at his doorstep and his actions at the Copenhagen Summit in December – seen by many as the seminal moment in the future of climate change. And beyond the content of the film, the way in which it was financed and launched is another fine example of the micro massive. The film was made possible through a combination of volunteering and crowd funding that ranged from small donations through to larger investments with a share of profits in return. The launch of the film was organised as a People’s Premiere with screenings simultaneously held at over 60 cinema’s across the UK, with a solar powered link up to the premiere in Leicester Square. Basically – the film would not have been feasible without the involvement of the crowd.

For me, the film surfaced many questions about the role of the individual – how disempowered  many of us feel from being active citizens. And at what point do we stand up and become accountable for our actions. What will it take to shake us from our apathy?

Well – yesterday, the team Stupid launched the 10:10 campaign at the Tate Modern, that asks individuals and institutions to vow to cut their carbon footprints by 10% with the hope of creating enouogh mass momentum to be able to challenge the UK government to  make the same commitment. Supported by everyone from Stella McCartney, Ken Livingstone and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall to the RSA, NHS Hospitals and energy company Eon, there will be the inevitable critics out there who will debate the affect of a single persons actions – but as we are seeing more and more, it is the collective action of many individuals coming together that is the solution – a solution made from simple everyday actions. Its not complicated.