Green Building Advocates in Philly_Expanding Green

I read this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about green building advocates in Philly and the continuing buzz about efforts there to bring sustainability more in the forefront of doing business rather than the background. As we head further into spring and the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth day it's good news to read about the continued growth in the green movement in nearby cities and communities.

Given our Vermont perspective of small is beautiful and unique, it's important to be reminded there's a much larger world out there than what we see here in our verdant green mountains. It's large, messy and in trouble. It's easy to fall into a myopic mindset thinking and conceiving of only the scale we know here in Northern New England. It's important to expand our thinking to scales beyond our own frame of day to day understanding.

It's great to read about the large commercial real estate properties being affected for the positive by going "green" and how its starting to figure into corporate bottom lines, PR and Marketing. Maybe there is something we can learn from each other, small cities to large and vice versa? I know Vermont has been an early adopter of many aspects of the green movement but we can't rest on our laurels and extend our impact without expanding the conversation and learning from other efforts elsewhere.

Please check this article out and let me know if this has any impact on you?

Exploring tonality_Ink washes and natural subjects

Here's some recent ink wash drawings I made over the last week or so. I recently picked up a Sumie Ink Wash brush and was enjoying trying it out on some subjects close at hand. I often am painting in full color with watercolor so working only in tones was a treat and very informative to me. With the Stones image, I found the ink wash behaved very differently on the 140 lb cold press watercolor paper than on the 90 lb drawing paper. On the heavier paper it blended so nicely and moved through the sizing in very interesting and somewhat unexpected ways.

On the lighter paper, with the Flowers,the ink wash laid more on the paper surface with a more spotty, dappled light effect. I had to layer successive wash tones atop one another to achieve a greater tonal range. But very interesting still the same. What do you think? Any suggestions?

I often believe all I need are stones, trees and water as my subject matter. The compositional and conceptual opportunities with just these three are endless and continually inspiring. I find relief not to be thinking about buildings but rather get lost in elements of the landscape such as these. I spend a lot of time designing buildings and spaces. I look to natural influences like these stones and flowers to provide respite and renewal emotionally, creatively and professionally.

"Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us", a review

I want to share a little book which might positively impact your business and creative life. I just finished Dan Pink's new book "Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us". It wraps together some new and older research on cognitive science, psychology and business process thinking. You can also hear Dan speak about his new book and his ideas at his recent Ted Talk. It's captivating and illuminating.

The main premise of the book is that what used to motivate us, the extrinsic carrot and the stick incentives of if you do this...then you can get that etc., or if you don't, "this" will happen to you. He says this is much less useful in today's world where people are looking for more intrinsic motivators. In fact Pink proposes Motivation 2.o based on this older view of motivation needs to be replaced by Motivation 3.0, one which recognizes the rising importance of finding a sense of personal autonomy, mastery and purpose helping to fuel our motivations and personal drive.

As Dan says, "We need an upgrade. And Science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: (1) Autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery - the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves."

The book sets up this idea of Motivation 3.o by first examining Motivation 2.0 and making the case of how the carrot and sticks approach while very appropriate during the 20th century and still useful as a base today isn't enough. He talks about Type "X" people, those motivated by extrinsic rewards or motivators like financial incentives, increased prestige, role power, getting your name in print. He then shares how as we have moved into the 21st century there has been a transition from extrinsic to the intrinsic or Type "I" with the rise in volunteer ism, the phenomena of open source fed group fed media like Wikipedia, success of viral mass participation enabled by the internet through texting aid to Haiti as another recent example. People are plainly responding to more intrinsic motivations. They want more than just carrots or sticks. Dan illustrates how this "leads to stronger performance, greater health, and higher overall well-being".

During the section on Mastery, Pink speaks about the impact of "Flow" a concept championed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. We all know about Flow as it's the feeling we experience when we're in the groove on the court, painting pictures, playing music or working together where individual personalities disappear and the work magically gets done and done well. He theorized people " are most happy when they are in state of flow - state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situationl. "The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment and skill - and during which temporal concerns (time, ego-self, food, etc) are ignored. " (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihály_Csíkszentmihályi)

As a creative business person and someone who engages in high levels of collaborative design and interaction, whether in design charettes, business meetings or interactions with colleagues, this concept of flow is something I experience often. It's a magical place to get to where personalities disappear replaced by a focus on the design challenge at hand and finding purposeful and appropriate solutions.

