From the Architectural League:
Branch libraries are serving more New Yorkers in more ways than ever before, yet they remain undervalued by policymakers. This summer, The Architectural League is collaborating with the Center for an Urban Future on a design study that will articulate new architectural, financial, and programmatic possibilities for these essential, neighborhood-based resource centers.

The design study will culminate with a public event this fall, featuring a presentation of the participants’ work and discussion with advocates and policymakers around issues drawn from the study.

Image credit: Alex Proimos

From the organizers:
“eco.villages focuses on finding a sustainable future for Switzerland’s mountain villages – and by extension for rural communities around the world – with a focus on simultaneously meeting environmental, social and economic needs. We see plenty of potential growth industries for villages : sustainable agriculture and tourism, education, clean energy production, home-working services, education.”

There Mori and Brown presented a vision for sustainable rural development entitled “Après-ski”, or “After Skiing (and beyond)”. Culled from an ongoing design research initiative in collaboration with stakeholders from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Ecos, and Liebreich Foundation, “Après-ski” represents a new vision for economic, environmental and social sustainability in rural communities at a moment when much of the ambition for design innovation has shifted towards urban contexts.

See VisionArc’s contribution to the Arena Calcetto installation here and check out the text to “Ultradisciplinary Futures” below or find it online here

Features
Ultradisciplinary Futures
June 19, 2013
Issue: AR 130 Pawn

Lucy Humphrey and Claire McCaughan of Archrival explore an ‘ultradisciplinary’ future, which surpasses the previously specified extent and limits of practice.

Author Lucy Humphrey, Claire McCaughan

Architecture is a relatively newly defined profession and the practice of architecture, historically, is not a precisely defined term. ‘The architect’ has drifted between master-builder, engineer and artist for centuries, and it was not until the 1800s that the modern day profession was established. Today the profession of architecture has been described as being in a state of crisis and Archrival considers this to be the result of an ill-defined contemporary profession, one that is further limited by reinforcing ideas of practicing ‘within’ or ‘outside’ of a professional boundary. Without actively promoting a broader idea of practice, we fuel an ongoing identity crisis; and without challenging contemporary practice we cannot realistically define a strategic response to the discipline’s crisis.

Documents such as ‘The Future for Architects?’ report by Building Futures provide background and statistics about how architectural practice will operate or decline in a changing world. In response, many architects are developing ‘new practices’ and expanding their reach by working in ‘interdisciplinary roles’. As an exhibitor in Formations: New Practices in Australian Architecture at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale, Archrival strategically concerned itself with exploring and challenging traditional practice boundaries.

In seeking co-contributors for the Arena Calcetto installation, Archrival connected a field of international collaborators that revealed their own strategic responses to the forecast crisis. Business consultancies such as McKinsey & Company argue that with clear strategy there is no reason to fear uncertainty and responding to change can be used to one’s competitive advantage. In examining key projects by four of the Biennale collaborators, we consider that by utilising realistic and accurate strategies, these practices are able to look beyond the self-governed boundaries of practice, and ahead to new opportunities for the discipline, by actively contributing to a redefinition of the scope of architectural practice. Rather than being seen as interdisciplinary, these practices capitalise on their design expertise and reveal the potential for interdisciplinary work to become critically ‘ultradisciplinary’. We might define the ultradisciplinary architectural practice as one that is beyond or surpassing the previously specified extent, range or limits of practice.

In creating unique fussball players for Arena Calcetto, four collaborators linked to Gap Filler (Christchurch, NZ), Diatom Studio (Wellington, NZ and London, UK), CAN (Critical Architecture Network) (London, UK) and VisionArc (New York, US) offer exclusive insights into their own expanded views of practice. The first example occurred in the strategic pairing of Mark Leong (Gap Filler collaborator) and Tiago Rorke (Diatom Studio), who simultaneously explore new digital fabrication technologies and community activism. In their first joint venture, a hardwearing concrete and steel fussball team was created and shared online as open-source material for future replication. Leong is a collaborator with Gap Filler, who activate urban spaces in post- earthquake Christchurch. As an architectural ‘free agent’, his social-minded focus has been played out in renegade community works such as The Night Club for Gap Filler’s Playtime project (2012), a competition-winning scheme for a temporary outdoor cinema designed to activate one of many vacant blocks in a city undergoing a painful transition period.

