The IDSA's annual run of Design Dialogue Conferences kicked off this past weekend with the Mideast event in Detroit; the four upcoming regional events will take place over the next month, including the Midwest Design Dialogue in Chicago and the Northeast Design Dialogue in Philadelphia next weekend, April 13–14.

We're pleased to announce that we'll be hosting a portfolio review at the latter event, which takes the timely theme of "Forward Thinking through Vintage Perspectives":

Getting design right is now recognized as essential for business success. Design thinking is equally beneficial in the social domain. How is design practice evolving to meet expanding demands and opportunities? How can design best use the lessons of yesterday and today to evolve and reimagine the future?

Philadelphia and the rest of the northeast are full of history, and daily reminders of how an entrepreneurial spirit built this nation and how innovation and design thinking have helped our country grow and flourish. So what better place to tackle this dialogue? We will consider explore and envision what the future through the lens of the past and how we got here. We will take a journey from the past, and take a hard look at the present to bring the future of the design practice into focus through the lens of our history and creative journey to the present.

The two days in the City of Brotherly Love is subdivided into three topics—"To know your past is to know your future"; "Change is the new Norm - Now What?"; and "What's next? Thinking beyond design"—each of which will be addressed over the course of half a day following a series of workshops on Friday morning. The conference will feature notable speakers Peter Bressler, Eric Chan, Hilary Jay, Deb Johnson and Bill Moggridge, among many others; the portfolio review will take place on the evening of Friday, April 13.

See the full schedule of events here, or register here.

The following weekend, April 20–21, will see the Southern Design Dialogue Conference in Atlanta; the series concludes in Seattle on May 4–5.

Head over to IDSA.org for more information.

As our Twitter followers probably know, we had the opportunity to attend the annual PSFK Conference last Friday. (The 2012 edition of the annual event shares its name with PSFK's first print magazine, "Need to Know," which was distributed at the event.) Featuring some two dozen artists, entrepreneurs, trendspotters, technologists and media personalities, the conference served up a broadly informative and inspirational mix of content, and, as always with the day-long series of talks and presentations, the profusion of ideas quickly precluded the possibility of stopping to reflect on them. (Lunch, of course, provides just enough respite to catch up with other attendees and speakers.)

While we await the forthcoming videos of the talks from PSFK, we've compiled our notes (mostly from the pre-caffeine-crash morning session, for better or worse) with a few finessed caricatures for flavor, plus photos and all of our Tweets for good measure.

Photos by Glen Jackson-Taylor; text and illustrations by yours truly

Jonathan Harris

"[Cowbird] is a new approach to participatory journalism... it's a contemplative space, like a church or a forest... an archive of stories that slowly becomes more beautiful."
-Jonathan Harris

Artist Jonathan Harris of Cowbird recounted his chronicle from Brooklyn-based art star to peripatetic soulseeker and back again. Over the past half decade, his artwork has come to address the possibility of translating meaningful real-life experiences into digital media, using photos, video and spoken word as a means of capturing and preserving the essence of those stories.

"The signals are out there."
-Robert Kirkpatrick

Robert Kirkpatrick of UN Global Pulse started with the premise that the Internet has become a veritable 'nervous system' of the digital world over as individuals intentionally and unknowingly generate massive amounts of data every minute of every hour of every day. His company is looking to harvest this raw data in order to identify patterns in real time, specifically to meet the needs of the increasingly-connected second and third world.

Graham Hill demos the foldable "ThinBike," which he developed with Schindelhauer Bikes

As founder of Treehugger, Graham Hill knows a thing or two about, say, reducing one's carbon footprint; his latest venture, Life Edited, started with his concern with reducing what might be called an 'urban footprint.' As the name of his new company implies, Hill has taken Dieter Rams' maxim "less, but better" to heart as an approach to maximizing space and utility through design.

