The Salvation Army’s Turk Street Center is that rare building which both honors the context of an historic district and stands out as decidedly contemporary.

The new building at 240-242 Turk Street was completed in July, 2008 after five years of programming and an intensive Planning Department design review process followed by 28 months of construction, which included the demolition of an existing building.

In designing a rippling facade of metallic bay windows the architects, Herman Coliver Locus, have capitalized on San Francisco’s vernacular building style and affirmed its functionality for the architecture of urban streetscapes.

Photograph by Tim Griffith

By coloring some of the window frames blue or yellow, as shown above, the architects sought to allow residents the possibility of identifying the location of their apartment and thereby lessening the anonymity of  the wall of windows.

The eight-story building has 113 apartments, 110 of which are studios with 358.5 sq. ft. Three are 2-bedroom units with 912.5 sq. ft.

by Lucio Flavio Pinto
translated from Portuguese by James Denison and Cassia Leal

It was a challenging spectacle that took place in Belem, the ninth version of the World Social Forum, bringing global solidarity to the Amazon. What really resulted from this initiative? That is the question that remains. One of the few things that remain after its departure.

Among capitals in Brasil, Belem has one of the lowest percentages of green space per capita, although it is located at the entrance to the Amazon, which contains one-third the world’s tropical rainforests. The most extensive green areas remaining in the city are the campuses of two federal universities, the UFRA and the UFPA, which hosted, for a week, the ninth edition of the World Social Forum, which ended on February 1st. These woods are surrounded by two of the most populous and dangerous districts in the city, Guama and Terra Firme, which contain 10% of the 1.4 million people living in Belem, and some 15% of its crime.

Guama grew by receiving migrants from the interior, who were thrown off of their native lands by the arrival of the new colonizers. These colonizers brought with them cow farms, timber mills, agricultural plantations and mining operations that are responsible for the largest destruction of forests in the history of humanity (the equivalent of expanding Sao Paulo to three times its size in only four decades). Terra Firme became overrun with miserable motels that were installed to receive desperate laborers who were forced off of their land and then urbanized by being herded up by the same coyotes who manage the manpower used to destroy the land where the natives used to live.

In meetings held in Terra Firme to prepare for the Forum a group was formed to ensure the participation of local people. But the idea of local participation evaporated because of the non-participation of NGOs and organizers who were in charge of the event. Furthermore, participation became an impossibility because of the 30 reais (15 dollars) entrance fee to the Forum that nobody could afford.

The Forum discussed none of the problems afflicting the enormous and chaotic outskirts of Belem, where one will find what is considered to be the largest flatland favela in the country, Paar, teeming with 140,000 inhabitants. In addition, Belem is the second most violent city in Brazil, after Recife, in proportion to its population. Ironically, during the week of the Forum, it was the very problems of these neighboring districts that inspired disdainful diatribes, on the internet, from the Sunday social columnist who writes for O Liberal, the paper that is owned by and represents the interests of the moneyed elite in the State of Para.

The international themed conference held in Belem, to emphasize the “Amazon question” and to provoke ideas and arguments about what to do about the current environmental situation, did not dare to cross the police barrier that isolated the dangerous districts, within whose limits are embarrassing black spots on the city’s image. Uselessly these neighborhoods looked on as the mob of foreigners held their unusual events. Locals from these neighborhoods did not participate in the hundreds of scheduled events, nor enjoy meaningful interactions with the foreign festival goers, but merely sold knick-knacks to them to make an extra buck. They had good reason to do this: out of all of the state capitals in Brazil, Belem has the largest informal economy and one of the largest unemployment rates in the country. A huge part of its citizenry make a living by doing odd jobs or work without relation to any kind of stable employment. From this there is an ever-expanding segment of the population that crosses over from the informal economy into the criminal world, with only the slightest possibility of returning.