The project is a critical urban intervention in Christchurch where, in the wake of the earthquake, architects wait for the ‘gold rush of reconstruction’, but neglect the urgent need for an immediate renewal of public space to avoid alienation from their own city. In his strategic involvement with the Biennale, Leong paired with Rorke of Diatom Studio – a small practice with a dual base in Wellington and London. Diatom’s interest lies in open-source digital fabrication and the potential to integrate designers, academics and online users with the design and making process. Echoed in the aesthetic of their metropolis- like fussball series, online projects such as SketchChair present cutting edge technology that embraces new opportunities for user-driven design, fabrication and customisation tools. Developed in collaboration with JST Erato Design UI in Tokyo, the project provides an open-source software tool that encourages the emergence of the user as co-author, while promoting the necessary role of the designer as facilitator, synthesiser and editor. Although operating at a small scale, both Leong and Rorke proactively explore potentials for community engagement and activation that preserve a critical future role for designers. Their facilitation of diverse community projects, whether urban regeneration or open-source digital design, strategically promotes the valuable application of their professional skills in response to contemporary conditions.

Working at a similar scale, CAN is a young, entrepreneurial practice within London’s bleak financial climate. The single object produced for the Australian Pavilion was a playful expression of CAN’s bold multidisciplinary approach, integrating fine art, architecture, furniture and graphics. Entitled Made by Many, the fussball object presents a meticulous composition of 1:100 scale human figures. Led by Mat Barnes and Eddie Blake, CAN mobilises specialists on a project-by-project basis. In creating the temporary signage system entitled Barbican Weekender Scenography (2012) CAN playfully implemented their spatial expertise within Europe’s largest multi-arts venue. Describing the graphic product as ‘scenography’, the project explored the creation of signage using ‘playful swarms of lo-fi electronics and parasitic floating signage’, juxtaposed against the Brutalist context of the Barbican. Having previously exhibited with other cultural giants such as Dezeen with Dezeen Platform in 2011, CAN demonstrate an atypical application of architectural skill, paired with their strategic alignment with dominant cultural institutions, in well-marketed public forums during an economic downturn.

Beyond the strategic effectiveness of these emerging practices, the final collaborator demonstrates the extraordinary potential for ‘interdisciplinary’ projects to increase the architect’s professional value. VisionArc’s graphically didactic fussball team represents the studio’s strategic global reach through cutting edge research projects. Design thinking has emerged as a valuable skill in the last decade and yet architects have been slow to understand or capitalise on the market. Founder Toshiko Mori and director Landon Brown operate VisionArc, a think tank dedicated to exploring ‘how designers might use this moment as an opportunity to catalyse their own transition into new modes of practice and broader fields of engagement’. Strategically operating as a research and visualisation consultancy, VisionArc mobilises design initiatives and fosters new and inspiring design futures through the integration of landscape, architecture,politics and science. Research is presented through engaging films such as Design Blind Spots 2050, commissioned by the DesignSingapore Council in 2009 as a speculative research project for the ICSID World Design Congress. The project coins the term ‘design blind spot’, a concept defined as ‘fields not currently known to integrate design thinking or strategy’. VisionArc outlines the enormous potential for designers to reframe global issues and new models of design practice by identifying and presenting solutions to global design blind spots. By designing how to facilitate collaboration itself, VisionArc suggest the key lies in the architect’s ability to operate across complex networks of stakeholders and policies, as well as to integrate competing ‘information silos’.

In dissecting the issue of oil sands mining in northern Canada, Design Blindspots 2050 presents a critical design future for architects, where by 2050 designers are sought out ‘as intermediaries capable of identifying blind spots across a wide spectrum of issues all crucial to the future of production, mobility and resources’. The project convincingly highlights the architect’s valuable role in global policy-making and development initiatives, demonstrating a critical future for architectural practice through extensive ‘ultradisciplinary’ projects.

The spectrum of practice represented by these studios underlines an expanding architectural profession. Instead of portraying a practice as outside of a professional boundary, we might consider the strategic value in actively promoting a wider and more marketable view of our discipline – one with greater opportunities for engagement. By determining realistic and strategic responses to economic, political, environmental and social conditions, and by operating in an ‘ultradisciplinary’ format, these practices are actively redefining the constructs of the profession and expanding the agency of architectural practice. Gap Filler, Diatom Studio, CAN and VisionArc are leading examples of professional advocacy and disciplinary adaptation across a range of scales, bringing about change from the level of the individual practitioner to the profession as a whole. The evolving profession must celebrate these examples as they walk the tightrope between artistic endeavour and business success.

