The United States of Design. From GM to 3M, in boardrooms and on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and
on Madison Avenue, design matters more than ever. Around the globe,
American designers have never been more influential. Welcome to an
unexpected and inspiring moment.
Jeanne Gang
Founder, Studio Gang Architects
When Jeanne Gang talks green architecture, she means more than solar panels and LEED certifications.
She means using the sun's angles to carve the shape of a building like Aqua, her 2010 addition to
the Chicago skyline that uses cascading waves of concrete balconies to create a natural shading
system for each of its 82 stories. She means "projects that involve the coexistence of human
populations and wildlife," such as the recently completed Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo. The
boardwalk and bent-wood pavilion were built to give Chicagoans a stroll unlike any other in the
Windy City, around a pond that was so well restored from ecological death that it now functions as a
habitat for local fauna. "By seeing wild-life that can coexist in urban settings, people will learn
to appreciate it," Gang says. More on Fastcompany
Infographic Of The Day: America's 50 Most Influential Designers
Link tip: index : award
How do you capture the present state of design in
one single chart, with only 50 names? You don't. But, inspired by the
effort of those 50, we gave it a shot in Fast Company's 2011 design
issue.
In Fast Company's 2011 design issue,
we focused on American design: What it means, where it stands, and
where it's going. And so naturally, we thought it necessary to create a
list of the country's most influential designers. We could have left it
as a list, and that would be fine. It would have enraged a few people,
enlightened a few more, and that's it. But instead, we wanted to gave
readers a bit more insight into what "design" actually means today. Say
it with me now: Infographics, to the rescue!
Fast Company's 2011 design issue
Saul Griffith: Designing for the decades
Saul Griffith is one of the smartest green designers around.In addition to designing things to last, Griffith says that we need to change the way we consume to favor the timeless and shun the fashionably disposable. He thinks we need to make a radical shift and stop selling far products. He told Good.is:
The principal and only way to make an heirloom product is to design something that people will need not just this year, but for the next 50 or 100 years. Choose good materials that will last that long; but in essence, don’t even bother making fad products. If you have to design something, choose things that we need as opposed to frivolous things that we might just want for a month or two for bragging rights. In many respects, designing heirloom products means saying no to designing consumer crap that you know will not last very long.
Read the whole interview over at GOOD.
LINKS
DesignObserver Interview > Design Matters / Alex Bogusky and John Bielenberg
VIDEO > TEDxGreenville - John Bielenberg - A New Collaborative Capitalism - COMMON Brand
Bielenberg has recently partnered with Alex Bogusky and Rob Schuham
to form COMMON, a new brand of capitalism that replaces competitive
advantage with collaborative advantage and believes that benefiting
people, communities, society, the environment and future generations is
the new advantage in business.
Stefan Sagmeister: 7 rules for making more happiness
Stefan Sagmeister from BrightSightGroup
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