During the days leading up to the opening of the World Social Forum, local people crossed over the security barriers, that isolated the campus, any way they could, carrying tables, chairs, pots, spoons and food to offer the public because of the inadequate supply of food services for an event of this size in Belem. Later, after an increase in security at the barriers and the entrances (to participate in the debates once inside the campus was free, but access to the entrances was super-controlled) local people began to rob, for the most part, the two thousand volunteers passing between the campuses of the Federal University of Para and the Federal University of Rural Amazonia.

First they stole the volunteers’ credentials, and then altered them so that they could pass through security and bring in with them their food, pastries and desserts. People also stole official t-shirts in order to pass through security (some of the volunteers actually had to sell their own official t-shirts in order to get money for the bus so they could get to and from the Forum). In this way, the marginalized people of this Amazonian metropolis tried to take advantage of the huge event of the year, which, according to organizers, welcomed 130,000 people. But because of thousands of extra t-shirts, many in unopened boxes, people began to wonder who really knew how many people were actually inside the event.

Thanks to a marriage of necessity between the need for food and the more than three thousand people camping out on the campus and thousands of others passing between the campuses during the day, there was a link between the bubble of solidarity and the hope for a better world, but there had to be physical manifestation of these utopias, those excluded from globalization in flesh and bone. Guama and Terra Firme were two of the most serious worries afflicting the government and the organizers, the hidden subject in the demand for independence by the World Social Forum (like a contra-faction against the summit of the ultra-rich in Davos).

The Federal government, the PT (Workers Party), dispatched 300 National Guard troops, and sent 50 million reais (out of a 160 million reais budget) for security alone. The State government, also ruled by the PT, put in a concentration of 7,000 military and civil police in the city of Belem. They set up barriers around the neighboring districts to protect the attendees of the Forum from the more than 200 daily incidents of crime in the area (60% of these are robberies, more than 2/3 of which are violent). Thousands of residents were stopped and searched by police patrols, neighborhood bars were forced to close at 10pm because of the marshal law that was imposed on the area. Daily routines were changed, but not for long.

Thanks to these measures, no violence disrupted the atmosphere of the Forum during its week-long stay in Belem. Isolated in this manner, the participants could develop, without interruption, their ideas and proposals for the construction of a better world and a sustainable Amazon. The uncomfortable reality, that was here before, will now return now that the gurus, prophets, disciples and people of goodwill have returned to their homes around the world. Carrying back home with them the same ideas and images that they brought to Belem.

Without a doubt, the World Social Forum brought to Belem people of great intellectual capacity, with strong credentials, willing to apply their talents to build a better future for the planet at large, and in particular, for the Amazon. Few, however, came to hear what the region itself had to say. Many had dedicated their time to studying the Amazon, remaining on constant alert to what is happening through their electronic devices, connected to satellites, accessing data banks, analyzing information, developing complex arguments and coming to conclusions about what is happening in the overexploited Amazonian soil. It seems, nevertheless, that this digital world is so fascinating that its users have no need to go out into the real world and see it for themselves. But the real life characters in this history are aware of their struggles and difficulties without the subtle sophistication of this new electronic idealism.

The Forum came and went like a traveling band passing by the young girl’s window that Chico Buarque de Holanda had in his hit song four decades ago. In one his movingly expressive verses he observed: “My suffering people/ said good-bye to the pain/ just to see the band passing / singing songs about love.” The love is gone, the suffering remains. That’s what life is, it invades and contaminates the virtual world, throwing out its virtue, that’s the way it should be.

Photograph by Curtis Myers

One place where your search will be rewarded is The Long Now Foundation’s Museum and Store, located in Landmark Building A at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center. The Long Now’s headquarters has been here since 2006. It is open—free–to the public seven days a week, and though the museum’s space is small, it is filled with engaging artifacts that recall the so-called Cabinets of Wonder popular in Renaissance Europe.

The exhibits show two of the foundation’s projects: a clock which, in its final form, will record 10,000 years of earth-time and the 10,000 Year Library, featuring the Rosetta Project, which has created a disk with 15,000 pages of text covering 2,500 languages.

