All posts by Bryan Boyer
All is quiet here at HDL. The events of this week were relatively mellow. Some good conversations and interviews with local press, ongoing long-term planning, a presentation to visiting bankers from France on a mission to discover "nordic innovation," and housekeeping around the office.
Fall is peaking
We also posted some further reflections from HDL Global 2010. Anna-Leena wondered if there is such a thing as a Finnish model of innovation, Ido compared strategic design to professional cooking, and Rory shared a very (very, very) comprehensive overview of the 3 day event.
There's also some sad news to report. Channel 4, the independent British broadcaster, is shutting down their digital media investment fund 4iP, which was headed by the brilliant Tom Loosemore. We're disappointed by this move because 4iP were doing some very innovative work at the intersection of public interest and commercial viability, digital media and the physical here-and-now.
Products like Newspaper Club, for instance, are an excellent example of the transformative power that a clever re-organization of existing resources and skills can unlock. It's a service that lets anyone print their own newspapers, in any quantity from 4 to 4000, direct from digital files. We could have used a Newspaper Club here in Finland a couple months ago when HDL printed its own paper. Rather than building out their own printing infrastructure, Newspaper Club use the increasing periods of downtime on existing presses. Thankfully, it appears that Newspaper Club had enough time to get off the ground and will flourish without 4iP's continued support. Best of luck to those who were not as fortunate.
Ahhh, That felt nice—that month-long break from weeknotes we just took. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and videos that replaced these weeknotes during the month of September. After the big event we needed the break, but now we're back at it refreshed and invigorated.
At the moment our attention is split between a couple bits of media to be produced in the near term and some decisions to be made about our long term activities. For a while it seemed as though the fall would be a quiet season, but after sitting down with Justin and Marco to review the calendar the myth of respite is once again shattered.
We've been on the horn this week with Tel Aviv inquiring about upcoming case study research, Zurich to talk about an exciting opportunity, and DC to check in on media-related issues.
This is a week of comings and goings. I'm back from my post-event holiday and Marco is leaving for some time with his family. Meanwhile, we have a more significant departure: Minna is leaving Sitra to begin a PhD program at the University of Helsinki. Thanks for everything, Minna, and good luck on your next adventure!
A still from Making Future Magic (linked below). Photo from BERG's Flickr
In celebration of the fact that we're actually posting this weeknote on Friday, let's close it with links to two bits of beauty. If you haven't seen them already, Steven Johnson's introduction of his upcoming book is a great four minute scribble of ideas about hunches, connectivity, where ideas come from. And there's not really a way to frame the five-minute video entitled Making Future Magic other than to say that if someone somewhere is giving us a glimpse into the future, it's most definitely the fine people at BERG.
After getting to know each other over dinner and then diving in to learn about strategic design with a series of lectures and panel discussion, the third and final day of HDL Global 2010 kicked off at Kaupungintalo, Helsinki's City Hall.
Why are "roundtables" so often square? Day 3 was held in a big circle to encourage a naturally inclusive conversation.
The building itself is a fascinating symbol of redesign. On the outside and in the banquet hall at the center of the building it's a grand 19th century palace. But everything in between was renovated at the height of Modernism in the late 1960s, creating a nice contract between the sleek lines of the new and the ornate decoration of the old.
Friday was simple: two closed-door panel conversations with time and space to chat.
Alan Webber, founder of Fast Company magazine, moderated the opening panel on A Changing World.
Marco moderated a session on the changing nature of leadership.
And we left plenty of time in between for people to meet and chat.
John Beard of the World Health Organization chatting with Ido Mor of Cheskin Value Added and Maja Kecman of the Helen Hamlyn Centre.
This week we're posting the third and final studio recap video. If you've been following the previous weeks with Education and Sustainability, this is going to look pretty familiar.
These videos were created for parallel panel conversations at HDL Global 2010 so the original audience was only able to see one, thus the repetition was necessary to allow everyone to have the same introduction to the studio concept. Feel free to fast forward past the recipe section if you've already seen it twice!
If the animation has piqued your interest, the best place to find out more about the Ageing Studio is in the Dossier. Like the other Dossiers, you might want to start with the Challenge and Opportunity Space, which together outline the starting point for the studio, and then continue on with the Studio Summary which outlines where the studio ended their week together.
Currently we're hard at work trying to convert some of the "hunches" that the studio sketched out into prototype projects. More details as they emerge.
Day Two was packed. Up early after a great opening night, we started at 09:00 in Säätytalo, Finland's House of Estates (also known as the former meeting place of Parliament). A more grand setting could scarcely be found in Helsinki and we're very grateful for the opportunity to share the experience of being there with all of the HDL Global participants.
Welcome to Säätytalo.
