The Sur Center for Maritime Futures is an institutional concept developed by VisionArc for a client working in conjunction with the Omani Ministry of Culture and Heritage. We were challenged to bring contemporary thinking to the historical depth and positive future for maritime activity in the Gulf state. The new Center will build upon the rich history of boat building, international trade, and coastal habitation that have shaped Omani society. Its long-term mission will be to strengthen the historic continuity between Oman’s maritime past and the future: threading together a wide range of social, cultural, economic, and technological opportunities for coastal culture in Oman.

The Center will function as a hub for maritime heritage, providing a platform for Culture, Education,Technology, and Leadership. The Center will be a robust and valuable asset to Sur, the Ash Sharqiyah region, and to the nation by building and sustaining links between these four key interests. These programs will be organized into a series of clusters capable of operating independently or collaboratively.

“From the discussion, there was a prevailing sentiment that the traditional top-down approach to city design is outdated in an increasingly complex and urban world. Over-determined policies and master-designs which have attempted to reduce complexity have “de-urbanized” the city and resulted in the loss of knowledge and spontaneity which form the essence of the city. In place of the top-down approach, some participants called for a “democratization of design” which puts citizens at the heart of the design process.

Participants debated whether democratic design could actually work in cities. The outcome was an overarching call for balance. Participants resisted the temptation to say that democratic design is the only future. They acknowledged that some of the best urban spaces – the grand boulevards of Paris – were the result of grand-scale master-planning, and recognized that design by consensus can often fail to yield badly needed sweeping changes for pressing social problems. The future must accommodate both approaches. The role of the specialized designer and citizens must thus must be recognized for their potential in the city design process.”

*Text courtesy of The World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Design and Innovation

Visitors to the Community Visioning event were provided with stickers that could be applied to the wall next to prompts indicating a range of wishes from “wanting” to “having” to “giving” in their community. A series of symbols arrayed along the bottom of the wall mural, would allow users to match their responses to a specific category of community needs or resources- from education and employment to family services, recreation and open space.

As a low-tech, interactive component the Community Visioning initiative served to attract visitors and become a catalyst for wider dialogue between Poe Park and the surrounding community. Data collected served as a tool to communicate to city agencies and organizations. The near-term goal was to capture the participation and feedback from local residents and stakeholders, generating future programming concepts in parallel with those currently on offer at the visitors center. This includes educational, civic and cultural initiatives. In the long term, the Poe Park pilot is designed to suggest opportunities for connecting other Parks facilities to specific communities and networks present throughout New York City.

The Community Visioning installation is a joint project with NYC Parks and VisionArc. Technical support and planning guidance were provides by members of City Parks Foundation/Partnerships for Parks and People Make Parks.

As Archrival describes it:

“Arena Calcetto explores the theme of ‘Formations’ and was conceived to represent Archrival’s practice ideals; to engage a wide number of collaborators and to create new connections between the audience, exhibitors and curators at the Biennale event. Our vision is to challenge existing practices in architecture and to expand the practice of creative professionals by harnessing the potential of design rivalries.”

For the installation, VisionArc produced a team of 11 players that were milled from 35mm pieces of corian with colored pictograms laser etched into their surfaces. The set sought to ask: How can we think of a “game” where individual players are instead replaced by some of the most wicked issues of our time- water scarcity, food crisis, energy and natural resource depletion, education, healthcare? How does this ask us to redefine the concept of the “common goal”? What is the nature of competition and collaboration on a playing field in this context? The answers to some of these questions may very well describe the nature of 21st century design. In other words, the practice of architecture in the 21st century has emerged as an increasingly issue driven endeavor- expanding its field perhaps more so than at any other moment.

Whereas in the past, the architect’s “material” palette may have been mostly defined by physical matter, today our practice operates more and more in what has been called that “dark matter” of design- matters of collaboration, policy making, negotiation, research, and advocacy. These broader, underlying systems and mechanisms are less about creating stuff and more about constructing contexts. In the coming decades architects and designers must demonstrate an ability to deftly navigate and negotiate these areas both tactically and strategically. Perhaps the athletic analogy can teach us something after all!

For more on VisionArc’s and others’ work on this collaborative effort check out Patrick Fileti’s short film here.