The clock is a work in progress that began in 01996–to affirm the 10,000 year time span the foundation uses five digits for the years instead of four.  The first prototype of the clock has been on exhibit in London’s Science Museum since June 02000.

Photograph by Ralph Horne

The clock’s first tick occurred on 12/31, 01999. Because of local and national concerns surrounding the coming of the millennium, foundation members could not find a space to rent for the celebration and had to host a small gathering of about 20 friends and family members in their offices. The clock ticked twice, once for each millennium.

The museum shares the ground floor of the Fort Mason space with a reception desk and store, which sells books, souvenirs, and DVDs of lectures given by well known thinkers in the fields of environmental science, physics, art, technology, social science. etc. The speakers are futurists for the most part, who support the foundation’s goal of promoting responsible long term thinking.

The rest of the space houses the exhibits. No matter what the weather is outside, the interior seems bright, as befits the future. This brightness is not just a result of white walls and lighting; it is also produced by the light from the reflective materials of which the objects exhibited are made. Not just high grade stainless steel, but also monel, an expensive alloy made mostly of nickel and copper. You cannot create things to last l0,000 years on the cheap.

Most visitors do not see familiar things when they look around the museum, but labels and the explanations of the staff are very helpful. The store sells a very attractive, seventy-three-page book, Long Now, works in progress, by Alexander Rose, Executive Director of the foundation, that tells the story in words and pictures. (see review accompanying this text.)

Pictured above is the columnar binary bit adder mechanism installed in a cut stone boulder and topped with a planetary display called an orrery which, when activated, shows the phases and motion of the six planets of our solar system that are visible to the naked eye. The planets are made of a variety of natural stones such as yellow calcite for the sun and Venus, red jasper for Mars, Chilean lapis for the earth, and banded sandstone for Jupiter. This orrery is roughly 1/4 the size of the one that will top the final version of the clock.

The large photograph on the wall below is the clock prototype now on exhibit in the London Museum of Science.

A platform in the museum’s main space displays a mechanism called the solar synchronizer, which resolves the difference between absolute time and solar time. As the label explains, without the synchronizer this difference between the two ways of measuring time would result in the clock’s time drifting from year to year because of eccentricities in the orbit of the earth around the sun and the tilt of the earth’s axis. At noon, local time, a beam of light strikes the large lens, which heats a length of memory wire that contracts when it reaches a certain temperature. The contraction pulls a lever that strikes a bowl gong, producing a certain tone. In the future the lever will be attached to the clock, the orrery, and the chime generator.

Shown above is a ten-foot long model of the chime generator. Danny Hillis, the clock’s designer, created this machine to ensure that visits to the clock would be sonically memorable. The turning of the array of Geneva wheels causes a series of ten Tibetan brass bowl gongs to sound in the more than 3,650,000 combinations required to ring out a different sequence of tones each day for 10,000 years. Brian Eno, a foundation board member, worked out the sounds of the gongs. Eno released a  CD titled, January 07003, that explores the possibilities of the chime generator. However, he did not use these bowl gongs to create the music.

Above is a two-foot tall version of the first prototype for the clock carved in plywood. Hillis wanted a form that would honor mechanical computers and time pieces of the past. Geneva wheels like those in the layers of this prototype were standard components of clocks. The Geneva wheel is a mechanism that translates the continuous rotation into the  intermittent rotary motion that occurs in the ticking of a clock.

Photograph courtesy of The Long Now Foundation

In addition to the display of apparatuses related to the clock project, the museum also has an exhibit of the Rosetta Project. This micro-etched nickel disk has room for over 2,500 languages recorded in its 15,000 pages of text. Why would this disk be a desirable artefact?

It turns out that our digital age is rife with discontinuities–black holes–so that although our information storage capacity is vaste, historians are likely to label our time the digital dark age because the system’s constant technical innovation has been accompanied by the constant loss of instructions for use. Among the losses will be thousands of languages, perhaps 90% of humanity’s spoken languages.

