Outside the Art Gallery of NSW,  the two monumental bronze sculptures The Offerings of War and The Offerings of Peace (1923) that are flanking the museums entrance, have been put in a new, quite absurd context. Titled War and Peace and in Between, the artist has built a perfectly average looking living room and bedroom around the sculptures which visitors can access via two ramps. It’s a stunning experience to grasp the actual scale of an oversize bronze statue from so close. And beyond that it really makes you aware of the divide of public and private in the objects that surround us in our daily urban environments.

The Sydney project marks the latest in the series of Kaldor Public Art Projects, running since 1969 throughout Oz and including the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Gilbert & George, Jeff Koons, and Bill Viola.

Building domestic spaces around public monuments, artworks and streetlights has been Tatzu Nishi’s signature act for over a decade. The artist lives and works in Cologne, and you can see more of his projects at his website.

Duane Bray and Ryan Jacoby of IDEO spoke last night at an IxDA New York event. The venue was Bloomberg HQ on Lexington and 59th. In case you are unfamiliar with IxDA, it’s the grassroots equivalent of a professional organization for interaction designers. The website serves as a forum to pose questions and answers. The group organizes great talks by influential people who are broadening the understanding of what interaction design is. This was the first event I attended and I’m glad I went for a few reasons.

1. I got a glimpse inside the Ceasar Pelli designed Bloomberg building – an overpowering but exciting onslaught of information design and a great example of an open plan office.
2. The food was great.
3. I bumped into at least 4 other faculty from the Design&Management Department at Parsons. It was great to see that they care about their subject and attend events like this.
4. The talk was fun and pretty inspirational in a very pragmatic way. The IDEO process of combining business people and designers on one team in order to create a market ready product just makes a lot of sense, so no surprises there.

Here are my notes (and like I said, no big surprises just a lot of things that clearly make sense)
- Go where people are rather than expect them to come to you
- Consumers expect a conversation with brands not just a monologue.
- The big question on clients’ minds today is “How do we grow without alienating the existing client base?”
- Incorporating the human perspective opens the room to a new approach
- In the current climate companies want to know how to leverage existing assets
- Map the business impact
- Follow the money (value chain and user experience)
- Map the competitive set from a user experience standpoint and from a business standpoint
- Draw the income statement (variable costs, fixed cost, income)

]]> http://supermetricity.com/2009/07/17/business-design-meets-interaction-design/feed/ 0 http://supermetricity.com/2009/04/04/new-voorsanger-architects-web-site-launched/ http://supermetricity.com/2009/04/04/new-voorsanger-architects-web-site-launched/#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:01:04 +0000 Marco http://supermetricity.com/?p=268

When Voorsanger Architects approached us to redesign their website we were immediately intrigued by two things:

First of all, their unique architectural language is applied to a great variety of projects with an amazing consistency of style and a subtle instinct for the ‘genius loci’.

Secondly, Voorsanger Architects understand the importance of good photography as a main ingredient to communicate and market their work in the best way possible.

It was clear that the new web site’s most important characteristic would have to be to play up this equation. A full screen image is the base layer for each screen and navigational elements, and text content are added on top of it in semitransparent layers. The main navigation appears and disappears intuitively as the user’s focus shifts between browsing the main menu and exploring the content of a section or project. Each element only comes into play when it is necessary for the immediate logic of a user interaction.

The plan is to get together again for the first time in 2009, catch up and discuss how we can help each other as small business owners. The last meeting we had in ‘08 was in the Manifold office in DUMBO. They’ve been busy, check out the HIRSCHKRON/CAMACHO APARTMENT on their new site. It’s gorgeous.

This time, Noah Landow of Macktez has kindly offered to host at his office. The two of us have been meeting for breakfast once every two months for the past 6 years. We thought his office  would give a larger group a quieter spot than a restaurant, a central location and the chance to see his place.

There are some new names on the list but you all know me so give a shout if you need more input on what this is about. Also, I’d appreciated it if you could let me know who will be coming so I can start a list and add to it depending on cancellations.

Hope to see you there.

Date:
March 19th at 7:30

Location:
137 Grand Street
4th Floor
New York NY 10013

February 17
Alternatives to a Culture of Choice-less Consumption
John Wood
Professor in Design, Dept of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London;
Co-founder of the Attainable Utopias Network

February 24
Global Fashion/Local Culture(s)
Hazel Clark
Dean, School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons The New
School for Design

March 3
Bioethics Futures
Elio Caccavale
Associate Lecturer, Product Design, Central Saint Martins College of
Art and Design, London

March 10
Being-by-Things: Seeing How Products and Built Environments Let Us Be
Dependently Blind to Them
Carmeron Tonkinwise
Chair, School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design

March 24
For Culture’s Sake
Constantin Boym
Boym Design Studio