With the plummeting economy, diminishing environment, and decreasing amount of land available for development, sustainable architecture has become a growing need that has drawn the attention of scientists, researchers, engineers, land owners and naturally, architects.  Last week, engineering school Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill announced a partnership dedicated to advancing the relationship between buildings and land: Center for Architecture Science and Ecology, or CASE.

Comprised of scientists, engineers, and architects from the professional and academic world, CASE has been focusing on ideas such as a rooftop’s ability to harness wind power, the cooling properties of various wall materials, a window’s ability to store sunlight so that it can be transferred into energy the building can use elsewhere, and “eco-chimneys” that could help purify the surrounding air.  According to the New York Times, “The idea is to tap and cultivate the talents of a new generation of architects, thinkers, and planners and turn out sustainable and energy-efficient solutions to today’s environmental challenges in the global building sector, which accounts for more than one third of energy consumption and nearly 40 percent of carbon production.

Not only do buildings count for a third of the world’s energy consumption, but also as the pace of building development increases exponentially, “acceleration in the pace of architectural innovation and the implementation of sustainable material and energy technology becomes ever more urgent,” according to CASE’s website.

Housed at Skidmore’s Manhattan office, where 24 students and six faculty members are in residence, the program was officially announced last week at a reception held on the rooftop of 7 World Trade Center even though it has been operating for a year.

RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson says, “Tackling the global challenges of sustainability and energy security requires a commitment to innovation, to inquiry, and to cross-disciplinary collaboration.  Through the development of innovative systems and materials that will shift building performance toward sustainable and energy self-sufficient models, researchers at the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology will demonstrate to the world the power that lies at the nexus of art, design, science, and technology. Two leaders with long histories of innovation in their fields — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — will work together to create ecologically sustainable design through cutting-edge technological experimentation and architectural work.”

For an in-depth look at CASE’s latest projects like “Next Generation High-Efficiency Solar Power Systems for Building Envelopes” and “Advanced EcoCeramic Structural Systems,” go to their site.  Be warned - you might not be able to understand the technical jargon, but at least you’ll get to see some fantastic photos of their work.

Systems research at CASE is currently supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR).

Contacts:

Elizabeth Kubany, SOM
(212) 298-9516
elizabeth.kubany@som.com

Amber Cleveland, Rensselaer
(518) 276-2146
clevea@rpi.edu

We’re back at it again with The Feast Conference: our gathering around Social Innovation and the intersection of creativity, entrepreneurship, and positive change.  “The Feast” gathers the world’s leading creative mavericks, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, and innovators together to inspire action to change the world.

We’re currently looking for speakers for our mini-conference in New Orleans on February 6, 2009 and our flagship conference in New York on October 1, 2009.  If you’d like to nominate a speaker, please email hello[at]alldaybuffet[dot] with the following information:

1)  Name:
2)  Company
3)  Why they would be a great speaker (in less than 100 words)

To get more information about The Feast Conference, please visit http://www.thefeastconference.com

Frog Design has a great post and video about a term coined by Dave Hoffer, Disruptive Realism.

Disruptive Realism is an expression presented in an everyday context that disrupts peoples perceptions about different things. Expression can mean many things and it a way it’s art but it’s also much more expansive a term than just art.

Some examples from include Banksy’s graffiti, Improv Everywhere, Reverse Graffiti and, of course, last week’s fake NY Times.

It’s a powerful messaging tool, especially where social campaigns are concerned, using juxtaposition to great effect by actually leveraging the very thing we’re trying to change– the status quo. Some of our favorite campaigns use this method like the Swiss Amnesty International campaign “It’s not happening here, but it’s happening now”

And of course, the amazing work by the Iraqi veterans of IVAW (Iraqi Veterans Against the War), like the piece below.

But Frog throws it back to  example to Orson Welles’s ‘War of the Worlds’ radio broadcast

which was meant as entertainment and likely a commentary on how evolution had been twisted into Social Darwinism (which is an interpretation of the HG Wells book on which the broadcast was based.) Regardless of its intention, the broadcast caused mass hysteria. An excellent example of Disruptive Realism.

I think it’s safe to say that The Yes Men would have made Orson proud. Here’s to “reality”.

We recently stopped by VII photo gallery in Brooklyn during one of Swiss-Miss’s Creative mornings. A collectively owned agency founded by photo-journalists, VII focuses on photojournalism and changes and development of society and culture.

You may recognize one of the agency members, James Nachtwey, winner of the 2007 TED prize, who launched the site http://xdrtb.org/ in October to generate awareness of the story about an extremely drug resistant strain of TB known as XDRTB. If you haven’t checked it out yet, do so and spread the word. It’s a great example of the power of photography and media in creating awareness and subsequent political and public action.

Along this concept, Demos, a UK-based “every democracy” think tank is putting together an event in London this week (November 18): How to make news and influence people: Media and journalism in the network age which will discuss “the new politics of images” and “what kinds of news and photo-journalism are emerging to connect people with politics.”