(Text from Storefront for Art and Architecture)

What is it that an architectural drawing does and how does it do it? How can we distill beauty from cosmetics? How can new modes of representation produce new architectures and new sensibilities?

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a collection of 30 newly commissioned architectural drawings. Each drawing depicts the Storefront Gallery space at 97 Kenmare, from the perspectives of a diverse group of emerging and established architects worldwide. The drawings reveal a different aspect of the space and are representative of the generative properties of the architect’s drawing. The gallery space, wallpapered with sourced images of birds, axonometries, children, green and comics cut from drawings produced in the past five years, reflects on the specific graphic devices used by architects to ignite certain feelings and properties in their drawings that the architectural drawing itself is unable to convey: skies filled with birds to portray movement, axonometries as a mode of applied intellectuality, children as life generators, green surfaces as magic ecological surfaces, or comics as prosthetic communicative devices.

Storefront for Art and Architecture is first and foremost a center for the exchange of ideas, agendas, challenges, confrontations; it is a part of a larger infrastructure for dialogue about the role of art and design in the city and beyond. At the same time, one might argue that all storefront’s in the city possess that kind of cultural, economic and political power. They are often the nodes that localize the exchanges and interactions between individuals and communities, expose and facilitate patterns of behavior, commerce, and many of the frictions (and fictions?) of our day-to-day lives in the city. A storefront might be a place to practice religion or slaughter a chicken; a conduit for illicit trade or creative destruction. Storefronts are both wallpaper and newspaper.

VisionArc’s contribution to the Storefront exhibition sought to communicate this complexity and this vibrancy by subsuming the presence of the gallery proper (and it’s always recognizable movable facade panels) into the larger matrix of associations, events, spectacles, and mysteries emanating from this 1-story landscape. The news clippings, headlines, and stories are all culled from New York City’s circulars and tabloids and are each presented as snapshots of a moment where a storefront became a stage. In so doing we are giving a nod to the contribution of Storefront makes to the critical and creative landscape of New York City while paying equal tribute to the (sometimes unexpected) role that our less rarefied storefronts play in the ever evolving shape of the curious life of our city.

In the weeks leading up to our visit to Helsinki we sent teams of students out into their city to explore how notions of, “soft-systems”, community infrastructure, and urban resilience play a part today- and in the future of- the characteristically-and often assumed- “crisis free” city of Helsinki. Here are some quick summaries of what the students observed.

Mobility
Our urban mobility team reported on the ways that a mode of transportation like cycling in Helsinki represents both a “hard” system- the network of travel paths, repair stations and parking points- and a “soft” system- the city’s community of cyclists and bike commuters. Through spatial mapping and on-the-ground urban mobility was framed as a “context that has two dimensions, both social and physical” as Aslihan Oguz , MA in the Creative Sustainability program said, “one supports or opens up the potential for the other”.

Food
Food and food availability in Helsinki was identified as a multi-scale challenge revealed through the relationship between Helsinki’s open markets, connected to local growers and regional food varieties and the country’s small number of retail chains who dominate the majority of groceries sold on the Finnish market. While Finland is known as a country with an abundant supply of fresh, local and organic food options, the team, led by Bianca Byggmästar, speculated on the apparent absence of adequate and affordable food options: how, she asked, might we be able to reconsider the meaning of the term “food crisis” in the context of overly centralized food systems and the shifting relationship of food as both a social good and a commodity.

Communication
Communication, as a research topic, was framed as a spatial question in Helsinki. The team set out to ask what are the urban conditions that facilitate and prefigure meaningful social exchange between individuals, groups, and stakeholders in different communities? By identifying a range of typologies: gardens and parks; liminal circulation spaces; local businesses and shared interest areas, the team sought to position communication as a product of shared geography as much as shared language. With new and emergent models in Helsinki such as equipment and skills share programs beginning to reprogram and occupy parts of the cities physical and social fabric, they speculated on the potential for new forms of resource distribution as well as collaboration functioning as a powerful form of urban resilience to address shared challenges in the future.