Recently, the Global Agenda Council on Design and Innovation asked VisionArc to help map out and illustrate the breadth of cross-council connections established through 5 of their initiatives during the last year. These included: a plan for a Design Innovation Policy, who’s aim is to create a new values system for design integration in the global community; a Visualizing Complex Systems initiative that creates tools to inform society through transparency and participation; a Reciprocal Design Index for sustainable social and urban design policy; an Environmental Index for creating a shared information platform for resource consumption awareness; and a Safe Water Project that entails the design of an inexpensive, hand-held filtration product to serve the needs for drinking water in environmentally challenged and under-served communities.

VisionArc’s mapping helped communicate the broad reach of design and its relevance, through the Design Council’s efforts, to the larger World Economic Forum community.

VisionArc’s analysis illustrated the interconnected environmental, economic and political dimensions of the regeneration plan. The analysis formed the basis for a series of proposals that were designed to negotiate multiple stakeholders and scales of concern. The proposals offered strategic design as a vital tool for moving beyond conventional urban typologies towards more holistic standards for urban development in ecologically important regions. Taken together VisionArc sought to create a picture of Pasaia as a place that can become a model for regional innovation and economic growth while also reinforcing an ecologically vulnerable but culturally rich locality.

Recommendations for the Bay of Pasaia regeneration plan are currently under ongoing consideration by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.

Japan is the only developed country in the world where household energy consumption exceeds industrial and business use. In the days following the earthquake and tsunami and the accidents at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, it became clear that issues of energy security and availability loomed large and the risk of future blackouts due to summer home cooling and other power demands in Tokyo were imminent.

VisionArc and the Global Agenda Council on Design studied a concept we called “Teiden Kensaku”, or “Blackout Alert”, for using a social networking platform to create a feedback system that could connect daily energy consumption to its larger consequences at the regional and national scale. The idea promoted behavioral change through consumption habits and encouraged individual actions of conservation through information and incentives. Instead of a centralized top-down policy of enforcement or surveillance measures, the system proposed a voluntary bottom-up framework. The platform would demonstrate that small individual gestures of conservation can account for a major impact on overall resource usage.

The platform proposed short and long term functions. For short-term concerns, an alert function would send mobile device notifications thirty minutes prior to a blackout, encouraging people to turn off their individual air conditioners and instead spend time in public places with air cooling systems. While this direct reactionary behavior would be important, we proposed putting the system in place for one hundred days prior, to begin encouraging and training new habits for the citizens of Tokyo. The implementation would also include various incentives for citizens to reduce energy consumption and use fewer appliances at home.

This mobile device program, conceived as a design tool, would also allow software and utility companies to directly engage their consumers through data analysis, behavioral science, and marketing expertise. At the same time, consumers are empowered to make smarter and more sustainable choices to conserve resources and save on household expenses, while contributing to the greater good.

For the World Economic Forum at Harvard: Design and Global Challenges, a day-long event hosted within the Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, VisionArc contributed by curating a diverse body of participants selected from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Kennedy School of Government, Law School, School of Public Health, Business School, and Graduate School of Design. Each participant was also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils. These Councils, composed of twelve hundred of the world’s thought leaders, work in interdisciplinary, multistakeholder groups to identify gaps and deficiencies in international cooperation and formulate specific proposals for improvement on more than fifty global challenges. Each individual selected to participate in Design and Global Challenges contributed to a series of panel discussions and workshops with graduate design students and faculty who acted as hosts for the program.

The event 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. As such, VisionArc worked to create a platform where participants from various design discipline could highlight the potential of the creative process to spark productive and imaginative exchanges. Such exchanges encouraged global dialogue as a generative discourse that can break out of silos of expertise.

As water increasingly represents a crucial hinge between land use, ecology and politics, VisionArc is developing a new framework to explore the issue within a broader set of typologies related to specific operations and uses. The aim of the study is to offer a critical perspective into the 21st century water cycle and to frame new concepts capable of contributing to future conservation and management initiatives.

The full study is expected to be released in late 2010.

The Ocean Energy Institute will be a research and investment center dedicated to the harnessing of ocean wind resources and the next generation of renewable energy technology. VisionArc produced a comprehensive report that sought to expand this agenda by locating critical challenges within the State’s energy profile and natural resources industries. The development of Maine’s offshore wind energy potential was studied as the hinge connecting these challenges to the broader goal of the State’s long-term economic and environmental sustainability. The research was used to inform the design of a robust institutional framework capable of addressing these goals within the Institute’s mission.

VisionArc is currently collaborating with Toshiko Mori Architect to develop an architectural strategy for the new Ocean Energy Institute being planned for a site in Rockland, Maine.