From Frog design:

The event, held at London’s King Cross Hub, will gather a salon of experts to examine the making and implications of James Nachtwey’s XDR-TB’s awareness campaign, a much acclaimed example of visual storytelling and a winner of the TED Prize 2007. Panelists include Charlie Leadbeater, Author of We-Think; Charlie Beckett, Director, POLIS, LSE and author of Supermedia; Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director, TED Conferences; and Alfie Dennen, Founder of We’re not afraid, Moblog and XDR-TB ‘Find-me.’

For a peak at the back-end research, they should talk to Fame Theory, the creators of Fame Game, a site that tracks and analyzes celebrity fame through a combination of event photography and online media. They’ll be holding an event of their own tomorrow entitled “Fame Theory 101″, exploring How Fame Game and the internet are changing the world of branding, public relations, and social and celebrity culture.

More than just a site about the vain and self-promoting, they’re using the data they’re gathering to develop all algorithms and visualization to track the functioning of popularity, offering insights into how can you leverage the power of the media to create more attention for your brand/project/client/artwork… or even XDRTB?

Next steps.. leveraging that for social good. We know, we know…we’re working on it.

Hip Hop is good for the new state of America.
Mainstream rappers dropping lyrics about Obama is dope.
Nevermind that the lyrics might be wack.
It’s instilling a new sense of hope and change within a culture that used to be apathetic.

CHANGE IS COOL.

The old model of politics and conservatism are dead.
Obama is the new role model and now the new “cool kids” will be academic.
Empowered to change things.
And it only helps when Young Jeezy, Q-Tip, and Busta Rhymes release songs about Obama.
Like Biggie said, “sky is the limit”
Yep.  I said it.
Hip Hope.

The system’s not super new, but we tried out some city wide bike sharing programs on a recent visit to Europe and fell in love. One of the most widely publicized and successful…Vélib (short for Vélo Liberté or bicycle freedom).

Part of a plan to cut traffic 40% by 2020, it’s become the largest and most successful bike-sharing program in the world growing from 10,000 to what’s now 20,000 bicycles and 1,450 stations, about 1 station every 300 m throughout the city center.

It’s a simple subscription model that allows you to pick up bikes at any location. The first 30 min of every trip are free with exponentially increasing rates per half hour (for most short trips to the store etc. and to keep bikes in circulation).

From testimonials (and personal experience), bikes are by far the fastest way to get around Paris.

Twenty vehicles are used at night to redistribute bicycles to high-demand stations and a barge that floats up and down the Seine serves as the service station.

JCDecaux advertising corporation financed the project and provides the government revenue from the program as well, a fee of $4.3 million a year and about half of all billboards free of charge for PSAs. In return, JCDecaux gets exclusive billboard ad rights.

The design challenge: convincing people that riding a bicycle is not a symbol of lowered social status, and that the Vélib is not their “grandpa’s bicycle.” At the same time, they also had to design something durable that could be ridden by a variety of people day after day.

New York, are you taking notes? For more, there’s an episode about the bike project that aired recently on the e2 series…(Brad Pitt narrating about city wide bike sharing? … swoon). Kudos to KR Films for some nice videography of a great idea. 

We’re looking to add some young stunners to our team. If you’re into creativity, entrepreneurship, and social innovation; hit us up.  At this point, you might be asking yourself, what is All Day Buffet?  Let us answer it for you in two sentences..

“All Day Buffet is a social innovation incubator for creative professionals. We create, launch, and connect ventures that promote creative solutions for positive change.”

If you have that entrepreneurial drive, and want to work at a startup that launches other startups, come join our team.  Whether you’re a designer, web developer, educator, creative misfit or all of the above, we’re looking for the all-stars from the slash/slash generation.

What will you be doing exactly?

You’ll be responsible for writing content for the alldaybuffet.org website, as well as helping us produce our first venture - The Feast Conference.  Our goal is to eventually help YOU get your idea off the ground, funded, and launched because that’s kind of what we do.  You’ll have access to our network which spans from venture capitalists to digital entrepreneurs.  Unfortunately, the position isn’t paid but don’t worry, we won’t make you get coffee or stupid nonsense like that!
If interested, please email us at mike[at]alldaybuffet[org], and send along your resume and twitter style description of why you’re awesome (140 characters max).   Thanks!

From main street to Wall street and everywhere in between, there’s been an outpouring of lamentations, exclamations and downright indignation and concern.  But what are we all going to do about it? How about slow down?

That’s one of the concepts behind a new movement called Slow Money. Based very much on the Slow Food concept, Slow money is the closest thing we’ve seen yet to a return to the fundamentals and meaning of “investment”. Here’s the def:

A concept under development by Woody Tasch, Chairman of Investors’ Circle. Inspired by the mission of the Slow Food Movement, Tasch considers that “fast” money investments (such as venture capital) is expected to return a profit quickly but is rarely invested long enough to create sustainable ventures. This is especially true of early-stage companies in some industries (such as biotech, high tech, and food development) which often require longer time frames to generate competitive returns. Slow money is invested with an understanding of the natural dynamics of these businesses and investors set their expectations of financial return around these processes.

