[Waste=Food]

I have a tendency to tear apart the documentaries in this class. This one is no exception on the aesthetic end. Poor camera work, poor choice of music, poor editing, etc.

However, the topic was far more fascinating, and much better presented than the past documentaries. Part of this was because of the poor aesthetics: they could not get in the way to make up for lacking content. And there was no need to make up for poor content choices: it was simply full.

At the heart of the documentary is the Cradle to Cradle movement and the two very awkward nerd-partners who envisioned it: William McDonough, an award-winning American architect, and Michael Braungart, a German physicist, Greenpeace advocate, and winner of the Strangest Analogy Award. It was on a New York rooftop that their vision of a better world (along with a delightful bromance) started. Their basis for a better world was a simple yet powerful statement: "Everything that is made from Biology [which is pretty much everything] should be able to safely return to the soil."

This sounds like a hopeless romantic ecologist's daydream, doesn't it? The thing is, it's not. Working with a German cloth manufacturer, Braungart was able to design both fabrics, cloths and dyes that were safe to produce and had no toxic materials in them. Most importantly though, it was just as financially feasible.

The two's work, which now is under the institution of MBDC, includes redesigning factories for Ford, working with Nike to manufacture completely Cradle to Cradle shoes, and even being apart of China's five-year sustainability plan. And while initial costs are great, the innovations often end up saving the company money while also improving work flow and moral.

Take, for instance, the Green Roof at the Ford Motor Plant in Detroit. The Bromancers (as I will lovingly refer to McDonough and Braungart from now on) designed a roof that was made up of grass and plants: a hefty investment that to many business men might seem like a whimsical fantasy expense. However, the roof, because it is growing, will not need to be replaced-only maintained with minimal repair. Re-roofing an entire car plant is a multi-million dollar job that would have to happen every ten-to-twenty years. Along with that, the Green Roof filters and purifies rainwater that would otherwise have to be shipped and chemically processed, saving the company even more money. And then, as icing on the cake, it uses materials that are natural and good for the earth, and even is home to many other creatures.

The power of of The Bromancers is that they take the grand utopian ideas and put them to work in a business-minded way. This is the basis behind Cradle-to-Cradle: putting our stuff to work. Waste becomes food for the earth. Food for innovation. Food for an industry. Or just food in general. Our dreams are put to work making industries not just more green, but more profitable.

"A building should be like a tree," Braungart tells us. It should grow, purify the air, produce fruit, be a home for creatures and produce things. It should respect it's inhabitants as individuals. A building should not just be sustainable; it should be beneficial.  "If someone asked 'how is your relationship with your girlfriend,' and you replied, 'sustainable,' that's not a good answer." In the same way, we don't want a sustainable relationship with the earth, we want a good one. Sustainable is less bad. Less bad is still bad. What we want is good.

So must everything break down into organic waste? Not necessarily right away. In The Bromancer's world, there are two places waste can go: the ecosphere, or biology, or the technoshpere, back to production. Modern recycling takes a stab at this by the re-use of waste, but it fails in one area: recycled products are downcycled until they become waste again. In order for them to benefit the world better, they must be upcycled, or be refined into a better product. This means things should be easily disassembled, and made of plastics that can be refined or chemically altered to a better state. And of course, the end goal being that the plastic can bio-degrade to benefit the earth, and is not toxic to produce.

What The Bromancers are asking of all industries is far more than just sustainability; rather, it is a world where consuming things is beneficial, not harmful, to the world.

It is easy to be swept away by the utopian vision of a completely green world. I believe it is important: I do not believe it is the most important. We are still dealing with extreme poverty, drought, genocide, war, and not to mention the various emotional and physical disabilities we suffer from. A greener society will not fix all our problems. It may in fact, fix fewer than we feel, and will cause more than we think. This is the case with any changes made on this earth. However, I believe it is something important to be pursued on both the corporate level, and the smaller, household level as well.

And good Lord, that bow-tie. Damn classy.

[Design & thinking documentary]

As stated before, I have an issue with documentaries, due to their inability to examine situations with objectivity. This exploitation often takes two forms: the first is that the filmmaker seeks to exploit all of the dramatic moments in order to turn a rather boring situation into a dramatic, two-hour thriller. The second kind of exploitation is the opposite; taking all the good of a situation and never showing the bad, in order to excite or inspire or whatever other bullshit catch-words you might use at a convention.

Design & Thinking, a film by Mui-Ming Tsai, is guilty of the second exploitative technique. The light, bouncy music, shallow depth of field shooting in all, hi-key light filming pretty, happy people. It dances around from scene to scene (each scene presented with a Wes-Anderson-esque futura title card), showing how happy people are at their job, and how much they love design, and God-forbid we ever see these designers try to curse out that piece of plastic that just wont fit.