Simon Collins of Parsons the New School for Design

Steve Clayton

"Technology is reaching the point where complexity leads to more simplicity."
-Steve Clayton

Steve Clayton of Microsoft shared several projects from their Lab-like space, Next, including a particularly gasp-worthy desktop videochat peripheral in Illumishare, as well as the "Wearable multitouch projector," a new platform for augmented reality.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, the designer of the 911 and the grandson of company founder Ferdinand Porsche, passed away today. The designer was 76.

F.A. or "Butzi," as he was nicknamed, was groomed to enter the family business. "Even as a small boy, he accompanied his father and grandfather Ferdinand to the engineering design office in Zuffenhausen," reported World Car Fans in an article on his 70th birthday. But in an interesting, Einstein-like twist, rumor has it that in the mid-'50s F.A. was dismissed from his industrial design program after just one year because his skills were not considered up to snuff. He then began training directly in Porsche's design department, where he would design the iconic 911 in 1963.

In the 1970s F.A. founded the spin-off Porsche Design company. Their first product, a chronograph wristwatch, was intended as a brand-specific accessory to be sold through Porsche dealerships. Through the brand F.A. diversified into designing eyewear and desk accessories. The current iteration of the company (formed by eventually combining all of Porsche's accessories and licensing spin-offs into one) is still alive and well today, designing everything from cell phones to luggage to kitchen appliances.

If you've ever gotten to drive a 911 with that flopover clutch and tail-heavy ride, you know it wasn't exactly designed to be easy-to-drive. "Comfort is not what makes driving fun, it is more on the opposite," he has been quoted as saying. If anyone remembers No Man's Land, the '80s Charlie Sheen/D.B. Sweeney movie about Porsche thieves letting the tail hang out around hairpin curves, you'll see his point.

Several years ago, when he was still Porsche's CEO, Wendelin Wiedeking said: "The shape of the Porsche 911 remains persuasive to this day. It has become a pillar of our brand identity. All of the sports cars we build now, and are yet to build in the future, must follow in the footsteps of the 911. It is how our customers recognize them as being Porsche.

"[F.A.'s] lines on paper, his eye for detail, his unmistakable feel for the overall effect - all of these things have contributed to his reputation as a world-class designer."

The Internet allows us to share information more freely than ever before. But along with that come two somewhat disturbing trends we've recently picked up on.

The first is that people are increasingly posting things linklessly. In other words, someone will assemble a Tumblr wall of photos of awesome things, but there is no link back to where those things came from, what they are or who made them. Merely showing a photo of a beautiful chair is apparently enough for the poster, with no opportunities to further your understanding of it. But I want to know who designed the chair and where I can learn more about it.

The second involves the rash of "How It's Made" videos that seems to increase every week. While we love seeing these, and feel funny complaining about something some shooter has obviously toiled to produce and has provided for free worldwide viewing, it bugs us that these videos increasingly lack any narrative that explains the processes we're seeing and therefore doesn't really deepen our comprehension of the subject. Given a choice between no-explanations-given videos and no videos at all, obviously we'd always choose the former (and would post them rather than you not seeing them at all), but we can't help but feel there's a real opportunity for learning here that is only being half-addressed.

As a good example of this, take a gander at this Encylopaedia Brittanica Films short from 1947 showing how books were made. We posted about it last year commenting on how many people the process involved. (Footage starts at 0:25.)

Now look at this short, currently making the blog rounds, commissioned by the UK's Daily Telegraph showing how handmade books are produced today:

Quick spot-check to see how up on your production methods you guys are: How was this Ohlala watering can (don't hit the link yet), designed by Barcelona-based CrousCalogero Design Studio, manufactured?

Hints: Yes, the object is completely hollow, as you'd expect for a watering can; it's an older production method (not RP); it's made from plastic, we're guessing polypropylene; and yes, the object is all one piece.

Hit the jump for the answer.