The Rosetta Project addresses this issue by collecting, naming, and sorting linguistic materials. Results of this effort are displayed on a wall and accompanied by a sound dome, which allows viewers standing in front of the wall of written texts to hear examples of the languages in the collection. The web site www.rosettaproject.org, permits people to view the pages of the Rosetta Archive and correct, comment on, or submit materials.

Other components of the clock that represent steps in the process of its development are displayed with explanatory labels. Visitors should not hesitate to ask members of the staff for more explanations if their questions are not addressed in the labels. The exhibits in this museum wll take many of us into new territory; we need guidance to find our way.

Unless otherwise noted, photographs are by Sally B. Woodbridge

Why make an atlas for designers? By definition an atlas is a collection of maps, charts, and visual plates that systematically illustrate a subject. Thorpe states that it was the visual nature of atlases that inspired her book because no matter how eloquent a text may be, design audiences are not engaged by printed words alone.

The book’s message is about how design in all fields can move toward the goals of sustainability; the integration of information about design and sustainability rewards users with a rich range of ideas, concepts, and facts presented in a sophisticated format that is itself thought-provoking. As with other kinds of atlases, the varied text does not converge on one conclusion. Rather, readers take what they need to make their own.

Ingredients, not recipes, presented with verve and clarity, make the atlas useful for the design disciplines. Economic and cultural elements of sustainable design, rarely discussed in the context of ecological issues, have their own chapters, which are divided into sections related to design issues. Although long-term sustainability is the objective, the 21st century landscape is the one within which design must perform for the foreseeable future. The most important concepts and ideas about sustainability are presented in terms of its ecology, economy, and culture.

The introduction defines sustainable development versus development as we know it. Sustainable development enables environmental and social conditions that support the well-being of humans indefinitely. To give meaning to the term, “indefinitely,” Thorpe invites readers to imagine designing a functional object that will endure and be useful for thousands of years. Yet, however inspiring this thinking might be, it is unlikely to take place unless an enlightened clientele for sustainable design appears to support and fund it.

Development without the modifier, sustainable, has implied well-being achieved through economic progress in tandem with industrial development geared to technological change, usually in the short term. Sustainable development functions like ecosystems, which support themselves over a very long time period with life-sustaining products and services. This development may invest in art forms and cultural norms embodying systems of belief that sustain our well-being even though the economic value is hard to quantify and less related to the ecological origins of sustainability.

The three main themes of the atlas, subdivided into related topics, follow:

ECOLOGY

Ecology’s key sustainability issue is the overwhelming of nature’s systems by human systems. The challenge for designers during the historic period of industrialization was humanizing machine-made, mass-produced products. Today’s challenge, harmonizing human and natural systems, will best be met by learning to see hidden connections between the two. We need a holistic approach to materials that will not limit their usefulness, and we need appropriate production tailored to needs instead of mass production in the one-size-fits-all mode.

ECONOMY

Technological acceleration has driven our economic goals not only in the private sector–the free market–where design is usually found, but in the public and nonprofit sectors as well. Designers have successfully expanded the market for the mass production of machine-produced goods by giving them consumer appeal. But just how this activity has increased our sense of well-being is unclear.

What is clear is that design has played a significant role in shaping the objects and images in our increasingly visual culture. The power of the visual images that stream our way is such that viewers routinely try to achieve what is shown to them as convincingly real no matter how fantastic it is.

CULTURE

Design’s success is often judged by its commercial success. Designers’ jobs may even be determined by whether their work meets marketing projections–never mind that this short-term focus puts an emphasis on ease of use that may actually limit the product’s usefulness. Commercial pressures have turned designers into pushers rather than enablers, a role they need to shed in order to support sustainable development.

So, how can design begin to change our dependence on the market-based means of well-being that stem from our reliance on the visual sphere of material goods? Many concepts that support cultural sustainability—a sense of time and history, open source design, and the acceptance of nature as part of culture–appear impractical when viewed in the context of commercial pressures. To move toward sustainable development, Thorpe advocates recognizing that the three systems of change–technology, policy, and behavior– interlock. Designers have a role in all three systems. They explore, invent, and apply new technologies in architecture, fashion, and products.

