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Every now and then I’ll come across a website, a product, or something that immediately resonates with me. Usually that means I’ll immediately subscribe to it, buy it, follow it, or do whatever the action is supposed to be. It doesn’t happen all that often – though I think it should be a goal of companies and organizations to delight – but that’s exactly what happened to me this morning when I stumbled upon Subtraction.com.
Subtraction is a blog about design, technology and culture (all things I love) and it’s written by Khoi Vinh. Khoi is Principal Designer at Adobe. Prior to this, he was Design Director of The New York Times and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. Fast Company also named him one of the 50 most influential designers in America. But enough of all that. His blog is great.
Whenever I write about blogging, I tend to get questions about other blogs I might recommend. So today I’m recommending Subtraction.com. I’ve also added it to my working reading list, which I don’t think many of you are aware of because you probably just read this blog in your inbox. But it exists and I’m happy to add to it if you have interesting suggestions. (Please leave a comment below.)
P.S. Because of Subtraction, I now have the movie High-Rise on my watch list. Have any of you seen it? Because I don’t have cable or Netflix, I tend to be painfully out of the loop on these sorts of things. It’s based on a book by J.G. Ballard and it’s the story of a 1970s suburban London apartment building that starts to socially degrade. How could I not want to watch that?
Yesterday I promised that today’s post would be less sad. I am sticking to that promise, but I am also sticking with a somewhat similar theme: getting older.
Fast Company recently published an interview with New York-based architect Matthias Hollwich. The topic is aging and the kinds of spaces that we have created for people as they age: retirement communities, nursing homes, and so on.
The reason this is getting airtime right now is because Matthias has just published a book on the topic called, New Aging: Live smarter now to live better forever.
Earlier today a friend of mine sent me this Fast Company article talking about bitcoin and the future of home buying. I’m really glad he did. Both because I wasn’t yet sure what I was going to write about today and because this is a topic that I’m deeply interested in.
I recently heard
Every now and then I’ll come across a website, a product, or something that immediately resonates with me. Usually that means I’ll immediately subscribe to it, buy it, follow it, or do whatever the action is supposed to be. It doesn’t happen all that often – though I think it should be a goal of companies and organizations to delight – but that’s exactly what happened to me this morning when I stumbled upon Subtraction.com.
Subtraction is a blog about design, technology and culture (all things I love) and it’s written by Khoi Vinh. Khoi is Principal Designer at Adobe. Prior to this, he was Design Director of The New York Times and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. Fast Company also named him one of the 50 most influential designers in America. But enough of all that. His blog is great.
Whenever I write about blogging, I tend to get questions about other blogs I might recommend. So today I’m recommending Subtraction.com. I’ve also added it to my working reading list, which I don’t think many of you are aware of because you probably just read this blog in your inbox. But it exists and I’m happy to add to it if you have interesting suggestions. (Please leave a comment below.)
P.S. Because of Subtraction, I now have the movie High-Rise on my watch list. Have any of you seen it? Because I don’t have cable or Netflix, I tend to be painfully out of the loop on these sorts of things. It’s based on a book by J.G. Ballard and it’s the story of a 1970s suburban London apartment building that starts to socially degrade. How could I not want to watch that?
Yesterday I promised that today’s post would be less sad. I am sticking to that promise, but I am also sticking with a somewhat similar theme: getting older.
Fast Company recently published an interview with New York-based architect Matthias Hollwich. The topic is aging and the kinds of spaces that we have created for people as they age: retirement communities, nursing homes, and so on.
The reason this is getting airtime right now is because Matthias has just published a book on the topic called, New Aging: Live smarter now to live better forever.
Earlier today a friend of mine sent me this Fast Company article talking about bitcoin and the future of home buying. I’m really glad he did. Both because I wasn’t yet sure what I was going to write about today and because this is a topic that I’m deeply interested in.
I recently heard
But this isn’t a new focus. Matthias actually taught at the University of Pennsylvania while I was there and I remember his design studio being focused on this topic. (I wasn’t in his studio, unfortunately.)
The sound bite that I really like from the interview is this one:
“I think the biggest flaw is that it’s age segregation. You take all of the people who are above 75, 85, or 95, depending on what type of environment it is, and put them into one place. And then you’re just surrounded by old people, people who have social and physical challenges, and you’re not around the vibrancy of a multi-age environment, which is something that we experience all life long. I think that is something that society really has to rethink.”