Craig Redman and Karl Maier run Craig & Karl, a multi-disciplinary design studio that operates in New York, where Craig lives, and London, where Karl lives. The duo says they collaborate daily on a wide array of projects, like murals, typography, sculpture, identity design, housewares, iPhone apps, web design, fabric patterns, iconography, posters and maps, though they specialize in illustration and installation. They've worked with brands like LVMH, Google, Nike, Apple, Vogue, Microsoft, Converse, MTV and The New York Times, and Craig also runs Darcel Disappoints, a cheeky blog where he posts a stream of illustrations of his adventures as giant, walking eyeball wearing one half of a pair of glasses.

The work they do together is colorful, bold and playful. Their vision has been described as "a rainbow-eating marshmallow [where] every face has five colors." That last bit refers to their portraits, like the series they recently made for Fashion Week (see Anna Piaggi looking crazier than normal, above). You can see a retro influence in their work that's not just confined to one decade, but spans the circular, grouped iconography that was popular, mainly in housewares, in the '50s, to the '60s/'70s psychedelic portraits and the late '80s neon color palette in the mural, shown below. All their designs, even the more 'serious' projects, have a distinctively upbeat feel.

Visual Designer (Jr.-Mid Level)
Code and Theory
New York, New York

Code and Theory, an award-winning interactive agency, is seeking a Junior-to-Mid-Level Visual Designer. Working with our Visual Design Team, the designer will report to an Art Director and use your experience of diversified experience to translate interactive problems into elegant and engaging visual solutions. The ideal candidate has worked across the entire interface design spectrum, including web sites, intranets, extranets, portals, demos, mobile devices, television interfaces, applications and emerging technologies, and is eager to collaboratively design and deliver solutions that address our clients' needs, while delighting users.

» view

The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

How is it possible that the man responsible for so many of the iconic buildings that make up the New York City skyline, a man credited not only for designing the first art deco skyscraper, but for designing the very first skyscraper, period, is not a household name? Ralph Walker is probably the most overlooked American architect, though the new exhibition, "Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century" seeks to finally give the man his due. Not that Walker wasn't known and respected in his time, but he has since been overshadowed by his contemporaries Raymond Hood, who designed Rockefeller Center and William van Alen, who designed the Chrysler Building.

The free exhibition is held in the lobby of the Walker Tower by appointment only, but it's worth the extra effort to reserve a private walk through. Models of the structures Walker is most famous for dot the room alongside replicas of his sculptural entries to the 1933 Chicago Fair and the 1939 New York World's Fair. His Chicago Fair entry, by the way, was never built because it was deemed too expensive. In fact, Walker spared no expense on any of his projects. "A skyscraper," he said, "is not a building, but a city."

Walker began working as an architect at the dawn of the Machine Age, when steel frame structures extended a building's verticality beyond anything the world had ever seen before. And as construction was remarkably fast, competing firms treated skyscrapers like a veritable space race (half a century prior to the actual one), rushing to reach higher heights than the competition.

Of course, Walker and his firm got there first with the Barclay-Vesey Telephone Building (now the Verizon Building at 140 West Street). It's perhaps most notable for using the 1916 Zoning Resolution to its advantage by implementing setbacks, or tiered sections, a style now commonly associated with art deco architecture, though at that point it was simply known as moderne.

Walker's brand of humanist architecture used form, texture and ornamentation to connect emotionally with pedestrians at street level. He felt that a façade should act like a drape hung over a building. The ziggurat-style setbacks began not just as a way to create texture and break up the form, but to establish his skyscrapers as structures that allowed their occupants to literally take a step back from the street and city life.

In the mere ten years they've been in existence, British design and manufacturing company Tom Dixon has produced some beautiful hanging lamps (among other objects) and we enjoy watching their aesthetic continuously evolve. The Copper Shade is simple and geometric; the Blow Light Copper is sleek and enclosed; the Void Light is soft and organic; the Beat Light series incorporates hand-hammered brass on the inside.

The Etch series became more visually sophisticated, using irregular geometric shapes produced through digital manufacturing techniques to create complex shadows.