Safety
Our team tasked with looking at the concept of “safety” in Helsinki noted (rightly) that safety must be understood as a relational condition mediated by a range of factors from gender, race and age to more abstract factors like cultural and spiritual values. Nevertheless, their groundwork allowed them to identify a range of safety systems- from conventional “hard” safety infrastructures such as evacuation shelters, police and fire stations to more diffuse- yet vital- systems such as public assembly zones, urban architectural and spatial strategies, events and visual language. Their two-pronged investigation led the team to project beyond a city perpetually defined by stability and security while generating broader thinking about hidden vulnerabilities ranging from climate events to stresses caused by future migration patterns or energy shortfalls.

Our exercise with the Aalto students was designed as a micro-studio and used to inform their individual research. In the coming months VisionArc will be continuing to develop similar research and workshop initiatives with some of our partners in New York City and abroad. Keep an eye out for future news and happenings.

“Over the past two decades the prevalence of the design practice as ‘Think-Tank’ has become an increasingly common model. Whether this approach is born out of survivalism amid economic crisis or it is a more intentional shift on the part of designers to generate agency in the world as ‘thinkers’ not just ‘makers’, it is clear that the current generation of design practices face an imperative to organize in ways that allow them to address broader issues through a range of outlets including media, technology, visual art, journalism, branding, and politics. For disciplines like architecture, what appears to be at stake is the need to cultivate a more pro-active engagement beyond the immediate boundaries of the profession in order to drive decision making and maintain relevance. If it is true that the traditional practice of building is simply ‘too slow’ to keep up with the pace of change in private enterprise, then how has the design Think-Tank model increased the agility of designers in the marketplace? What are the direct results and residual effects of these strategies? How are design thinking and research methodologies evolving?”

For our part, VisionArc discussed our involvement in a 2011 energy monitoring and conservation initiative that was launched in the immediate aftermate of the March 11th tsunami and earthquake in Japan. This was discussed along with our ongoing work studying the design of urban resources and strategies for risk response in cities ranging from New York to Helsinki to Tokyo.

The roundtable discussion was guided by moderator and partner of Leong Leong Architecture, Christopher Leong. Other panelists included Troy Therrien, Partner at Th-ey and Curator at Experiments in Motion, Columbia University, New York; Adam Greenfield, Founder of Urbanscale; Ken Farmer, DoTank Brooklyn; Georgeen Theodore, Partner at Interboro Partners; and David Benjamin, Principal at The Living.

A video of the discussion can be seen here.

Published in Reports from the Field on March 28th, 2012
Reporting by Benedict Clouette, writer and the editor of e-Oculus.

Recognizing the need for fresh ideas to address these new risks to the city, a recent design charrette at the Center for Architecture brought together more than 50 architects, urban designers, landscape architects, planners, and educators to develop creative responses to the challenges posed by rising water levels and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. The event, a joint project of the New York City Department of City Planning and the AIANY Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee, called on designers to propose strategies to improve the city’s flood-resistance while also maintaining the vitality of New York’s streets.

The charrette’s participants were divided into groups, each addressing a different building typology (single-family homes, elevator apartments, mixed-use buildings, and multi-family row-houses), and were charged with producing solutions for similar buildings sited in low-lying and flood-prone areas. The brief asked that the designs respond to the anticipated water elevation levels of a 100-year flood, and prompted the teams to keep in mind the pedestrian experience of the street.

During the charrette, the participants crowded around tables, sketching their ideas over typical sections and elevations of their building types. Many of the teams produced several possible schemes, reflecting different trade-offs and priorities, all of which were discussed in a round of presentations at the conclusion of the charrette.

“The design charrette was a creative, collaborative, and dynamic step in addressing the risks that we confront as we move into the 21st century,” said Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, co-chair of the Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee and an organizer of the event. “These members of the New York design community stepped up, voluntarily and on short notice, and donated their time, energy, and creativity in pursuit of inventive solutions.”

The afternoon ended with a call to continue to refine the ideas generated at the event, and the suggestion of future workshops to address a greater range of scales, moving from the building to the city and the region. The Department of City Planning is expected to issue a report summarizing the findings of the charrette this summer.