But this isn't a film review blog, it's a design blog. So now I'll talk about design.

The problem with these sorts of documentaries (besides the fact that they are poor pieces of cinema) is that they rarely show you much about the process itself. All monotony is stripped away, leaving us with just the exciting results. Now you may look at me like I'm stupid, and say "of course you cut out the boring parts-It's a movie." Then I would say you are apparently watching bad movies ('Breathless', 'There Will Be Blood', and 'Hunger' are all excellent films that use the boring parts to their advantage). However, this is simply not fair. To show the exciting parts of design, stripped of blood, sweat and tears is an insult to design and designers themselves.

Some might argue that the purpose of the film is to inspire us to look at design differently. Well, they've failed in that too: it seems they are echoes the same "Design is everywhere!" chant that every other design-based film is echoing as well. As for inspiration, it fails in that area too. Sure, I might get excited the the happy people, and the fun shapes and all the money, but when I actually set down to the nitty gritty, my inspiration high will quickly wear off, leaving me more sad than before.

Not to say that the movie was a complete bore. Talking with the guy who ran the cooking classes was very intriguing.

My biggest problem with the film was the tone. The tone that is so well summed up by a passing quote on a door of one of the design institute: "Every problem has a material solution." The whole tone of the film was that this was true, that design of material things could fix every problem. There is no idea that is more dangerous than this, and this is where I really show my cards as a Christian Mystic. This assumes that every problem is rooted in the material world. That we are no more than a collection of molecules interacting and processing via matter and energy. It assumes that our problems are not based in something far deeper that matter.

This is my problem with design today; we really believe we can fix everything, while we ignore the blatant issue that maybe, just maybe we are the problem.

A Zahner

My friend, the comedic genius that he is, does an excellent YouTube show called the Oreo Reviewer. A riveting, edge of your seat experience. You should check out the latest episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SvXxbeC2rs

Also, if you notice the genius channel art, that's all me.

Anyways, A Zahner! A family-owned company that started over 115 years ago that has blossomed into one of the leading metal fabricators. Their main clients are architects and artists looking to fabricate complex metal facades. Their job is to help take the ideas and make them a reality. Ideas are discussed with engineers and designers, and tests are made before final pieces are made and shipped. Often, tests can be quite large, built on mockup towers for the architects to see.

The main tools used in fabrication are the Chimbo Punch, Waterjet, and Mill. The punch is used to perforate or dent the metal in particular ways. It's ability to program it to make complex perforation makes it unique. The waterjet is used for cutting metal using water at high speeds, and can get very exact and detailed cuts. The mills is used for thicker steel or more simple cuts. It is quicker and more cost efficient.

The different metals are also treated with different chemicals processes in order to get unique finishes. One in particular, called Interference Colored Stainless Steel is treated so that the light reflects off the metal at a different angle, allowing our eyes to perceive it as darker.

They work in strictly metals. Steel, copper, ect. Some aluminum, but rarely composites, because of their difficulty to work with.

They like to innovate. Currently, they are renovating their old building to become another section of the shop.

And that's A-Zahner!

Frank Gehry

Here's an interesting fact about coffee: there is no such thing as a 'coffee flavor.' I mean, there is for ice cream or other crap like that, but real coffee is just a combination of multiple flavors. There are six parts to a cup of coffee where flavors can reside: the aroma, the body, the flavor, the sweetness, the aftertaste, and the acidity. Each can be ranked on a scale of 1-10, and is also assigned a different flavor profile. My favorite roast is an Ethiopian SOE called Deri Kocha, which originates from the area Ethiopia of the same name. Roasted at only a 2, it's incredibly light and full of floral flavors. As a pour over, it's similar to a raspberry tea, and as espresso, it has a similar taste to Blood Orange. Unfortunately, it's out of season at the moment, so I need to wait a year to get some more. 

And now, onto the homework. 

I don't love documentaries. As one who has studied film, I understand that the purpose of film is not to portray reality, but rather to give the viewer the illusion of reality, which is excellent in fiction and disastrous when applied to actual events (and we wonder why the news tells us nothing). Thus, even after watching a documentary about Frank Gehry, I feel I know very little about him. Was he a genius? Was he crazy with enough smart engineers behind him? I was bothered by how he had people building the models for him. I liked his bluntness. I disliked how he left his wife to become a better architect. 

I shall therefore comment upon what I know to be true (and even that tainted by music and camera angles): the process and the architecture itself. 