When Danny Meyers planned to open the first Philadelphia branch of his much beloved Shake Shack, it made sense to call in local designers Shift_Design to construct an exterior wall that would give a nod to the original ivy-covered restaurant in New York. The Philadelphia location isn't scheduled to open until Summer, and Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group wanted to call attention to latest addition to the neighborhood while it was still under construction.

Shift_Design devised a system of window boxes, living wall units and custom panels made from galvanized steel cut into "ribbons" that undulate from the surface of the wall, creating a trellis for climbing plants. The temporary construction wall is painted in blocks that transition from dark grey to bright green, marking the months of construction, from Winter to Summer. Once Shake Shack opens the plants and planters will donated to the nonprofit Rittenhouse Square Flower Market for Children's Charities. I've got a thing for architecture that incorporates living walls, and it's too bad that Meyers et al can't find a place for the plants inside the restaurant. It could send a positive message about how fresh their fast food is, but at least the greenery is going to a good home.

Hot on the heels of LG announcing their forthcoming flexible displays, a company called Atmel has begun flogging XSense, their new ultra-thin touchscreen technology that's capable of bending and going just about full-bleed.

While comparing the two technologies is admittedly a bit apples-to-oranges—LG's black-and-white device is user-malleable, whereas XSense's color display seems intended to hold a fixed contour—the display promises to "open new dimensions for industrial designers," says Atmel Marketing Director Mariel Van Tetenhove. And unlike LG's device, XSense is touch-capacitive. Take a look at the video after the jump:

Like inventor and cycling enthusiast Michael Wallis, I certainly agree that I've come to regard pedestrians as a greater threat than automobiles. Despite my best efforts to share the road with pedestrians and motorists alike, every crosswalk in lower Manhattan demands a sort of micro-wiggle, and much of my 'weak side' auto-awareness stems from the fact that I never know when I'll have to take a bit of quick evasive action to dodge a jaywalker. As for heavily-touristed throughfares such as Broadway above 34th St or Central Park? Fuhggedaboudit.

Enter the Bike Butterfly:

Don't be fooled by the pictures that look like something out of a Ricky's catalog (do they even have catalogs?): Bike Butterfly wings come in at a solid 3.5m² (over ten square feet)—i.e. a span of over a meter—for maximum visibility and increased stopping power, giving new meaning to 'dressed in drag.' Wallis explains, with a demo at the end:

If only there was a way to combine my love of metalworking with my laser proficiency

Here's something we don't see often: A "How it's made" video showing how they make something that makes other things. Specifically, a laser cutting machine.

The coolest thing we didn't know before seeing the video is that a laser beam must be the appropriate shape in order to cut optimally, just like a router bit or a kitchen knife designed for a specific task. But the laser used here is invisible, and you can't shape what you can't see. So check out 2:10 in the video where they use clear blocks of sacrificial plastic that actually reveal the laser's shape.

German design student Raphael Volkmer ventured south to Italy's Free University Bolzano for his design education. Noting that the average European household consumes over a kilogram (2.2 lbs) of chocolate every Easter, he's created "Calorie Bomb," a veritable explosion of sugary sweet deliciousness.

Like the hand grenade from which it takes its form, the "Calorie Bomb" is a fairly straightforward proposition... though I can't help but wonder if a foil-wrapped version might somehow function like those chocolate oranges that split apart when smashed. It's no incendiary avocado, but in case you're wondering:

Happy Good Friday / Easter!

Since 2005 the Holcim Foundation has awarded $4 million in prize money in a competition aimed at promoting sustainable construction. In each three-year awards cycle, they whittle more than 6,000 entries down to 15 finalists and, finally, 3 winning projects that challenge a conventional understanding of sustainable building practices, address environmental, social and economic issues and are compelling on an architectural level.