Other participants included:
Participants: David Piscuskas, FAIA, 1100 Architect; Richard Dattner, FAIA, Dattner Architects; Deborah Gans, AIA, Gans Studio; Lee Weintraub, FASLA, Lee Weintraub Landscape Architecture; Pablo Vengoechea, Pablo Vengoechea Architect; Mary Kimball, NYC Department of City Planning; Vincent Linarello, Alexander Gorlin Architects; Anne-Sophie Hall, AIA, Grimshaw Architects; Chris Garvin, AIA, Terrapin Bright Green; Julia Murphy, AIA, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Wids Delacour, AIA, Delacour & Ferrara Architects; Erick Gregory, NYC Department of City Planning; Jill Lerner, FAIA, Kohn Pedersen Fox; Basar Girit, Situ Studio; Bill Browning, Terrapin Bright Green; Maria Milans del Bosch, Mathhew Baird Architects; Denisha Williams, ASLA, Denisha Williams Landscape; Jeff Schumaker, NYC Department of City Planning; Beth Greenberg, AIA, Dattner Architects; Reid Freeman, AIA, James Carpenter Design; Eric Bunge, AIA, nArchitects; Carmi Bee, FAIA, RKTB; Allison Duncan, ASLA, Allison Duncan Design; Skye Duncan, NYC Department of City Planning; Peter Gluck, Peter Gluck & Partners; Jonathan Marvel, AIA, Rogers Marvel; Stephen Cassell, AIA, Architecture Research Office (ARO); Florence Schmitt, Matthew Baird Architects; Chris Holme, NYC Department of City Planning; Hayes Slade, AIA, Slade Architects; Marc Puig, nArchitects; Lisa Tsang, Obra Architects; Jamie Chan, NYC Department of City Planning; Leah Cohen, NYC Department of City Planning; Frank Michielli, AIA, Michielli + Wyetzner; Colin Cathcart, AIA, Kiss Cathcart; Matthew Berman, Assoc. AIA, workshop/apd; Claire Weisz, AIA, WXY architecture + urban design; Susannah Drake, AIA, ASLA, dlandstudio; Jessica Fain, NYC Department of City Planning; Michelle Valdez, NYC Department of City Planning; Pablo Castro, AIA, Obra Architects; James Slade, AIA, Slade Architects; Winka Dubbledam, Assoc. AIA, Archi-tectonics; Michael Kwartler, FAIA, Environmental Simulation Center; Tricia Martin, LEED AP, WE Design; Michael Marrella, NYC Department of City Planning; Colin Gardener, NYC Department of City Planning; Illya Azaroff, AIA, Co-chair, Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee; Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, Co-chair, Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee

In the last year we have been witness to all sort of major shifts in the social, environmental and political orders of the world. At the outset of the year a tide of sweeping social and political change erupted in the Middle East, shifting long standing regimes towards more inclusive and democratic models. On March 11th, Japan experienced a devastating natural disaster, bringing the lives of tens of thousands of Japanese people to a halt while also shifting the entire global discussion about energy production. And in the fall, a small demonstration in a park in New York City gave birth to a global movement demanding broad shifts and reforms towards equal social and economic distribution. While geographically disparate, these events, and many others, reflect a global present defined as much by large scale shifts in dominant orders as by the systemic interconnections that make them shared challenges and just far off news items.

VisionArc’s ongoing mission is to confront large scale challenges like these by positioning the strength of design as a vital form of leadership and innovation. In the last year we’ve done so by developing initiatives through four key mechanisms:

Individual Tools for Collective Risks
While challenges like energy and food consumption are defining the decades ahead, new tools for linking individual behavior to collective risks will be an increasingly important nexus for social and design innovation.

This past March, in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and the events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, VisionArc and the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Design studied a concept called Teiden Kensaku. In it we proposed a social networking platform to create a feedback system, connecting daily energy consumption to its larger consequences at the regional and national scale.

Civic Practice & Urban Resilience
With half the planet now living in cities, the requirement for new modes of social and urban resilience is creating a need to redesign the civic function of everyday practices like running a business, locating resources, and engaging citizens.

This Fall, VisionArc launched a long-term initiative as part of a public workshop entitled Confronting Comfort: Visual Systems at the BMW Guggenheim Lab in New York. The workshop engaged participants in identifying “soft systems” in the city, such as small businesses, and social resources that represent powerful, bottom-up mechanisms for confronting shared challenges. We’re now in the process of extending this initiative towards creating programs that focus on specific neighborhoods and communities throughout New York City.

Platforms for Collaboration
To confront the interrelated challenges of the 21st century, collective problem solving will require new frameworks that replace ‘silos of expertise’ with ‘platforms for connecting’ – linking the broadest spectrum of thought leaders.