That's one of the reasons why I want to share Dan Pink's book with you and its ideas. Our work lives can be filled with a sense of fulfillment, excitement and yes, at times, rapture! Please let me know what you think, if you've experienced this shift from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation in your work, creative and personal life. Does Dan Pink's Motivation 3.o resonate with what you're observing in you work and life? Tell me how. I'd be psyched to get your perspective and share it with others.

Making Meaningful Places and Spaces

As an architect and shaper of place and space I grapple with the dilemma of how and why to integrate nature into the buildings I'm involved with and how to make them meaningful for those who use them. Designing buildings and places involve a conversation of sorts between a building site, the people who use it and required functions to fulfill the building and site program. Couple these layers of design with the needs for a building enclosure, required equipment, various building systems, furniture and finishes and you have a very complex conversation indeed which is why I like architecture so much. It's not simple, but it is extremely interesting.

With all of this inherent complexity, I see design framed within the beguiling simplicity of nature and behavior. I say this because, architecture when reduced to its essential, provides shelter from the elements and a setting for human interaction. Meaningful places and spaces are those which rise above mere perfunctory performance and speak to something extra. You know these buildings and places. They are the ones you and others cherish. They are the special places forming the rich texture of your memories and life. The house or dwelling you grew up in. The library you visited when you were a kid. The places of worship or places of meaning you experienced over the course of your life. Sometimes you had this feeling outdoors, perhaps some special hike or time spent along a stream looking a water curling around rocks.

Architecture when it's really powerful and successful, engages your body and its senses similar in a way when experiencing a great work of art or sculpture. You kind of get lost in a reverie of sorts. It's kind of hard to explain. But it is powerful. I think architecture and place-making are at there very best when they fully and completely involve nature and create compelling and memorable spaces for interaction. The other enriching aspect is all of the wonderful people you meet and the friendships you make along the way.

Doing just that is a life long process of discovery and learning.

A Design Story - My Yellow Pelikano Junior Fountain Pen

Why do I love my see through yellow Pelikano junior fountain pen so much? I'm an architect and designer and am wildly attracted to high value low cost design. This is the pen I can afford to lose and continue loving! It costs $11.50 from the Paradise Pen Company and is generally plainly affordable online and in stores.

The pen is very pleasing to look at, lightweight, easy to use and the nib is well, nimble and pliable with an easy writing style, great to sketch and draw with. It takes ink cartridges from Pelikan (those are the best fitting). It's nimble in action unlike other entry level pens with stiff steel nibs costing five times as much as this one!

The Junior is a fantastic example of a well-executed affordable mass-produced design. It's iconic rounded forms resonate with comfort along with the practicality of the shaped rubber finger hold near the nib. I like the yellow case color best because the rubber finger rest is yellow regardless of the case color. The yellow pen case and grip present a unified appearance missing in the other colors choices where its more complementary, ie bright red and yellow grip, bright green and yellow grip etc.

The translucent enclosure allows you to see how much ink is left in the cartridge and helps visibly lighten the pen. Nothing is hidden and it's very, very simple.

I was in a pen shop over the holidays browsing and looking at much more expensive pens. The cases, materials and nibs were all joys to see and behold. However, half-way through my reverie I remembered my last nice pen and how I lost it. I was watching my son play baseball, laying on a blanket. The pen fell out into the grass and was probably mowed into oblivion by a college age worker the next day. I winced at the memory and put down the expensive pens. The salesperson smiled less happily when I asked him if he had any Yellow Pelikan Juniors? I left the store ecstatic in purchasing a piece of modern art and knowing I could lose it any time I wanted.

The pen delights me and lifts my spirit. And that my friends is what I think great design is all about!

On reading Dan Pink "a Whole New Mind" as a precursor to "Drive"

Last summer at NeoCon 2009 Dan Pink lectured to a standing room only crowd in Chicago on ‘Motivation’ which I attended. There Pink expanded our thinking about what drives motivation and creativity. This is the subject of his new book "Drive", just released. Because Drive wasn't available then, I picked up his 2005 book a the conference, "A Whole New Mind", a New York Times and Business Week Bestseller to form a clearer context while reading Drive which I just now purchased. Here's an overview from his site:

"The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate. That’s the argument at the center of this provocative and original book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times. " (from D.Pink.com)

Pink illustrates work through the ages in an apt visual metaphor of a Neanderthal hunter-gathering, to a farmer in agrarian based society of cultivation and production, leading to the factory, then to knowledge workers, a trend coined by Peter Drucker a generation ago, to today's stage showing a cultural creative wielding a paint brush and palette. (p.50). The cultural creative wields the paintbrush like a conductor of a symphony. In fact he calls it a “150 year three act drama” beginning with the Industrial Age, leading into the Information Age and shifting yet again now into the so called “Conceptual Age”. It’s a time where “high touch and high concept” form the armature around the core of information age type skills and work. In short, we need to move beyond reliance on old patterns of work and production borne from the Information Age.

