It’s been quiet around here, which is a good indication that things are being done outside the written word.
Writing is one task which takes an great deal of mental and physical energy to complete; anyone who has worked with me knows that I often think out loud, taking my inner monologue and sharing it for those around me in order to work out a particularly hard problem. While at IDEO, a hack I created was asking someone to take notes on a Google Doc while I speak out loud, getting a first draft on a page, where I could see it, and quickly edit. This allowed me to keep in flow and the moment, where if I type directly there is a hitch between the mental thought, and the physical act of typing into a keyboard or writing on the page. I have to – strongly – resist going back and editing anything while I write, or flow will be broken.
So. This is a lacking excuse for not following through with a self-imposed goal of writing something each week. Add in sick kids, a new school, and (waves generally around him) the current situation of the world, it gives me a mental out to do things which take less energy.
On entrepreneurship
This is my 10th month of being a small business owner, and I’m still learning the craft of entrepreneurship. Having met and exceeded my annual goals, I am now trying to improve my overall metrics (sales, projects, etc). It’s difficult to balance everything I need to do during a day and week. Letting my desires rule the day, would mean making art and sketching everyday. But luckily, I need to do other things to maintain and sustain this business. One of those tasks that I love to do, and am trying to find new ways of doing, is talking to people. One of my metrics is how many people I speak with on a given week.
And speaking to people can take a lot of energy for me to complete. I never thought I was introverted until I read that a great way to diagnose where you are on the extroverted-introversion spectrum is if interacting with people give you energy, or takes it away. For me, just like writing, interacting with people takes a lot of energy and I have created lots of (sometimes negative) ways where I need to retain my energy, which sometimes reads as being rude.
To make sure that I improve in this area, I am always looking for ways to test and prototype new ways to engage with people. I’d like to speak about Block Builder today.
Block Builder
This past Sunday I completed my initial activation of my Block Builder art and engagement installation at MoMA PS1. For all those who joined me, or amplified the advertisement, thank you.
Block Builder is a prototype on how might we engage with residents to help them share their hopes and dreams with others, civic organizations, and the city agencies. I’m a trained architect, builder, and former DOB Expediter who still has to think for a moment what the difference between a R2 district from a R3x district. These things are complex, as the city and our dreams are complex and competing. Giving people the tools to be able to communicate in ways experts can understand is a stepping-stone toward positive engagement with residents, hopefully building greater empowerment.
Block Builder is also a prototype of seeing how might we create another way to speak about how our dreams are physicalized into the city around us. Speaking to the 100+ people who came out to a tiny pop-up plaza in Long Island City took a bunch of planning, support, and energy. My hope is by creating a reusable kit-of-parts and toolkit the successive versions of Block Builder will take less energy, time, and resources.
Below are initial thoughts based on this activation, knowing that I have a stack of synthesis to complete on this work in preparation of a possible additional activation to be announced soon.
People want to be listened to
We live in a time of great communication revolution. These are the days of miracle and wonder – but for COVID, climate change, the cleaving of society into separate spheres of truth (thanks Fox News!), and the general increase in anger – this might be a golden age for humans. Even before COVID our isolation seemed to be growing. It feels like a gift to give an invitation to someone to listen to their dreams, and they say yes.
One of my design principles for my practice is to try to be as non-extractive as possible, and compensate people as much as possible. That’s why I designed Block Builder with stickers so I could give lots and lots of stickers away; I made buttons as little gifts; and I made sure that the art making could be completed by everyone.
Prototype with a 5-year old
Besides being non-extractive, I try to be as inclusive as possible; striving to make designs and interactions possible for people across racial, gender, orientation, and across the ages. I think that if 5 year olds can participate and have fun, then I can find ways to connect with everyone’s inner 5 year old, tapping into the wonder and joy inside us all.
My daughter was key to this: I would make versions of Block Builder and have her play with it, asking questions and seeing how she “played” the game. She even helped me choose colors and what buildings to sketch and illustrate. I hoped to borrow some of her joy and wonder at this amazing city we live into the project.
I was overjoyed that about 20% of the participants were younger folk, who made their own block by themselves or with their grownups. Creating vehicles for intergenerational engagement is so important, something I learned from working with the City of Long Beach, which has one of the largest Cambodian-American populations in the US. The older folk often fled from the Khmer Rouge, bringing trauma inflicted by scars physical and mental, often not sharing or having an outlet to repair their trauma with the younger generation.
It is incumbent on us to create easy ways for people to connect with each other, across all the different lines we create for ourselves.
Stickers make everything better
Finding ways to speak and listen to each other has been a key plank in my practice. Often conversation, speaking, listening, and acting needs a boundary object: something to either gently prod, or force, people to share. This was key during our Listening Room project and our project for AARP to gather Local Wisdom.
I originally was thinking of a fleet of stamps with monochromatic buildings, so that people could make an infinite amount of building stamps. I might still do this version, but I choose stickers once I prototyped it with my daughter and it was clear that COVID is still here.
Stickers just make everything better.
You can take as much as you want, you can take stickers home, you can position them anyway you want, and they are fairly neat and clean. They also connect to something joyful and wondrous inside us, when we got stickers for good behavior, or to create worlds of our own.
Scale is tough
The biggest obstacle to Block Builder is that scale is tough. This was one 3 hour activation, in a small part of the city, for a group of people who generally are pretty affluent and have the 5-10 minutes to sticker with a stranger.
When I do this again, I will recruit additional facilitators to support the block builders on a more 1:1 mode. I also had dreams of being diligent on recording the block builder’s demographic and residence zip code so I could see what the mix of residents to visitors was during the activation. While I was somewhat able to do that, it wasn’t as consistent as I would like.
My ultimate goal would be to run this again, in a more controlled environment so I can control attendees, information gathered, and have a more in-depth set of conversations. I also have dreams of creating a digital version, maybe borrowing from StreetMix, to create scale. So if anyone has some spare grant money sitting around, please email me.
Art was made
I am beyond happy how the first prototype went, and am looking forward to iterating this tool, and bringing it to other communities. I want to thank the City Artist Corps grant program, which allowed me the resources and connections to make this art possible. Special thanks to New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Made in NY, and the Queens Theatre. Extra special thanks to MoMA PS1 who helped arrange space and advertising, and the NYC DOT who’s pop-up plaza installation gave me the space to conduct this art.
What I’m reading
Sharing research about the shared value of shared streets
Help build this collection of shared, open research about some of the multiple and diverse forms of value that retrofitting our streets might produceThe Largest Autocracy on Earth
Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way.Growing Innovation Capacity with City Hall Influencers in Glendale, CA
NBER Paper: New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s
The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
More things we’ve made
If you haven’t seen this work, the below connect to Block Builder in interesting ways.
Outdoor Dining Pavilions
Outdoor dining pavilions, often temporary, located on public thoroughfares. Built with mostly short-lived materials such as plywood, wood framing, or inflatable plastic.
Community Voting
Provide residents with a way to vote besides the second Tuesday of each November. Successful Community Voting ranges from Participatory Budgeting to Focus Alignment to basic feedback.
Local Wisdom
A temporary installation for AARP to better understand the needs of city practitioners, so AARP can improve their Livable Communities offer.