Last fall of VisionArc collaborated with the World Economic Forum and Harvard University Graduate School of Design on a prototype for extending the Forums global dialogue format into the realm of design education and research. Design and Global Challenges: The World Economic Forum at Harvard worked to develop a better understanding of the relationships that exist among key global issues and to surface points of connection through a dialogue that included varied perspectives.

Education & Visualization
With global issues such as resource consumption and climate change, shared challenges require equally shared and open educational tools: making global issues legible to the broadest possible audience.

Last Fall Visionarc launched an ongoing research and educational initiative called Water Guide. The study seeks to expand the definition of water, from a singular concept, into multiple typologies that reflect the varied human systems that depend on this resource. It seeks to offer a critical perspective into the 21st century water cycle by framing new concepts capable of contributing to future conservation and management initiatives.

These are a few of the past and ongoing projects that made up VisionArc’s 2010-2011 year. We’ll be continuing to develop some of them throughout this next year and beyond. We’ll keep you posted. We’re always excited to hear thoughts from out there in the world so if you have any feel free to drop us a line.

One last thing: if you’d like us to send you either a hard copy or a downloadable .pdf of our 2010-2011 brief send us an email by visiting our contact page. Please include your name and preferred format. We’ll send you out a nice looking fold-out for you to read on the subway, on the front porch or wherever you feel so inspired.

See you in 2012!

On September 7th, VisionArc director Landon Brown presented a talk and public workshop entitled Confronting Comfort: Visual Systems. In the talk Landon spoke on how, today, conventional definitions of comfort as an individual measure are being upended by unseen risks in the shared systems that our social and personal comfort-ability depends upon.

As a stepping-off point, the talk explored the notion of visual language as an index to some of the shared systems that we encounter throughout our day-to-day lives in the city. The initial discussion about “hard systems” like mass transit and energy networks transitioned to those “soft systems” found in even the most mundane of routines like going to the laundromat or the corner deli. Ultimately, the “making visible” of the intersections between these systems was shown to represent opportunities for developing resilience in even the most varied of urban contexts.

In a concluding workshop/open forum, Landon, along with participants from the audience, discussed ways in which the re-purposing of familiar parts of New York City’s social, infrastructural and commercial landscape might offer a glimpse into future solutions for confronting shared risk at the urban scale.

See some visual excerpts from the talk in the slideshow above.

About the BMW Guggenheim Lab:
“The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile laboratory traveling to nine major cities worldwide over six years. Led by international, interdisciplinary teams of emerging talents in the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability, the Lab addresses issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse. Over the Lab’s six-year migration, there will be three distinct mobile structures and thematic cycles. Each structure will be designed by a different architect, and each will travel to three cities around the globe. The theme of the Lab’s first two-year cycle is Confronting Comfort—exploring notions of individual and collective comfort and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility.”

A calendar of other events and happenings at the Lab can be found here.

Here’s a link to the article. The original text is below.

Systems Thinking: A New York City think tank, puts design at the service of complex global challenges.
Written by Mimi Zeiger

VisionArc is a consultancy run in tandem with Toshiko Mori Architect, the practice founded by Toshiko Mori (pictured) in 1981. Mori also teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and chairs the World Economic Forums Global Agenda Council on Design.

Toshiko Mori, FAIA, is unfazed by the kind of large-scale, thorny issues—the fate of the Earth’s 332.5 million cubic miles of water, the infrastructure underlying peak oil—that might leave some designers a bit weak in the knees. In fact, where some might see imminent environmental crisis or a geopolitical quagmire, Mori, 59, sees an opportunity for systematic thinking. In 2009, she launched VisionArc, a think tank that probes complex global issues, which operates in parallel to her New York–based architectural practice, Toshiko Mori Architect, and her teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD).

In 2008, Mori was appointed to the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Agenda Council on Design. As chair of the council, she recently attended the WEF’s 2011 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. So, although VisionArc is a young strategic consultancy, it has quickly attracted the attention of government officials, CEOs, and venture capitalists who were wooed by the ability of Mori and director Landon Brown, 32, to use design skills to both structure and visualize complex problems.

“Architecture education and our discipline at large can contribute beyond building buildings,” Mori explains, before listing the three components she sees as needed for any successful enterprise: “hardware,” “software,” and “the network.”