Today, the distribution of left-brain dominated work overseas leaves an uncertain future for today's workers like accountants, bankers, computer programmers, engineers of all kinds, customer service professionals in call centers etc. As a work culture we saw great success honing these skills and developing new information technologies. In a sense we’ve put ourselves in a developmental box which we must figure out how to leap over by shifting to new behaviors.

He asks us to ask ourselves three basic questions; "Can someone overseas do it cheaper? Can a computer do it faster? Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age?" If you answer yes to any you might continue reading on to the second part of his book.

Working with the Right brain or R-directed thinking as Pink describes in the Part two of the book may lead us into an more empowered future. Pink identifies six creative forces to help our collective transition - Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. Hearing Pink emphasize the importance of Design at NeoCon as a driver of business and value creation immediately peaked the audience's interest as a lead into his thoughts on what motivates us. He used this as a lead-in to how the “carrot and the stick” incentives based approach is broken and needs to be replaced by more effective strategies.

He worked us up by describing the power of design to transform brands, organizations, our built environment and eco-cultural realities. Successful design integrates functional, cultural, financial and environmental concerns together in a sometimes less than rational manner. The power of story, the ability to orchestrate complex parts in symphonic manners, to build empathy and significance, to be playful and most of all find and bring meaning to our work and the value it produces can shift the world of work firmly into the “Conceptual Age”. Using creative value adding R-directed thinking can help companies differentiate themselves in the global as well as local marketplace.

Five years after publication I see only further transformation of our nascent social media present where so many of us text, tweet, facebook and update our status on Linked-In. Nouns are now verbs in the topsy turvy world of R-directed value creation Pink foresaw five or so years ago. Shaping experience and perceptions alongside the information stream so vitally sustaining our world now tends to take precedence over the L-directed skills so relevant to the information age.

Over the last five years did Pinks book inspire companies and individuals to see their situation anew and shift their behaviors modeling on what they learned in the book and others like it? I know I’ve read other books written around that time by Tom Friedman (The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded) and IDEO’s Tom Kelly’s “Ten Faces of Innovation" sharing similar factors and trends. Taken together they must have shaped businesses and thinking around innovation. I will be looking for examples of companies and thinkers who used these ideas and see what happened. Did they find success? Did they build great brands and innovative products?

With last year’s economic disasters I wonder now how valid is Pink’s premise is that we’re in the “Conceptual Age” and success lies in R-directed creative oriented thinking? The Conceptual Age as Pink described was based on a time of abundance and prosperity. That evaporated over the last year and a half. When it’s not so easy to do business is this kind of thinking essential or expendable? Times like now require rapid adaptation, invention and a flexibility and willingness to try new ideas and strategies. In short, it demands a desire and passion to innovate and motivate, to make moves outside of the box.

I’ll be looking for answers to these questions both near and far and hope to report back over the next few months about what I find. I’m looking for companies and entrepreneurial types who read Pink’s book and for better or worse worked with “A Whole New Mind’s ideas”? Contact me with your suggestions. As an architect and designer I hope they proved useful and I’d like to learn more about the realities of working with them.

Net Zero Low-Income Modular Homes in Colorado

I wanted to spread word of a model net-zero affordable housing project located in Lafayette, Colorado, a city located in Boulder Country about 40 miles from Denver and 10 miles from Boulder.

(image courtesy of BCHA)

The Paradigm Pilot Project, a single family home and a duplex showcase a mix of super-insulated building envelopes, smart site orientation and use renewable energy sources, combined with passive solar design strategies. The building design use a fairly straightforward modernistic vocabulary of 13 rectilinear boxes easy to manufacture in a factory setting. What's hopeful is this is an experiment of sorts to be studied and leveraged into a much larger 153 Unit housing project in the planning stages in Lafayette. It uses geothermal

The project was designed by HB&A Architects,and built by All-American Homes for the Boulder County Housing Authority. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory / Department of Energy were also partners on the project.

You can find out more about the project on the Green Building Advisor and later covered at Jetson Green. You can see helpful information about it at the Housing Authority's Website.