Not only do I agree with him, but I think it exemplifies one of the things that I love about architecture. The idea that the way things are done today is usually not some sort of universal truth. Instead, everything can be questioned, rethought, and reinvented for the better. It’s a very entrepreneurial way of operating and I don’t think that parallel, between entrepreneurs and architects, is drawn or leveraged nearly enough.
I also don’t think we’ve given enough design consideration to this topic of aging. I mean, why can’t the spaces that people end their lives in be as (or more) sexy and enjoyable as (or than) the spaces they live the rest of their lives in? That’s what I want when I’m 95.
So kudos to Mattias and the rest of the team at Hollwich Kushner (his firm) for caring about and working on this.
Book image from Matthias Hollwich’s Facebook.
The Fast Company article was written by Matt Weiss of IDEO (the powerhouse design and innovation firm). Here’s an introductory snippet:
Insert block chains: a relatively new and promising technology that could transform the way we digitally exchange value, similarly to how Internet protocols, like TCP/IP, transformed the way we exchanged information. For example, to transfer ownership of a home today, there are countless check of authenticity and intermediaries involved to insure the transfer is legitimate. By using a distributed database (a.k.a. “a block chain,” the same technology behind Bitcoin) to prove authenticity, we could legitimately transfer ownership immediately without the need of a middleman. In fact, when we think about block-chain technology and the industries it could disrupt, real estate tops the list. While Trulia, Redfin, Angie’s List and others have brought some transparency to the opaque world of home buying and home ownership, most of our experiences in this industry are fraught with incomplete, inaccurate, and asymmetric information.
Following this, he goes on to talk about what it might be like – each step of the way – to buy a house using the block chain technology. There are even mockups of what the app could look like. I highly recommend you give it a read if you’re interested or involved in this space.
The real estate industry hasn’t seen a lot of innovation. It remains an opaque market with lots of information asymmetries. I have no doubt that will one day change; it’s just a question of when. Perhaps it’ll be the block chain that makes that happen.
Image: IDEO via Fast Company
But this isn’t a new focus. Matthias actually taught at the University of Pennsylvania while I was there and I remember his design studio being focused on this topic. (I wasn’t in his studio, unfortunately.)
The sound bite that I really like from the interview is this one:
“I think the biggest flaw is that it’s age segregation. You take all of the people who are above 75, 85, or 95, depending on what type of environment it is, and put them into one place. And then you’re just surrounded by old people, people who have social and physical challenges, and you’re not around the vibrancy of a multi-age environment, which is something that we experience all life long. I think that is something that society really has to rethink.”
Not only do I agree with him, but I think it exemplifies one of the things that I love about architecture. The idea that the way things are done today is usually not some sort of universal truth. Instead, everything can be questioned, rethought, and reinvented for the better. It’s a very entrepreneurial way of operating and I don’t think that parallel, between entrepreneurs and architects, is drawn or leveraged nearly enough.
I also don’t think we’ve given enough design consideration to this topic of aging. I mean, why can’t the spaces that people end their lives in be as (or more) sexy and enjoyable as (or than) the spaces they live the rest of their lives in? That’s what I want when I’m 95.
So kudos to Mattias and the rest of the team at Hollwich Kushner (his firm) for caring about and working on this.
Book image from Matthias Hollwich’s Facebook.
The Fast Company article was written by Matt Weiss of IDEO (the powerhouse design and innovation firm). Here’s an introductory snippet:
Insert block chains: a relatively new and promising technology that could transform the way we digitally exchange value, similarly to how Internet protocols, like TCP/IP, transformed the way we exchanged information. For example, to transfer ownership of a home today, there are countless check of authenticity and intermediaries involved to insure the transfer is legitimate. By using a distributed database (a.k.a. “a block chain,” the same technology behind Bitcoin) to prove authenticity, we could legitimately transfer ownership immediately without the need of a middleman. In fact, when we think about block-chain technology and the industries it could disrupt, real estate tops the list. While Trulia, Redfin, Angie’s List and others have brought some transparency to the opaque world of home buying and home ownership, most of our experiences in this industry are fraught with incomplete, inaccurate, and asymmetric information.
Following this, he goes on to talk about what it might be like – each step of the way – to buy a house using the block chain technology. There are even mockups of what the app could look like. I highly recommend you give it a read if you’re interested or involved in this space.
The real estate industry hasn’t seen a lot of innovation. It remains an opaque market with lots of information asymmetries. I have no doubt that will one day change; it’s just a question of when. Perhaps it’ll be the block chain that makes that happen.
Image: IDEO via Fast Company
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