Some of the trees in New Orleans belong in their own architecture book, fairytale, or sexy calendar! They have turned me into a person who often stops in mid-transit to admire them – and not just because live oaks’ long branches seem to defy gravity but because their shade provides great relief in this heat. I’ve never been so aware of the simple kindness of tree shade. Taller cities like New York are shaded by buildings. Here short neighborhoods like the Marigny, Bywater, and Lower 9th Ward roast in the sun. Metal benches burn your butt. St Claude Avenue, the area’s commercial corridor and only street with bike lanes, feels like an oven-y highway. At Rising Tide environmental law expert Robert Verchick pointed out the importance of shade canopies in NOLA’s humid heat waves – without them the city turns into a hot box and the dangers compound when residents without air conditioning don’t open windows for fear of theft. People talk about all the trees they lost and the extreme climate it’s triggering. People also talk about all the new ones they’re planting. Thanks to my neighbors and local initiative Marigny Green, four Crepe Myrtle saplings now live on our block and bob in the breeze.

Pune, India (photo by Question Box)

Question Box provides easy access to information on health, agriculture, education, and more through SMS and talk boxes in public space. Push the button, ask any question, and receive an answer from a live operator. It’s free and helpful for residents without internet access or adequate literacy, and they’ve answered over 3,000 queries in Uganda (mostly about agriculture). Thanks to the TED Fellows program, I met Jon Gosier, founder of Appfrica and CTO of Question Box, who introduced me to Question Box founder Rose Shuman. They needed a graphic to make the service easier to understand, so I worked with them to make this friendly comic without words. Here’s one version on a box in Pune, India as they test out different configurations. Their good work is also open source and they encourage all to use their system.

The Rising Tide Conference was the best crash course for a new resident on the current politics in New Orleans, which deserves its own show. Excellent panels included new chief of police Ronal Serpas, human rights reporter Mac McClelland, and Gambit Weekly owner Clancy DuBos. Now the first seven pages of my happy cloud journal include quotes like you lie you die, rate of murders cleared (solved) going down since 1960, when radio system crashed 1500 police went in own direction, why do cops keep scary blue siren lights on while patrolling neighborhoods, Coast Guard disseminated BP’s numbers and weren’t even fact-checking that shit, you are the first line of defense against misinformation, I blame my former boss Governor Jindal on an anti-science approach, experts on the Mississippi Delta were/are not being tapped, there are two types of levys: levys that have failed and levys that are going to fail, we have a lot to learn from the Dutch, it is extremely uncommon for women to hang themselves, everyone is grossed out by David Vitter and yet he will win because he has an (R) behind his name, Joseph Cao has integrity, Bobby Jindal is a douchebag.

New Orleans, 2006

“men and women alive in the world, in all their brave variety, with all their quirks and greatness and folly, surrounded by beauty and harshness, moved by wonder and selfishness and love, aware of splendid ghosts in all their yesterdays, fearful or confident about tomorrow even while they dare, themselves, to shape it.” – The World of Mankind, 1962

Bywater, New Orleans

“Our thoughts are to the individual as our art is to the community” – Wendell Pierce at TEDxNOLA

Designer civique! Sounds so classy. A generous six-page spread and interview (translated into French) in the current issue of design magazine étapes. Full of beautiful and inspiring design projects from infographic milk packaging to old Surrealist book covers.

Johannesburg

Helsinki

Santo Domingo

Nice

Taipei

New Orleans

The tiles looked up and said this one is just for you, pedestrian.

Maputo, Mozambique

“Like similar abstractions, participation is an empty goal unless it is gauged in relation to the job to be done. It is a means, not an end, and when treated as an end, it can become more repressive than the unadorned authoritarianism it is supposed to replace… No one wants to see the old authoritarian return, but at least it could be said of him what he wanted primarily from you was your sweat. The new man wants your soul.” – William Whyte, The Organization Man, 1956

I came to New Orleans with dreams of rollerskating, but the state of the streets and sidewalks in my neighborhood makes it a high stakes endeavor. It’s like Maputo, Mozambique where all seven of us humorously tripped at some point and one friend not-so-humorously broke her leg after falling into a giant hole. It’s a little harder to enjoy the city when you need to keep your eye on the ground. Rollerskating dreams on hold. Instead I got a bike and joined a sturdier version of civilian stuntmen and women. Flat terrain and something-intriguing/wild/sketchy/beautiful-on-every-block makes it an amazing city for biking. This helps too. Our dresses fly over streets bursting with crunchy personality.

Santo Domingo

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

Atlantic City

He kissed her on the head and drove them across another border.