This year the Gold prize went to Diebedo Francis Kere of Berlin-based Kere Architecture for a school project in Burkina Faso. Kere used subterranean tubes, planting vegetation, stack-effect air currents and double-skin roofs to route air in a passive cooling system that combats the region's intense Summer heat. The project also includes a reforestation initiative and it addresses the social aspect of the award by creating jobs and providing training. Jury head Enrique Norten, principal and founder of TEN Arquitectos, noted "This beautiful school is not only an elegant design solution, but it also delivers training and employment, uses local building materials, and—with simple means—creates an outstanding environment from a social viewpoint and also in constructive terms."

The Silver prize was awarded to Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner of Urban Think Tank, Brazil, for a project that will reinvigorate an eroded landscape in the Paraisopolis favela in Sao Paulo, one of the world's largest informal communities. The eroded area will be transformed into a thriving public space that includes urban agriculture, a water management system, public amphitheater, music school, small concert hall, sports facilities and transport infrastructure. Brillembourg and Klumpner have also included plans to prevent future damage due to erosion and mudslides.

Finally, the Bronze prize went to a team of German architects led by Jan and Tim Edler of Realities United for their plan to develop an unused area of Berlin's River Spree, transforming it into a natural 2,500-foot long swimming zone, the equivalent of 17 Olympic-sized pools. The new area will provide a public recreation space for tourists and locals, and will also include a 4.5-acre natural reserve with "sub-surface sand bed filters to purify water."

Reporting by Carly Ayres

In less than two weeks Savannah College of Art and Design will be hosting Design Ethos: Vision Reconsidered 2012 a two-part conference: part conversation, part action. The Ethos Conference delves into what is currently being done in the field of design to take on social problems, while the Do-Ference synthesizes those conversations to create a roadmap for social innovation in the future. Don't procrastinate—REGISTER TODAY for the Design Ethos conference April 19-20th at SCAD.

Liz Ogbu is one of the panelists for Design Ethos, an Environments Designer and current Fellow of IDEO.org. An expert on sustainable design and social innovation, Ogbu takes on challenged urban environments through her work. From her role as design director at Public Architecture (where she worked on a project for International Planned Parenthood Federation's Bolivian affiliate), Ogbu lives and works Design Ethos—making for a perfect introduction to the conference as a whole. I spoke with her to glean some insights into the motivation behind her work.

Core77: The Design Ethos conference centers around the overlap between design and living, something that seems to be epitomized in your work as an architect of social innovation. How did you begin to apply your design work to larger social issues?

Liz Ogbu: As corny as it sounds, I think I have had a passion for making a difference in the world since I was very young. I also had a passion for creating things. It wasn't until college that I began to understand that the two could actually fit together. I went to Wellesley, where they have what I call a choose-your-own-adventure approach to the architecture major. The freedom allowed me to include classes in urban economics and sociology as part of my major coursework. Following Wellesley, a series of amazing opportunities, from traveling through the dynamic and complex urban environments of Sub-Saharan Africa as part of a Watson Fellowship to creating a position as Design Director at Public Architecture to working now as an inaugural Global Fellow at IDEO.org, have allowed me to move from just looking at the intersection between social issues and design to actually engaging it in practice.

Notes from IDEO.org's Multiple Use Water Services project

As an experienced designer, do you feel a responsibility to take on social issues in architecture and urbanism? How can others designers follow suit?

Since exploring the connection between social issues to architecture and urbanism has been part of how I have framed my understanding of architecture, it's part of my designer DNA. I have been fortunate enough in my career that I have been able to work for trailblazing organizations and firms in this arena. But I think it's important to stress that you don't need to go work at a nonprofit or "alternative practice" to do this work. At its core, engaging social issues in architecture and urbanism is about us embracing a human-centered approach to design; creating dialogue with and learning from beyond the design disciplines; having a willingness to not only be a designer but also instigator, listener, facilitator and storyteller among other things; and being willing to tackle—and even fail at—these challenging issues. I think many firms have the capacity to embrace these elements as part of their work. The trick is just giving it a try. You can start small: Is there a problem in your neighborhood that represents a social and physical need that you can lend some creative brainpower to examining? Is there a conversation in your community that would benefit from your ability as a visual storyteller? Is there a nonprofit who you can lend some pro bono design assistance to?

