Rain, Feedback Loops, and Missed Opportunities
Urban designers seem to consider rain to be an intruder, and the city tries to hide the downpour as quickly as possible. The weather’s swept under the carpet with inconsistent success.
The same thinking informs cars that lose value the second you drive them off the lot, fashion that only lasts one season, and iPods that look terrible when they get scratched through daily use. Our culture so values factory-freshness that the moment of box-opening is the only stage of a product’s life that’s usually designed. The rest is left to fate. We need to make products that exist in a user’s world, over a substantial period of time, instead of in stasis on a hoped-for shelf in MoMA’s design wing.
Every material feels the effects of time and use. My favorite designs articulate their wear artfully rather than attempt (never successfully) to hide it, or worse, to ignore its inevitability. Yixing teapots are left unglazed to promote the development of a patina over the course of many infusions. The most beautiful floorboards have a soft, almost frosted texture from centuries of bare feet, and you “season” rather than wear out cast iron cookware. Designers need to design beyond a single moment in time; freshness should be important for veggies and ideas, not a mass-produced product.
Like products, cities exist all the time. Designing for crisp, sunny days in early autumn and trying to “deal” with weather that deviates from this ideal isn’t just difficult, it’s a missed aesthetic opportunity. Why not use runoff to grow walls of fluffy moss instead of uneven bacterial stains in subway stations? Just replace the tiles with porous concrete and add some dried moss to get things started. Or sidewalks that use two kinds of cement that look the same when dry, but change when wet to reveal a pattern only on rainy days. Rain is already a trigger in a system of mostly hidden feedback loops – any other ideas for designing these loops into the city’s surface?
10 Comments
April 19th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Joey, great post. I agree with your sentiments. Have you read the book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. I have some issues with what they say, but its going in the right direction. In addition Allan Chochinov’s “1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design” is a fantastic piece about the responsibilities that a designer should consider when executing the next super-cool gadget.
The society we live has become too disposable, push and urged on by corporations who want to move even consumer products to a ’service’ model so we constantly consume, dispose, consume, dispose. We have been conditioned to only think about the next , the new, the novel instead of looking at what we have, recycling and appreciating time.
Everyone should consider their actions when disposing, and multiply it by a thousand, a million because that is exactly what is happening every time you throw away one coke bottle. You think its just one. Think again. We are in this boat together and designers, the ones who may be in the best position to make a statement about this, should make use of their unique position within the product and technology food chain to bring not just awareness, but action.
April 20th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I agree with Wynn — great post! The line, “Rain is already a trigger in a system of mostly hidden feedback loops …” is also a simple, poetic and articulate description of a very complex concept — can I quote you?
April 21st, 2007 at 1:17 am
Thank you both. Wynn. although I wasn’t talking about green design directly, you make a great connection between a product’s ability to age well and sustainability: products that people continue to love won’t get thrown out and replaced. Barbara, you can certainly quote me- I’m honored.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:29 am
Hey Joey, very well said! I completely agree, and love the idea about moss. Have you heard of ?
April 28th, 2007 at 12:32 am
[...] Rain Storms in New York City Trigger Visible Feedback Loops [...]
June 6th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Great post, designers should really make an effort to apply materials that age well.
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I love your idea of the sidewalks that change with rain or the moss growing walls. We need design that is whimsical without being insipid.
I love rainy days, the change in the tone of the light, the sound, the pensiveness. You can hear everyone waiting for the sun to come back. Walking along a downtown Chicago sidewalk in the rain or just after a rainstorm is wonderful and it could only be improved by secret concrete designs.
Please try your best to sell that idea somewhere–theme parks would be the first to do it. Try Disney.
November 15th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]
December 4th, 2007 at 3:11 am
why did you put wheels on your boat?
February 11th, 2008 at 3:27 am
[...] When I think of design at Princeton I think cerebral architecture, but in two weeks they’re hosting a conference about making design accessible and useful. They invited me to speak about sustainable industrial design. I’m planning to talk about how design that anticipates patina is the most sustainable; something like my post about how New York City handles rainfall. It’s a start, but I think I can go deeper with the conference’s “design for non-specialists” theme. Any suggestions? [...]