PURETALKS, will be presenting a talk by Woody Tasch on the topic. In partnership with StartingBloc, NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship, Green Leaders, and Pure Project and hosted by  NYU Stern’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies it’s sure to be enlightening. So if you want to learn more, stop in. Your wallet will thank you.

Eventbrite it here and see below for info.

PURETALKS presents: Slow Money: An Evening with Woody Tasch

Join us for an inspiring and innovative talk with Woody Tasch, Chairman of Investors’ Circle and Founder of Slow Money

A founding group of advisors, funders and members are making 2008 the year of Slow Money. The newly organized 501c3, incubated by Investors’ Circle, is designing strategies for investing in local food systems and promoting new definitions of fiduciary responsibility around principles of carrying capacity, cultural and biological diversity, non-violence and care of the commons.  Woody Tasch will present the vision, mission, and strategy for the new intermediary and share from his recently published book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money.

Q & A and and catered reception to follow.

Hosted by:

NYU Stern’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

In partnership with:

StartingBloc, NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship, Green Leaders, and Pure Project

Slow Money - An Evening with Woody Tasch

NYU Stern - Henry Kaufman Management Center
Cantor ballroom (top floor)
44 West 4th St.
New York, NY
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
7.00 ~ 8.15PM
Catered reception to follow
RSVP: By November 14, 2008
Post-event Social Networking hosted by StartingBloc
Apple Restaurant
17 Waverly Pl. (near Greene)
New York, NY
8.45 ~ 10.00pm

PURETALKS is a collaborative series of conversations touching on topics of creative expression, sustainable practice and social entrepreneurship.  The goal of these talks is to inspire and ignite activity among its participants, and to offer a platform to support this activity.  These conversations will take the form of action workshops, networking events, lectures, and conferences.

About Woody Tasch:
Woody Tasch is Chairman of Investors’ Circle, a national non-profit network of investors dedicated to “Patient Capital for a Sustainable Future.” Since 1992, Investors’ Circle has facilitated the flow of over $130 million to over 200 sustainability-minded early-stage companies and venture funds, including over $24 million to 37 food companies. He is Chairman and President of the newly formed NGO, Slow Money, an intermediary dedicated to catalyzing the flow of capital to enterprises that support soil fertility and local food communities.
The mission of Slow Money is:
•    To promote entrepreneurship that preserves and restores soil fertility, appropriate-scale organic farming and local food communities.
•    To catalyze increases in foundation grant-making and mission-related investing in support of sustainable agriculture and local economies; and,
•    To incubate next-generation socially responsible investment strategies, integrating principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place, diversity and non-violence.

Woody Tasch, Investor’s Circle, Slow Money

How does innovation happen?  When you bring together all players and, well… let them play! Just one of the many insights we learned from our visit to an amazing innovation shop, Brain Store. Based in Biel Switzerland (the cutest town around), Brain store is a literal factory of ideas that combines innovation tools into their Idea Machine process (below).

Their phone book definition:

The IdeaFactory BrainStore develops ideas using an industrial process.
For companies, organisations and private people. Reliably, and in record time.

It’s industrial idea production for some heavy duty brands, having worked with everyone from the BMW to DuPont and a ton of social campaigns as well including Amnesty International and the Swiss Government.

But their productivity comes from fun as well as trends, research and inclusion of multi-disciplinary vantage points for creative thinking, which often means kids.

Via an article by Fast Company

“We’re not looking for average ideas. We’re looking for crazy ideas. We use kids to find those ideas, because they know how to talk without letting their thinking get in the way.”

The BrainStore mixes these young people with members of its client teams during creative workshops. “One of the ideas behind the company was to blend the professionalism of experts with the unbridled enthusiasm of kids. We have 17-year-olds working on products and campaigns for such companies as Nestle and the Swiss railway. It’s cool for kids to be able to say, ‘Hey, I was a part of that.’”

Not only do we love the idea of bringing together the target audience and the client (an great idea Brain Store was founded on) but also their realization of the innovative potential of young people.

Many thanks to our gracious hosts and founders Nadja and Markus for an inspiring tour and stay. Keep up the amazing work and realization of the motto, “It’s Possible”.

Danny Outlaw of the Outlaw Design Blog has a nice Blog Action Day day post over at PSDtuts about 23 Awesome Examples of Design as a Force for Good.

While design is too often used as a means to persuade us to buy, buy and buy some more, it is less often but more importantly used as a means to communicate positive messages and encourage action. Here we showcase 23 examples where graphic design has been used not to sell us products we don’t need, but instead, to fight poverty.

Of course, we usually get a good dose from our friends over at http://osocio.org/ but this round up includes some interesting uses of clever advertising, messaging and design for good.  Check it (and some more PSD tutorials) here. ]]> http://www.alldaybuffet.org/2008/11/07/graphic-design-and-advertising-for-good/feed/