Creative Spaces for Web Teams - and Others

Designing a space for creativity is always hard - especially teams focused on interaction design. If this is your current design challenge, check out the answers to,
"What are some of the best qualities or features you've experienced in physical workspace to do Creative/User Experience work?" at LinkedIn.

The New Decorative Modern in Philadelphia

I am seeing more modern interior design in Philadelphia mixing in decorative and floral elements. Most often this means mixing large pattern wallpapers and furniture that is reminiscent of early French pieces in with very modern pieces. I think my wife, interior designer Michelle Waldo of Michelle Waldo Interiors, did a pretty great job of this for a photography studio here in Philadelphia recently.

I like the frames on the wall, the modern couch and the trippy modernized classic chairs that face it. And then there's the pink - which with the white floor (that doesn't show at all in this pic) is pretty cool.

(Note: So I’ve avoided mentioning Michelle's work as a modern designer in this blog because doing so would seem like an advertorial – but I give up. I think she’s one of the best modern interior designers in Philadelphia. I also think this room merits attention, so I hope you don't mind that I point it out).

Robert F. Boyle’s Honorary Oscar : Art Direction

Boyle has said some of the best words I have ever heard about architecture. Although his comments below are about production design for the movies, I think they apply perfectly to architecture as well. Using his words to guide me, I think that ultimately architects are creating spaces within which the action and meaning of a person’s life is arrived at. This is a basic truth about architecture. A truth that becomes “an emotional truth as well.”

I’ve transcribed some of his quotes from the clip shown at his award.

“Production design. Art direction. Very few people know what that means. A production designer is responsible for that space within which the action and the meaning of the film is arrived at. What we are looking for is the appropriate environment .

“As a designer, my obligation is to give a physical interpretation of the script.

“The basis of production design is an architectural truth, which becomes an emotional truth as well. That’s what we’re really after is the emotion.

“We try to return to that essence. To get back to feelings. And that’s what we in movies try to do.”

FLASH: Grammarian Police State Rules Architecture

I was watching a lecture at Temple University this past Thursday. My wife and I were hoping to learn a little more about the principal of a design firm whose work we found interesting. We lasted 20 minutes. Her lecture was all in terms of semiotics: subject-object and the concepts that bind, illuminate and confront these grammatical components. And it went on and on and on. I was so furious (that shows my weakness. But it was architecture theory as practiced in the late 80’s all over again. Or… and here is my fear… it is STILL the late 80’s).

I watched the students in the audience. They were listless and uninspired. To those inside the current discourse on architecture, in other words my peers guided by critical theory and semiotics, it must seem like they are part of an inspiring rebellion. But from the outside, it looks as it did this night, like they are part of the boring old Academy.

And they are losing their audience: young designers.

This kind of discourse is just not relevant enough. I won’t reject the critical theory/semiotics mix out right – everyone has a right to a steak cooked to their taste – but it isn’t relevant enough. There is no soul in it. There is no love. There is no beauty. There is no spirit.

The primary paradigm that this kind of theory operates within is oppressive. We can’t go stamping people (the bourgeoisie) on the head with our (academia) awareness, and we can’t reject people’s uninspected impressions because of what we believe about ideology and culture (and the subconscious).

This is the new police state at work: The Grammarian Police State of the Arts. Art and design theory grounded in sign and message has become “The Academy”. It replaces the “Academy” that was overthrown at the turn of the last century . Semiotics and Critical Theory are the hegemonic bonds that now constrict the architecture profession.

Watching this Principal with degrees and merits given by the Harvard Design School and Cornell speaking about the work of her office in these terms was watching the Grammarian Police State in full wing.