Marco began the morning by making the case for strategic design, telling a story about a swimming pool and a bus schedule, and playing a short animation.
Marco giving the first talk of the morning.
LaSalle Leffall was next, sharing his experiences on the President's Cancer Panel and their recent focus on environmental, systemic factors that contribute to cancer. To hear from such a well respected practitioner in the medical realm asking for more big picture thinking was a call to action that underscored the urgency of the conversation throughout the rest of the event. Whether in medicine, education, climate change, welfare, or other topics, stepping back to see the big picture is essential if we want to truly deliver real value.
LaSalle impressed everyone with a perfectly delivered oration.
Next up was a series of three brief presentations. These were conceived as "brain dumps" which would help establish a shared terminology.
Darrel Rhea, CEO of Cheskin Added Value, spoke on innovation, with a focus on the different between incremental and disruptive innovations and how those models demand different approaches.
Nick Mabey, CEO of E3G, shared his thoughts and deep experience with the realities of decision making in the political arena.
Eric Rodenbeck, Creative Director of Stamen Design, shared his group's work on using visualization to ask new questions, beyond merely documenting known facts.
To give everyone a chance to see more of the city, and to add a bit of refreshment, we took a walk for lunch at local restaurants instead of having it catered in.
Follow the big white balloons!
Returning from lunch, we split up into three concurrent panel discussions focusing on the HDL Studio topics from earlier in the summer. Each of these closed door open and honest discussions used the HDL Studios as a starting point and opened the conversation to our global group of participants. These sessions started with short videos such as this one from Education and a similar video from the Sustainability session.
Dan Hill moderates the Sustainability panel discussion with Oras Tynkkynen, an MP in Finland; Tuuli Kaskinen of Demos Helsinki; and Peter Sharratt of WSP.
At the close of the day we gathered together for a final presentation, this time from Rosanne Haggerty who shared her work at Common Ground. Rosanne continued the theme of housing which was brought up in the conversation between Minister Vapavaauori and Alejandro Aravena the previous evening, but her focus on homelessness and Common Ground's work to "eradicate homelessness" provided a different—and inspiring—view of systemic redesign in action.
Rosanne Haggerty closing the second day of HDL Global 2010.
Is there a better meeting space in Helsinki?
To honor Tenley Albright's long career fostering collaboration across many different communities, we loaded everyone on to boats for a cruise through the harbor and dinner at the Boathouse.
Keep following the balloons.
After-dinner conversation included a spirited debate about what was a more spectacular end to the day: an incredible sunset or Iiro Rantala's performance in celebration of Tenley. You decide:
One note of business: all panel discussions were closed-door and will remain private, but in the coming months we will be posting videos of the talks by Marco, LaSalle, Darrel, Nick, Eric, and Rosanne. In the mean time, if you just can't wait to see more there are tons of pictures on Flickr.
The themes of each of our three summer studios were borrowed as panel themes for HDL Global 2010. Last week we talked about the Education panel, and this week we're sharing the video from our Sustainability panel.
The goal of the panel sessions at HDL Global was to expand the work of the studio, which focused on an issue within Finland, to include input from the global community. You could think of it as a very (very) brief road testing session: is the broad thematic area of the studio dramatically different in other contexts? Might the studio concepts helpful elsewhere?
To find out more about the Sustainability Studio, the best place to look is here in the Dossier, our living archive. The Challenge and Opportunity Space which were part of the call to action, and the Summary which is a quick recap of where the Studio ended the week, are two good entry points.
Since the studio concluded we've been working on finding opportunities to convert some of the sketched "hunches" into prototype projects. That work is ongoing and we'll share developments here as they emerge.
What are architects good at? What roles might a background in architecture prepare an individual for? These are some of the questions that Martti Kalliala and Hans Park set out to answer in their New Architect's Atlas, part of a publication called Double Happy (8+8=19) – Views on Architecture in Finland and China which our friends over at OK Do recently put together. In their own words:
The near-collapse of our financial system has had tremendous effects on the architectural profession. The number of unemployed architects worldwide is higher than ever before. This, combined with the fragmentation of the building process into the hands of specialist consultants and the shift from architects being in the service of public to private capital, has made a lot of the work and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to them simply disappear or move to other professional domains. This is why newly graduated architects have difficulties finding jobs that match their education, creative ability or ambition – not to mention the thousands of students facing an increasingly uncertain future.
All images courtesy of Martti Kalliala and Hans Park.
As communicator of material implications of decisions...
As maker of spaces, both cultural and physical...
As resource for civil society...
As link within broader building and city delivery ecosystem...
See the full post here.
As part of HDL Global 2010 we hosted a panel discussion on each of our studio themes. These discussions were used to open up the localized findings of the studio to a global frame of reference.
