If you’re rethinking how offices can be - from startups to government - check these award-winning examples. They demonstrate design principles like: dynamic color, contiguous spaces, dwelling in nature, private-public synergies, and more. Proving there is no reason why offices need to suck the life out of one’s soul and divide instead of connect.
What would democracy look like without the divisions of self-interest groups? What would have to happen to the structure of elections and voting, candidate requirements, and the structure of consensus building for decisions to emerge from caring about the whole?
Geoff Lawton talks about the amazing design of permaculture transformations in Jordan’s depleted environments. Permaculture creates locally sustainable agri-options for economic and food sourcing now around the world, providing an example of how we need to think about food and economics in the future.
According to the Permaculture Institute, permaculture is ”an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more.”
Material Connexion, a materials library for designers, has just unveiled its inaugural MEDIUM awards, for the best materials of the year. Here is some examples of the cutting edge of new materials.
Abtech Industries’s Smart Sponge, which took an honorable mention. The material absorbs oil but not water–thus potentially solving the once intractable problem of oil-spill cleanup.
Arkema’s Pebax Renew is the first plant-based alternative for tennis shoe soles. Comprised of 95% plant-based materials, they reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.
Cellucomp’s Curran has a strength that rivals carbon fiber. But instead of carbon strands, the “biofiber” is made from–get this–processed carrots. It’s used for applications like fishing rods.
Concrete Canvas. The fiber is impregnated with concrete; it only hardens when you add water. Thus, you can create “buildings in a bag”.. .and bingo, a concrete building that can be erected almost as quick as a tent. The applications abound, from food storage in disaster areas, to military barracks.
Thanksgiving from a future perspective means being grateful for the possibilities before us. This expression of gratitude validates the reality of possibilities. It affirms that possibilities are as real as memories. Consider the practice of being grateful for specific possibilities.
Zen poetry from my friend Chris Thompson
Fly fishing demands concentration. One cannot succeed at fly fishing while thinking about the previous meeting, or while mapping out the next meeting. The river and the fish demand our full attention. If we don’t give them the attention they deserve, then we learn a new way to lose a fish. When we give the river and the fish the attention they deserve, the thoughts and worries that plague us are washed downstream, carried away to a distant place. A place where — if we were truly honest with ourselves — they belong. Most of the worries and anxieties that we carry with us each day are insignificant.
What does this have to do with zen and the future of everything? Everything.
In a recent conversation with the celebrated creative emergence diva Michelle James, we talked about the creative and innovative processes as being containers holding the space of paradox. Paradox is the truth of both-and, in contrast to the lies of either-or. It’s the contrast of abundance and deficit consciousness - more than we need to go around and not enough to go around. It’s the contrast of authentic and transactional trust. It’s the possibility of the 3rd-Or, the transcendent higher ground that liberates us from the dualism of common ground.
Lord Salisbury in a conversation with Queen Victoria: “Change? Why change? Things are bad enough as they are.”
Belief in destiny beyond one’s engagement is the failure of imagination. People of imagination are engaged in their own destiny.
If we had better citizens, would we worry about better civic leaders? If we treated people in organizations as citizens, would we worry about the quality of organizational leaders? Perhaps then the wisdom of the whole would replace authority of the individual.
The idea of citizen, given lip service in our society, is revolutionary because citizens become the core stewards of common assets and the common well-being of the whole. And leaders … their contribution becomes the cultivation of thriving citizen networks.
When doing neighborhood asset mapping in a neighborhood or housing co-operative, include attention to things like: unused garage/basement space, tools and technologies, volunteer bookkeepers and beekeepers, babysitters, unused kitchen equipment and cookbooks, children and adults who could play live music at parties and gatherings. Think of common ways to create a “library” co-op for these.