“Our profession is focused on the hardware, meaning the building craft,” she says. “We are somewhat involved in the software, meaning infrastructure and engineering. And architecture has always been part of a civic network. But we need to look at the other problems surrounding us—to use our talents to think comprehensively, collaborate, and connect the dots.”

Design Blind Spots 2050, one of VisionArc’s first endeavors, exemplifies this approach. A research project, exhibition, workshop, and video commissioned by DesignSingapore Council and presented at the 2009 International Council of Societies of Industrial Design World Design Congress in Singapore, it suggests that there are unseen linkages between international economies, population centers, and the environment. Or, as the project distills them: production, mobility, and resources. By using the example of environmentally destructive oil-sands mining in Alberta, Canada, as a case study, Mori and Brown identified areas where strategic design could address critical issues at a top level and ultimately create a new mode of practice. “Architects see spaces in plan, elevation, and section; we have a way of analyzing problems in a three- or four-dimensional way. We can slice through an issue that may not connect in plan,” Mori says.

In their case study, issues went far beyond the standard purview of architecture and included the environmental impact of pipelines on natural habitats; existing mining technologies; mine workers and the health of populations living near the oil sands; and policies governing mine operations. VisionArc’s research led to proposed solutions for the near future, such as new regional legislation and localized pollution-monitoring by nearby communities, and longer-term visions such as remediated forests and low-impact transportation.

“We mine data that is already there and rigorously and imaginatively translate it in order to find potential connections to industry and natural resources,” is how Brown characterizes the VisionArc process.

Which is not to say that architecture itself falls out of the equation. VisionArc produced a study last year for the Ocean Energy Institute in Rockland, Maine, a think tank and venture-capital fund addressing offshore renewable energy. The study included the proposed development of a 50,000-square-foot R&D and venture-capital operations facility, the need for which arose out of VisionArc’s comprehensive research on the impact of offshore wind energy on Maine’s economy and environment.

If there is any ambivalence in the VisionArc model, it is here, where altruism meets business-development opportunities. Presently, VisionArc is a small, self-sustaining counterpart to Mori’s firm that is run by Brown, who brings in consultants and interns as needed. As it grows into a more robust enterprise, there are sure to be tensions between the social mission that drives VisionArc and the bottom line of conventional practice. (Mori’s 11-person firm is very much engaged in traditional practice, having recently completed a building for the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems, in Syracuse, N.Y., and the vistors’ center at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, N.Y.) Mori speaks of VisionArc as a platform for systems research and a growing network of firms and institutions; although it’s self-sustaining financially, this is an untested business model.

Like Mori, Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, is also a member of WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Design. His book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (2009), is often cited as a bridge between the worlds of business and design. Indeed, VisionArc’s agenda can be seen as part of the “design thinking” trend (see Mark Lamster’s “Business Philosophy?”) as well as part of a slower architectural drift toward research-driven work, which began in earnest in 1998, when OMA founded its own think tank, AMO.

Once considered a holding area for Rem Koolhaas’ more academic exercises in datascaping and branding, AMO is now engaged in top-level consulting on a global scale. In February, the firm released The Energy Report, a study on renewable energy for 2050 developed with the World Wildlife Federation and the sustainability-minded consultancy Ecofys.

Mori is not interested in carrying the mantel of design thinking, which she categorizes as often limiting itself to the “hardware” side of things, to products and goods. She’s after the application of architectural thinking to global policy, politics, economics, and business. Recently, she and Landon Brown were in discussions with members of the WEF and the Japanese prime minister’s office about a study called the Carbon Portal, for the design of a system of incentives and monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, to track (and reduce) regional and national carbon footprints in Japan. When the earthquake and tsunami struck, the two redirected their efforts toward the design of risk-response mechanisms. “As we had already been exploring concepts for interconnected tracking systems … we repurposed this model, but with a focus on how such a system might be employed in a crisis context,” Brown says.

In October, Mori was instrumental in organizing the WEF’s first Design and Global Challenges conference and workshop at the GSD. The daylong event brought together architecture students, Harvard faculty, and WEF experts on trade, human rights, population growth, and the international monetary system. The workshop, split into six cross-disciplinary working groups, pushed the students beyond the cloister of design, exposing them to the languages of economics, business, and law. Asking students to engage with the multiple crises facing the world expands their architectural education and primes the next generation of practitioners.

On this point, Mori is passionate. “With this type of work, we can be engaged with people who are making decisions,” she says. “We can help identify the right problem, instead of inheriting the wrong one.”