Here's a link to a powerpoint about the project from the BCHA site. The site also shows the construction process with highlights being the installation of the modular factory built units and solar system installation. One interesting note is the project used both evacuated tube type solar hot water and solar electric panels as part of the system. The jury's out here on the efficacy the evacuated tubes but it's interesting this technology was used on the project.

All in all, this project is an inspiration to those of us in cold-climate regions and of use to others close to home here in Vermont. Perhaps some of the lessons learned from this project can be used here on our affordable housing projects. I know Efficiency Vermont is doing it's best to partner with other non-profit and for profit developers and housing authority's to continually upgrade our housing stock, whether new construction or renovation. It's Multi-family Housing Design Checklist is a very thourogh guide helping with efficiency measures and low-energy usage. They also provide financial incentives and technical assistance to clients and project teams to extend the value of the check-list.

Perhaps with the far-away inspiration of the Colorado example and the close to home specifics of the Efficiency Vermont's checklist this will help move us forward!

"Workplace Matters"...a design and organizational process resource

I ran into Kevin Kelley from the GSA public building service at NEOCON East in Baltimore last fall.

He mentioned Workplace Matters, a GSA applied research design book published in 2006 as a great resource for those interested in the design of the high performance and sustainable workplace. Kevin was a principal author along with Kevin Kampschroer, Kevin M. Powell, Judith Heerwagen and Intern: Patricia Cheng. Though it's a few years old now it offers an in-depth overview and explanation of the GSA's design process along with a variety of case studies illuminating best practices in application in the field at GSA projects around the country.

The book explains why the workplace matters in Government (or private settings). It identifies on page 8, "The emphasis of workplace design should be on the people and the work they accomplish. The cost of people in a building is typically 10 to 12 times the cost of the building’s infrastructure." So often, in designing, conceiving and constructing workplaces, the focus is on first costs rather than long-term operational costs and the soft-costs of human capital. This is unfortunate as much can be done in the design and implementation of workspace positively affecting long-term organizational effectiveness, while serving the public good. This is the heart of the message of this book and it's case studies.

Some Key GSA processes which emerged from the book:

• Using a Balanced Scorecard in the design process: The system is a mission driven measurement and management tool developed by two Harvard professors. Specifically it analyzes key financial, business process, human capital, and customer outcomes and creates a “balanced” perspective on how well the organization is performing and helps guide improvements.
• Quantitative and Qualitative Discovery Toolkit. GSA’s WorkPlace program develops design concepts and proposed solutions by seeking to understand how organizations tick, their mission, goals anFeedback Loop. GSA’s WorkPlace program uses a modified version of Deming’s “Plan, Do, Check, Act” continuous feedback loop. The hallmarks of this process are clearly identifying connections between business/workplace goals (plan), designing solutions (do), measuring organizational outcomes (check), and improving upon the originally identified business/workplace goals (act). objectives, the make-up of the people, their clients etc. The GSA uses quantitative analysis of space use, turnover rates, absenteeism, and costs. The complement this by using qualitative tools such as a Web-based workplace satisfaction survey. They also conduct visioning sessions focused on seeking out organizational goals, behavioral norms and workplace expectations.
• Change Management: The GSA cast a wide net involving as many employees in the process with surveys, workshop and targeted focus groups. They gather information to influence thinking and build consensus about new ways of working and organizational behavior. This helps shift the organization from a entitlement to needs based space- allocation culture.
• Feedback Loop: Their program modified Peter Deming’s “Plan, Do, Check, Act” continuous feedback loop process which identifies links between business/workplace goals (plan), designing solutions (do), measuring organizational outcomes (check), and improving upon the originally identified business/workplace goals (act). (paraphrased from p.14)

Workplace Matters also tackles other issue such as dealing with "Generations at Work" where Millennials, Generation Y, Generation X and Baby Boomers all work together in the topsy turvy world of the blended workplace. Each generation has its own work /life expectations and proclivities in the workplace. It's part of the story and any considered design process. Steelcase provides an interesting white paper on this subject as well entitled Millenials at Work.

For those interested in specifics on their process check out the chapter/ section on "Deep Dives", the workshop driven, data collection, brainstorming process so important to involving key stakeholders and deriving key design constraints.

All in all the book provides a very helpful complement to other Workplace Design resources written about on prior blog posts. It's a great find and better yet it's freely available online!

Give me your feedback on how valuable or informative resources such as Workplace Matters are to you in your work developing the high performance workplace!

Thanks!