Feedback on designers’ work typically comes from sales: consumers either buy or don’t buy. Disgruntled owners of new products that don’t work satisfactorily must wait for the next versions; they have no way to register their wishes in advance except in market surveys, which are rarely broad enough to reflect all the audience’s concerns.

Perhaps we should have feedfront to make design less of a one-way stream and to engage users in the vital process of design. For instance, open source design, most familiar in the development of computer operating systems, allows users to act as designers by providing rapid feedback on imperfect prototypes. Thus designers may quickly see their work in newer and better systems.

Although the virtual form of computer-based design removes it from the field of physical artifacts, Thorpe points out that designers are increasingly involved in supplying information about form rather than the forms themselves. Design companies now exist that permit viewers to make online modifications of products they intend to buy by giving them a choice of, say, the shapes or graphic motifs for t-shirts and other clothing. Graphic design and photography make multiple contributions to design in other fields.

In the design of physical artifacts the ability of users to access construction and repair information could enable the interaction possible in open source computer technology. New features and components of physical artifacts could be backward compatible so that users don’t have to buy the new version to get the newest capabilities.

Which products/artifacts would benefit from the open source process. Thorpe’s answer is any artifact that has a reasonably large number of users. Still, a strong motivation is necessary for this level of engagement. Most of us probably don’t want to be involved in the design of our toothbrushes or safety pins, but other artifacts—bicycles, electronic communication devices–would likely generate the kind of interactive discussion our digitally connected society makes possible.

Thorpe’s last proposal for exposing design to other professions and perspectives and to make it less beholden to private sector patrons is to bring design as a profession into the field of sustainable development as in non-profit organizations, governmental, and educational institutions. Organizations devoted to sustainable development usually lack the tools designers have to combine human factors, technology, style, and function into an attractive package. Linking them would benefit both sides.

Designers should read The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability, not only because it is a mine of information and ideas, but because the relevant issues are explored and weighed with admirable directness and a sense of urgency that should strengthen their convictions about what they profess and how to do something about it.

CODA

One large-scale application of the open source process could be design competitions for, say, public parks, and buildings. Since the innovative special features of competition entries are considered proprietary in today’s modus operandi, those owned by the various competitors will not be part of the winner’s scheme even though they might benefit the project. If such ideas were shared in a preliminary design phase open to all competitors, their approach would be more holistic even though the outcome would still depend on the varying talents and skills of the individual competitors.

In the design fields the prestige of authorship is tied to ownership. But when the projects don’t function as they should, authorship loses its appeal. Yet, though the winning designs often turn out to have flaws, the competitors discount the risk of failures because winning will likely bring more projects and maybe stardom. Even though feedback in the design phase might prevent flaws, the relative lack of concern for long-term validation of performance has meant that buildings are rarely assessed in respect to their success or failure after they are completed and occupied. If the assessment occurs at all it is usually triggered by litigation rather than interest in performance per se.

Although it is easier to credit a single author than a team that instigates and coordinates the design process, it is certainly more accurate to recognize the collaborative process that not only involves a bigger team of designers but also includes other professionals such as engineers in a variety of fields. Yet few things threaten designers more than the idea of surrendering authorship or artistic control.

Although Thorpe does not advocate the use of the open-source approach to design described above in her book, it occurred to me that it could play an important role in the field of architecture.
I hope readers will weigh in with their reactions.

This densely written and wonderfully illustrated book seeks answers to questions such as: what is wrong with the cities we have created and what can be done to correct our mistakes? The answers that Randolph Hester explores in chapters headed centeredness, connectedness, sensible status seeking, sacredness, selective diversity, everyday future, reciprocal stewardship, and pacing—among others–come from his many years of working as a political and environmental activist, landscape architect, urban designer, and farmer to improve the physical environment through the creation of forms that celebrate everyday life.