Day Labor Station. Rendering of the Harbor City Day Labor Station. Designed by Liz Ogbu and John Peterson for Public Architecture. Renderings by Francesco Fanfani.

Every woodworker, carpenter or furniture builder has dreamt of making something completely out of wood scraps and cut-offs, even if that stained poplar wouldn't match the ash board and the birch ply. You just think of how cool it would be, and you wonder what it would look like.

Well, Piet Hein Eek has actually done it. A lot. (See our coverage of his show last year in Milan at Spazio Rosanna Orlandi.)

The Eindhoven-based designer makes chairs, stools, benches, beds, tables, bowls, cupboards and cabinets all from scrap wood (presumably not his own cut-offs, unless he has the world's largest woodworking shop). The attendant prices do not place these objects within the reach of the common person; I'm posting word of the objects here primarily so you can see what they look like.

Last week, Michael DiTullo's took a look back at the frog FZ750 Rana which recently entered the collection of the SFMOMA. Inspired by the original Rana, a small group of folks in frog's San Francisco and New York offices have been tinkiering with a new bike. One that incorporates the kinds of technologies that designers and consumers expect today. Here's a look at where the project currently stands—there are two concepts with some differences between the San Francisco studio's bike and New York's version. The SF version has projected augmented reality and swappable batteries and seems a bit more practical. NYC's bike reaches more—it lacks a combustion engine and has no battery. What are your thoughts on frog's vision for an electric future?

The San Francisco bike started with an electric powertrain. Three removable nanoparticle crystalline copper hexacyanoferrate battery packs are mounted in the sculpted frame. The cylinder are removable with a quarter turn of the handle so they can be swapped out on the road on long rides. These batteries power a large exposed hub motor that occupies the entire center of the rear wheel.

A smartphone mount is integrated into the bike's triple clamp. The smartphone processor is used as the brain for a series of on road projected augmented reality graphics. To the rear of the bike are projected lane guides that help motorists on the road understand how far away from motorcyclist they should be. All instrumentation is projected toward the front of the bike onto the road surface. The illustration shows the maximum of what could be projected. In reality we would see many of these widgets appearing in a just-in-time fashion.

It's awesome to think we can recycle plastic bottles into polyester thread that can be used to make clothes. But when you actually see this process in action, you have to wonder—between the shipping and the factory machinery, what's the carbon balance here? Not to mention the human health cost? We think you'll be surprised to see what goes into the process:

It also makes you realize that if we could do the impossible and get people to pre-separate their recycleables, we could probably save a lot of trouble down the line. For example, if all drinks bottles were separated from their caps, and further separated by color. But that would be a massive design problem requiring multiple containers in each household, and a level of vigilance I just don't think our society is ready to undertake.

"In 1955, the US State Department commissioned Richard Neutra to design a new embassy in Karachi. Neutra's appointment was part of an ambitious program of architectural commissions to renowned architects, which included embassies by Walter Gropius in Athens, Edward Durrell Stone in New Delhi, Marcel Breuer in The Hague, Josep Lluis Sert in Baghdad and Eero Saarinen in London."

Neutra called these sites "just pretty buildings," as opposed to his design for Karachi, which was, according to him, "stripped for action." Whether you're impressed by his audacity or not, Neutra's US Embassy in Karachi in an impressive place—a white, rectangular slab punctuated by the pattern of rounded, half-cylinders. Despite its importance as one of Neutra's few public buildings as well as its significance as the only Pakistani icon of the International style, its been decommissioned. Not only will it no longer be used for international and state affairs, it will not be preserved.

Richard Neutra's son, Dion, a consultant for the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design, is sponsoring a petition to support the preservation and repurposing of the former US Embassy. Currently, the Institute is leaning towards converting the building into a Pakistani cultural center with an emphasis on Neutra's practice. Sign the petition to show your support.