When Poster Offensive asked me to design a poster on any political issue, I thought about a sad and simple fact: one out of six people in the world don’t know when they’re going to eat again. Forget about learning or playing or loving. One out of six people aren’t sure there will be enough food for the week. Food insecurity now affects a record 1.02 billion people, or one sixth of the world, and the rate has spiked over the past two years because of the economic crisis and high food prices. One in seven American households have been without food, and 65 percent of all chronically hungry people in the world live in just seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

There are a lot of causes: poverty, unemployment, inadequate minimum wage, unexpected expenses, lack of financial security options, bad governance, lack of democracy, war, climate change, natural disasters, personal disasters, land degradation, lack of agricultural infrastructure… which reminds me of TED Fellow Alex Petroff who founded Working Villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo and made a lasting impression at TED Global 2009 with his rapid slideshow of bursting harvests. In 2006, thousands of people in the Ruzizi Valley region were starving. Today, residents grow a whopping 90 different crops and are the largest food producers in South Kivu province. Learn more about their Swadeshi (“localized economics”) approach here.

This poster will be exhibited in the Poster Offensive show Oct 28 – Nov 7, 2010 at Frank Stone Gallery in Minneapolis. If you want to print it out you can use this pdf or purchase a fine print at various larger sizes. Learn more and take action here: UN World Food Programme, Share the World’s Resources, Feeding America, Stop the Hunger, Working Villages

Near Batesville, Mississippi

Stripped of their faucets, the rusty tubs looked out onto the road and tried to tell us something.

Medan, Indonesia

Jo-Fen, Taiwan

Bangalore

Berlin

Streetcar, New Orleans

Shinkansen bullet train, Japan

Reversible rotating seats are fun and allow more people to enjoy the ride how they like, although this wasn’t the original intention of the New Orleans streetcar. The seat backs reverse because the streetcar itself runs in reverse when it reaches the end. The leg space doesn’t change, but it ends up that’s just fine for many: grandparents with two kids, one parent with two kids, and three couples with one kid each. They all adjusted the backs for group seating, and suddenly the cruel two-seater world became just as kind to the three-person family.

Tokyo

The cars stopped and the pedestrians walked in every direction they could think of.

Shotgun houses are so damn cute I want to pet them. It’s all thanks to New Orleans’ tax laws and people trying to get Best Value. The government taxed property based on lot frontage; so people made their houses as narrow as possible. The government taxed two-story houses more; so people added second floors to the rear, where it didn’t count. The government taxed houses based on the number of rooms; so people didn’t make closets or hallways, which counted as rooms. And presto, the Best Value House looks like this:

As wide as a room, up to a half block long, made of consecutive hallway-less rooms, and sometimes with second floors in back (like above, a typology now know as the Camelback). Doors are arranged so that in some homes you could potentially shoot a shotgun straight through from the porch to the backyard, hence the name. Or in more peaceful terms, you could line up seven Slip-n-Slides in a row and have the ride of your life!

And in more Best Value strategies, people often joined forces to save on property width. Known as a Double-barrel Shotgun, two homes share the same roof and a central wall (above). This is the kind of house I now live in, owned by my friends next door. Our homes are each one room wide and a half block long (12.5′ x ~120′) and completely separate except for the backyard and the porch, where we open our wood shutters every morning and say “Lawd it’s hot!” and chat with passers-by and feed the neighborhood cat. Interiors are a grand 13′ tall to keep it cool, and ceiling fans add a classy breeze. Everyone is sitting on porches and riding their bikes and saying hello next to little houses and storefronts painted green, pink, and yellow. It all adds up to a neighborhood that feels like it was drawn by a five-year-old, in the very best way.

P.S. Here’s a beautiful and insightful map of plantation plots along the Mississippi River! Same skinny lots but on a way bigger scale. Thanks Dave Tufte for pointing out these origins of the frontage tax:

Image from USGenWeb Archives

“The frontage tax, in turn, had its origins in the plantation and river transport system of colonial Louisiana… Each plantation had a small waterfront – to ship out sugar or whatever, and deliver supplies – and a very deep farm. This was so that every owner could have access to cheap transportation. Since operating the plantation on cleared land behind the levee was problematic, it didn’t make much sense to tax its value. Instead, the frontage could be taxed since it was representative of the number and size of ships that could dock for transsshipment.” – Dave

Stasi Prison, Berlin, with its original 1951 furnishings, eerily chipper.

Once you understand the nature of color, space and design, your prison will reflect good planning and radiate a personality only you can give it. Play smooth surfaces against rough. Reserve brilliance for accent pieces. If you keep it simple, serene, with a minimum of clutter, you’ll find it warm and friendly, and most easy to keep.