The depressing trends of today’s world: climate change, the loss of cultural and biological diversity, economies that exploit backwaters to create international cities, and the inequities of developing countries, are critical issues of urbanity. Hester observes that, “We sanitize our suburbs, but we still cannot make places where we feel safe. We have lost the balance that makes a city clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy.”

Through technology, standardization, and specialization, along with freedom from environmental constraints, we have obtained privately many things that were once only available if shared. In Hester’s view, the social cost of privatization which has altered public discourse and limited the exchange of information needed by the public for responsible actions must be addressed by forging new relationships between the community and the environment.

Our lack of ecological literacy has led us to ignore natural factors in urban design. According to Hester, if cities capitalized on their regional characteristics, they would realize significant income from energy, water, and waste disposal processes while providing their inhabitants with amenities and a sense of place. Instead, we have blurred the vegetative patterns, microclimates, air-movement patterns, and hydrologic cycles that distinguish urban areas and robbed them of any special meaning. As a result we have mistakenly labeled the wildfires, energy shortages, and flood damage in urban areas as “natural disasters.”

The ecological democracy Hester advocates is government by the affected citizenry through hands-on involvement. Since the form of our cities influences our daily lives, the creation of meaningful landscapes for our cities requires a participatory, scientific, and adventuresome design process. Though not likely to produce a quick fix, ecological democracy offers a comprehensive way to act and think about the future.

The preoccupation of cities with raising their status to gain recognition and attract tourism to validate it has been, by Hester’s lights, a considerable waste of time, energy, and money. Blurring the line between healthy self-expression and unhealthy striving has produced the malls, markets, festivals, and historic districts, which are cobbled together and often infused with an ersatz history that obviates genuine needs. Design should help people take root by increasing users’ knowledge and experience of everyday features in which they may take pride. Designers should look beyond project boundaries to reveal nearby connections. Indeed, Hester says, “Connectedness in the urban environment is the most fundamental contribution of applied ecology.”

One example of the benefits of looking beyond project boundaries is Big Wild, which Hester’s and McNally’s young firm, Community Development by Design, began work on in 1985. The client, a state agency called the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, was originally mandated to acquire land in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreational Area. One Conservancy acquisition, the 1000-acre Mulholland Gateway Park, turned out to lack ecological integrity because of its fragmentation. Effective planning required larger boundaries. But even as more acquisitions enlarged the project area, Hester and McNally found it to be ecologcally connected to national forests two valleys away.

Over the course of the next decade, the concept of a greenbelt around Los Angeles evolved. But since the concept of a large region is too abstract to connect to most people’s daily life, the creation of greenbelts requires incremental implementation. A citywide campaign of education and research in conservation biology was instigated to deepen people’s experience of wilderness.

The story of Big Wild features such dramas as the battle to stop a freeway that would sever a wildlife corridor, the expansion of the Mulholland Gateway Park into a 20,000-acre Big Wild and its connection to the creation of a sustainable habitat for mountain lions.

Many victories are described in this book; enough, in fact, to turn designers into environmental activists. But before enlisting in this growing army they might want to consider what they are in for, to wit: varying success in bringing people together to discuss urban environmental issues and managing their heated interaction, defeats and/or long periods of inaction, improvising ways of bridging the doldrums, and never giving up!

In the Epilogue Hester explains how he has interwoven ecology and democracy into a theory of good city form. His theory, he confesses, is “more like a mass of mating salamanders than a regression analysis.” Urban design theory must adjust to the realities of implementation until it becomes meaningful. This process may be unending.

Always modest, Hester describes his projects as having advanced small increments of ecological democracy; they have put project design in an overall framework with a long term vision.

In the book’s last paragraph Hester reveals the secret of his success: fearless optimism. “Optimism,” he affirms, “will help us to shape healthier places to dwell and create the most fulfilling lives we can achieve. And optimism will keep us cheerful along the way.”

The Book at Amazon…