Of what I saw of Frank's process was this: making lots of loose handed sketches, free handed and wild, and then building model after model, very quickly, then scanning the models into a computer to get all the technical measurements. Initial models were quick, made from whatever elements were lying around. As they became more technical, craftsmen would make more technical ones out of wood and plexi. Models can then be made in the computer using a 3D scanning tool. 

The architecture itself is wild, unlike anything I've ever seen. It's full of compound curves and movement, weird angles. When looking at it in the midst of a city, it's like seeing an aborigine in the midst of a business meeting.  My initial feeling is one of wonder and awe, which is rare. Buildings bore me unless they're old. 

However, there seems to be something missing in his work. The structure is a sprawling jazz piece, an epic cacophony of structure, shape, and material, but still a cacophony, never the less. Parts awkwardly jut out here, curve there. It's all very free, individual, but not cohesive. It does not point to something greater than itself. This of course, is fine. I just feel without it, it feels lacking. 

In the video, his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, was called to a cathedral. I cannot agree. Cathedrals point upward, spiritually. The purpose of a Cathedral is to remind humanity that it is small, that us as artists do not create, but rather tap the great beauty. 

However, Frank's work does have an aspect I love: whimsical fun. Every piece I look at of his feels like it was fun to make, as if he were playfully putting his middle finger up to stodgy architects whenever their backs were turned. And I like that a lot. He seems to tap a simple, childlike joy in his work that makes the impossible possible, and trades practicality and utility for laughter and beauty, a feast for the human soul. 

[Matthias Pliessnig]

Did you know that the famous YouTube video Heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa was actually a morph off of another video? Funny world isn't it. If you haven't seen the video, here's a link.

Anyway, back to that design stuff.

Matthias Pliessnig is an artist and furniture designer who's work is made out of bent wood. Using a machine called a steam bender, he heats the glue-like fibers in the wood, allowing it to bend with considerable ease for about thirty seconds before hardening again. The wood he uses is mostly white oak, all air dried (as opposed to the process of placing the wood in a kiln to bake). Forms are wrapped around plywood struts that act like a cast for the wood to be bend around, and the pieces are glued or riveted together.

Usually, when people talk at Hallmark, I am looking at my watch, quite ready to leave. For this one, I was still looking at my watch, because I had a date I didn't want to be late to, but I sincerely hoped that these two events would not end up conflicting because I was thoroughly enjoying his speaking. I even asked a question, which is about as rare as a baboon giving birth to an elephant.

The organic shapes captivated my imagination. That would could bend in such unique ways was truly amazing to me, how it could resemble such a living, breathing mass while still being incredibly light and functional. What struck me most, however, was his process. Matthias talked about how often he would experiment with shapes. His early works of simply free-bending the wood were inspirational, how he would ignore the computer in order to get in touch with the wood itself. I dislike doing creative work on a computer (except when I'm writing, because I can write faster. Even then I print off to re-read,) and to see a designer who, while used the computer, was not reliant upon it was incredibly encouraging. Rhino was used as a tool to give a visual idea to clients, not as the creative process itself.

Also, I like boats. Perhaps I'll build one soon.

*Sigh* Up

Well, let's start this blog with something fun. I watched two great films over last weekend. One was a French New Wave film by Jean-Luc Goddard called Vivre sa Vie, and the other was a Japanese film by Akura Kurosawa called Rashomon. Both are excellent, and I highly recommend them highly. My girlfriend and I also went on a date to the new Lawrence Library (what horrid Lawrencians we are-we hadn't even been there yet!) and I picked up a few comic books by an author known as Jason. Check him out.

Alright, now on to the homework stuff: Sign Up!

Sign Up is a local company that manufactures (say it with me, kids) signs, from small wayfinding signs to large aluminum facades. Their main clients are colleges, along with businesses. While Sign Up does some design, their job is most often to take their customers ideas and make them into reality, which may mean altering some parts of their dream sign so it can actually exist.

Sign Up's shop is an industrial building on the east side of Lawrence, large enough to deal with the larger signs (often up to 20 feet). Most signs are made out of aluminum, being a lighter metal. Cutting is done on a CNC router, along with jump shears. Welding and riveting are common methods of attatchment. For more precise cutting, or the need to cut thicker aluminum (below 6 gauge), they ship out of house.

Paint is mixed in house and sprayed on in their super badass spray booth, and then can be moved into a super badass huge oven to heat dry.

Digital decals can be printed in house in various manners.

And yeah, that's what they do. They were kinda cool, I guess

Pics from Reuter