Malmo

New Orleans

A strip mall near Mechanicsburg, PA

We met each other on swings and mattresses in a big bright metal treehouse… At TED India Freeman Murray gave a talk about his pallet rack building and invited us all to check it out in Bangalore. Using standard warehouse storage pallet racks, he and other creative locals built Jaaga, a three-story collaborative community space for art exhibits, dance performances, film showings, lectures, parties, and anything else you can think up. It’s super flexible and relatively low-cost ($15,000 for 3000 square feet). Coincidentally a few days earlier I was chatting about flexible spaces with Adam Greenfield in Helsinki and he put Cedric Price on my radar – a British architect who, in 1961, came up with the idea of the Fun Palace, a flexible community space of moveable and modular units whose only fixed element was a structural grid of steel columns and beams. It was never built, but when I saw Jaaga I thought ooh it is now!

In Mexico Beach the waves crash into a Connie Francis song and one firework poofs in the sky.

Aerial acrobatics over the Gulf of Mexico! The Blue Angels thunder across the sky while BP workers pile up trash bags of tar balls and girls lay out topless. It’s a whole lot of look at the Pensacola Beach Air Show. While jets circles overhead people talk about the famous sand, once “sugar white” and now stained yellow. A tan lady stares at the trash bags. “Why are they going so slow with toy shovels? It all makes me want to puke.” Another woman complains they’re only allowed to work fifteen minutes each hour. The workers show me what they’re scooping – soft dark pellets the size of cockroaches to coasters. He circles a tar ball in the sand and says they collected ones the size of plates earlier this morning. Then he looks around. “I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone.”

It’s hard to tell where vacation ends and hazard begins. 125 miles east, in Mexico Beach, the Gulf is full of kids. 125 miles west, in Biloxi, families are splashing in the waves. One mile west, an official sign from the county health department says the beach has been affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and avoid the water. Here on this beach, a handwritten chalk sign says stay out of the water, but only because of the high surf and currents. No one wants to cut the local tourism short if they don’t have to. People still walk along the shore and let the waves hit their feet. Six out of forty beach chairs are used. Men in neon vests walk slowly with shovels while girls in bright bikinis adjust their straps and waves leave brown outlines in the sand. “Is it safe to go in the water?” one lady asks me. “I let my grandson go in yesterday… Is that wrong?”

Nashville, TN

“At the edge of Brooklyn or the world sits a quiet tea room waiting for you.” – Justin L. on Ashbox Cafe

It was one of the first words I learned in Finland. Mahtava. Finnish for “awesome”. It worked itself into my daily vocabulary because it does things that “awesome” never can, letting you exhale and simmer on the awesomeness of it all: MAH-ta-vaaaaaa. My one and a half years living in Helsinki have been mahtava in large part to the friends I made at Nokia and beyond, a very global crew from Finland, Italy, Holland, Chile, India, Romania, Ireland, Brazil, Sweden, Australia, Spain, Germany, Singapore, Norway, the UK and the US, who made me feel like I belonged here the moment I touched down. Like Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, we all lived within a few blocks of each other and for that reason and others we hung out with an intensity I’ve only experienced at camp. Many of us worked in the same building. All of us ate and drank at the same places. And most of us danced our hearts out until nothing mattered besides friends, rhythm, and avoiding the broken glass.

By coincidence and for all positive reasons, five of us left the city at the same time. While packing up my apartment I found a can of temporary spray chalk in the back of the closet. I cut out a stencil while stuffing things into suitcases and after friends came over for one last hurrah and we laughed and played and they adopted my chairs and lamps and we slow-danced and hugged, I crept out into the night and left one last message to them in front of their doors and streets and our favorite cafes, something they would see only after I was up in the clouds. There are few feelings greater than leaving a love note in public space, a note that all people will enjoy but certain ones will enjoy even more. Helsinki, you make me feel so mahtava! Thank you for everything. We were all here together at this moment in time in our lives and it was great.

Thanks to good neighbors I’ve shared wi-fi, chairs, a large pot, a bike, design books, a corkscrew, a ladder, an iron, professional studio lights, an inflatable bed, wine, and food. And this is only amongst a few neighbors because I rarely bump into most and have no way to break the ice. In a time where SMS has made phone calls seem invasive, a door knock feels nearly violating. My neighbors could be in their pajamas, eating dinner, fresh out of the shower, or making out, and suddenly I’m banging on their door…

So when the good people of GOOD Magazine invited me to contribute to their Neighborhoods issue (April 2010), I wondered if I could take advantage of the format and make something that could be torn out of the magazine and used as a tool. The Neighbor Doorknob Hanger is a simple, double-sided sign that provides a friendly platform for residents in dense quarters to offer and request things at everyone’s convenience. One side says “Please Disturb” and makes space for you to list offerings and choose how you prefer to be contacted – a knock at specific times that are good for you, by phone, or by email. The other side of the doorknob hanger says “Can I borrow?” and provides the same format for requesting things and resources. Think of it as an invitation, a validated request, or a low-tech status update for your door, so we can share more resources without frightening each other at a bad time!