Here's the short video which introduced the session by providing a glimpse into the HDL Studio environment.
While we're at it, you can also dive into the Education Dossier, in particular the Challenge and Opportunity Space that kicked off the studio and the Summary from the end of the week.
At the moment we're working to convert some of the "hunches" that the studio sketched into prototype projects. When that happens, readers of this blog will be the first to find out.
HDL Global 2010 was designed as a social gathering, so what better way to emphasize this than to start with a dinner? The first day of the event started at 18:00 in the spectacular ballroom of Ritarihuone, Finland's House of Nobility.
Mikko Kosonen, President of Sitra, welcoming everyone to Finland
As punctuation to the meal and the many conversations at every table, we added three pieces of programme. Over appetizers Filmmaker/Architect Helen Han premiered Tending The Garden City, a short film focusing on the Daily Dump which she created and we produced.
After the main course was cleared Tyler Brûlé, Editor-in-Chief of Monocle Magazine, hosted a conversation embodying the "government meets design" theme of HDL. Finland's Minister of Housing, Jan Vapaavuori and Chilean architect (and Studio member) Alejandro Aravena had a frank discussion about what they saw to gain from engaging each other's work.
To set the night off right, Helsinki-based architect Tuomas Toivonen took the stage for a lecture on architecture... set to music! Tuomas' "Architecture Is In The House" LP will be available for digital download in the near future and we highly recommend you check it out if you get a chance.
And a whole lot more over at Flickr!
All photos in this post are by Pekka Mustonen.
One week on and we've just about recovered from HDL Global. The scattered papers and other piles of random bits are cleaned out of our office, the team looks fresh again, and we're steadily chipping away at backlogged emails.
As a testament to our quick recovery, I offer this "Strategic Design 101" video which introduces our work and the opportunity space we operate within. After debuting it at the event we wanted to share this as soon as possible.
To date we've begun a journey with studios on Ageing, Education, and Sustainability; began a library of case studies (which we hope to grow before the year ends); and hosted 120 people for an event that brings together government and design.
The big question at HDL—one that many of our guests asked at the end of last week—is beautifully simple: what's next?
A beauty it may be, but this question has no easy answer. Our thoughts on this have not changed substantially since the last time we pondered the future. We're dreadfully allergic to hype so we will continue to under-promise and over-deliver.
Taking a cue from the Education Studio, at the moment we are practicing being comfortable with ambiguity. Now two years in gestation, HDL's role at Sitra is in a moment of transition during which time we're taking the opportunity to hunker down and think carefully about the many opportunities before us and which we want to pursue first.
To frame this with a small touch of specificity, our thoughts are swirling around three big questions:
- How can we help more teams benefit from strategic design in their own work?
- How can we accelerate the rate of strategic design success stories?
- How can we better serve our awesome network of collaborators, partners, and friends?
Once we have some answers, this will be the first place we'll share.
During the rest of September we're going to take a bit of a break from posting these weeknotes. Over the next three weeks a selection of videos and photos from HDL Global 2010 will trickle onto the blog. Hope you enjoy and see you in October!
Done. Is there more to be said? We're done with the big event, this team's first stab at hosting a gathering of 100+ people from all over the world. I'm very proud of our effort. Feedback from the participants thus far has been overwhelmingly positive. Go team!
This snapshot was taken a couple hours before HDL Global began, as Marco and I walked with the panel moderators to see the venue. It's an accurate description of the HDL team's mental acuity at the moment.
At 11am on a Monday morning the team is still looking a little tired. The previous week of hyperspeed organizing, preparing, futzing and fixing is now being paid back as all that expended energy echoes ahead of us while we ramp down, disintegrating focus at an equal but opposite rate as we applied it during the ramp up.
If you missed it before, I highly recommend you read Marco's welcome letter to the HDL Global 2010 guests.
We're also happy to have guest blog posts from four participants: Rory Hyde's summarization of the bus schedule vs. the building is a nice recap that explains strategic design, Helen Han gives us some thoughts on the importance of visualization, Ido Mor wonders what problem solving looks like when we work on problems with no reference, and Anna-Leena asks us to accept complexities.
In coming days we'll be posting follow ups from our four guest bloggers as well as more images and thoughts from the event. For now, our sincere thanks to: Emil+Stephanie for making the finest of event materials; XOXCO for their excellent help on the dossier and liveblog aspects of this site; Ivo Corda and Pekka Mustonen for fantastic photography; Sanna and her team at Management Events for their able handling of everything behind the scenes; the 100+ people who came from far and wide to be part of our event; and to you, dear reader, for following along at home. See you in Week 078!
Alejandro Aravena, a designer from Chile, and Jan Vapaavuori, Finnish Minister of Housing, in conversation with Tyler Brûlé at the opening dinner of HDL Global.
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