The doorknob hanger was printed on fine card stock in GOOD Magazine in April 2010, but if you missed the issue you can print your own at home with these fine pdf files of side 1 and side 2.

The first thing I saw at last year’s Vappu in Helsinki was a girl in a party dress on all fours licking a puddle of beer. Hard to top that ha and this time around I felt less fazed seeing guys topple over to bloody concussions and leggy blondes hunch over & hold each others’ hair on every block. This year I hooked up with the Helsinki Public Works Department to understand how the City cleans the hot mess so quickly. Vappu brings out the slob in everyone and not only are there broken bottles, vomit splatters, deflated balloons, and the occasional lone sock, but there’s a lot of post-boozin’ food residue: pizza boxes, burger wrappers, coffee cups, and surprisingly healthier fare. I’m kind of charmed that someone got trashed and ate a yogurt ha. District gardener Sampo Sainio enlightened me on the process that turns Helsinki so fresh and so clean by Monday:

Number of employees on the clock:
12 on Friday night
10 on Saturday morning
22 (plus 40 volunteers) on Saturday night
30 on Sunday

Total cost:
Likely exceeding 100,000 euros (last year’s cleanup cost 121,000 euros), which includes rent for:
184 toilets
40 waste containers (240 litres each)
75 waste containers (3.6 cubic meters each)
16 trash pallets (8 cubic meters each)
4 containers for bottles (8 cubic meters each)
waste charges
fences
man hours cleaning streets and parks

Total amount of trash collected:
Over 250 cubic meters (9,000 cubic feet), including around 24,000 sparkling wine bottles!

New Jersey service station

Bangalore, India

Johannesburg, South Africa

Somewhere in North Carolina, USA

Medan, Indonesia

Panama City, Florida, USA

Placencia, Belize (I’m partial)

Tallinn, Estonia

Nice, France

Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Johannesburg, South Africa

“Should have gone with peanuts.”

Yrjonkatu Swimming Hall (est. 1928), private pool, floor 3B, Sunday April 11th 2010. 15 naked girls with champagne and the run of a private 1920s sauna, pool, and hot tub.

“Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

While walking around Prague we stumble onto the Hervis Prague Half Marathon. Each runner is given a rectangular piece of foil to help stay warm, and behold the range of beauteous fashions they conjure up:

Oversized Scarf

Double-tie Cardigan

Tube Dress with Bow

Volumous Vest. Layered Shawl & Skirt

Superman Cape

I can’t decide which one is better…

Santo Domingo

There are more immigrant mannequins than immigrants in Helsinki…

This is what Helsinki’s dance floors look like at 4am. People get hammered. Glasses drop. No one cleans. More glasses drop. The floors get crunchier by the hour. Pieces get stuck to your soles. One friend had to get three stitches after a shard speared his toe. Even in well-lit sit-down bars glasses crash to the floor, people turn their heads, people turn back, and life continues with new terrain. What’s up with that? Is it because people don’t sue here? No legal worries about someone falling onto a pile of hurt? Or because Finland has crappy service in general? We still dance hard, brushing shards away with our shoes, feeling more concerned about feeling the bass, stomping away on party jewels and leaving an apocalyptic scene behind.

Los Angeles

“Bob, our sales are down. What we need is a sign that will freak the fuck out of everyone.”

Singapore

“Thus what had begun as a man’s impression of an animal ended in an animal’s impression of a man, and a few drops of private blood gained general currency and became a great pool of public blood, and the world immediately contained more persons who had seen a lizard bite a man.” – E.B. White on television, 1948

We end another intense work week at Nokia House with a drink at the top of Hotel Torni. It only takes 14 stories to have a spectacular view of Helsinki and feel very poignant. Olly’s new album Karhu ja Tiikerini (A Bear and a Tiger) makes it even easier. Music made in and for Finland. The track ‘Break Fast’ is on repeat. Wait for the drop. A gush of optimism like the first wave of heat in the sauna. Days of hyper reflection and visceral heartache.

One of these magnets is not like the other…

Riffing off the ground signage dividing bikes and pedestrians in Helsinki…

a more nuanced edit on my block on Uudenmaankatu.

Grenoble

Bangalore

Genoa

Johannesburg

Singapore. No durian fruit, a.k.a. the stinkbomb.

The tables tell the story in Finland’s immigration office in Malmi: Chechnya 09, Espana, Israel, Be cool, Kosova, Moskova, 30.9.2008 Today, Kurdistan PKK, Kill Bill, Estonia, Turkey, Ahmad 2010-1-13, Iran, Unite, Somali, Vive la France, Hello Everybody!

Cape Town

Cameron Highlands

Maputo