Activating your change-making agency

In periods of ecological, political, and economic issues like our current times, it can feel like our actions are meaningless. Is it possible to trigger any change at all, as a simple individual?

“Change is the process of causing a function, practice, or thing to become different somehow, compared to what it is at present or what it was in the past. ”

— Unschool of Design

Wanting to make change comes from the desire to make an impact, and shift a situation from one state to another. Some changes may happen organically (the only constant in life is change), but trying to change the status quo requires strategic thinking.

The decision to be involved in change, be it in your personal or professional life, starts by discovering how to activate your personal agency, which is the topic of this article, based on the Make Change course by the Unschool of Design, which I took a long time ago.

Artwork by illustrator Yo Az

Agency is the capacity of an individual to take action in a particular environment, where we can make free choices. These choices are affected by our worldview and the way we see ourselves, formed through our experiences, and the things we choose to learn and do.

Every action we take or don't take has an impact: the things we buy, the conversations we have, the work we do - it all has an impactful relationship with the world.

During our lives, we actually grow from having very little agency (most of our lives being decided by our parents as children), to being able to choose and create our own path. However, social structures and circumstances have a huge impact on one's agency, and the life you are born into can increase or decrease your “given” agency. 

Being aware of the fact that we are inevitably affected by our context and situation, we can evaluate the scope and reach of what we can do, and increase the span of our actions where possible.  

When motivated to create change around you, you may start by analyzing two things: the barriers to change and your sphere of influence.

Barriers to change

There are probably some external forces, structures, or people who are resistant to change. When seeking to affect change in a system, it's important to understand and acknowledge the forces at play so you can work around them. 

Maybe people are afraid of change because they’ve grown used to the way things work. Maybe they find it too complicated or don’t want to feel silly in an unknown situation.  Maybe they even feel personally attacked because they’ve grown to believe their values are tied to a certain behavior or situation.

Sometimes there are also vested interests in maintaining the status quo at play (powerful people, corporations, or governments can manipulate communication agendas or the enforcement of certain regulations, for example). 

Identifying potential barriers up front gives us a better perspective to design a suitable framing to try to overcome them. This applies to complex issues (like climate change) as well as more “simple” ones (getting your client to consider an unconventional solution, or speaking with your dad about new technology).

Sphere of influence

A concept I really liked from the course was the definition of your “sphere of influence”, which is the space in which you have the ability and power to change things. 

It combines with the knowledge you have, the people and communities you engage with, and the integrity you hold (which can relate to how much others value your point of view). Your sphere of influence is also the scope of the potential impact that your actions may or may not result in. 

We all have some degree of influence and impact over the environments we inhabit.

“When we are kids, our sphere of influence is small, often restricted to our families, but it's potent because we often wield quite a bit of influence over them at this stage in our lives. Then, as a young adult, we expand to have a more significant influence on our friends and peer group (as they do on us), and this slowly grows out to colleagues and partners and then other communities, as time and experiences give us more agency and influence over the space we hold.”

The influence that we can each have is based on the amount of agency we cultivate and the integrity we build in ourselves over time.

Framework to map your sphere of influence, which starts from yourself and continues to expand outwards

Recommended exercise: map your personal sphere of influence (your family, friends, communities…). As an idea, you could also add some areas of change where you’d like to be more involved, and find new communities and people you could meet to share interests and work together with.

“A sphere of influence does not just tally up the number of people you know or the social network you have, although these are important in some cases of social influence (and important for personal connections). The key thing to influence is the integrity you hold and the trust that others have in your ability to influence within the space you hold.”

By working on identifying and expanding your agency and sphere of influence over time, you can find creative ways to leverage this into new ways of effecting positive change.

Personal notes and reflections

I’ve always been more on the introverted side, and although I’m not a person with a massive amount of friends and connections, I’m really proud of being able to say with confidence that the people close to me hold my perspective and thoughts in high regard and see me as a positive influence.

No one is perfect (neither myself obviously), but what I’ve been trying, and continue to aim for, is to cultivate through the years a sense of coherence and integrity.

Some things I’m currently doing to grow and activate my personal agency:

• Going to more social events (even when I have to force myself a little because I’m tired or rather be in my bubble) where I could meet new people with potential interests in common. I’ve discovered that it’s always worth it.
  

• Conversations with friends and acquaintances about all sorts of sustainability topics: materials, recycling, industrial challenges, and living in more conscious ways. My heart feels warm when I see they are the ones talking about it and promoting sustainability in a totally different context.
  

• Debating with friends and especially family members, about social behaviors that were common in previous generations and contexts but are not fair and equitable if we analyze them. Tackling feminist topics with older members of my family who don’t think similarly has ultimately been very positive.
  

• Being part of a local work group focused on Sustainable Architecture in the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya, where we are researching how to incorporate environmental emissions and health impacts in national regulations for architecture.
  

• Supporting the Right to Repair movement.
  

• Sharing ideas through this blog and newsletter.
  

• Joining communities like Climate Designers and Nesslabs, where I’ve met lovely people working on fascinating projects. 

These are just a few ideas. I’d like to dedicate much more time to these initiatives but of course, time and energy are limited, and I’m not having much spare time recently. But anyway, the goal is to do the best you can, while maintaining your well-being and having fun!

Any activities or projects that you are currently working on to activate your agency? Feel free to reach out via Twitter, the newsletter or the website’s contact form :-) I’d love to hear about it!

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References:

1. Make Change course by the Unschool of Design.

2. Louise, E., et.al. (2017) Beyond the roots of human inaction: Fostering collective effort toward ecosystem conservation. DOI: 10.1126/science.aal1931.

Banner artwork by: Yo Az

The Mysterious World of Fungi

Fungi are everywhere. They are transforming soil, growing food, making medicine, and communicating in a language we don’t fully understand.

More than 90 percent of their species remain undocumented. The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2 and 3.8 million species of fungi in the world – six to ten times the estimated number of plant species - meaning that only 6 percent of all fungal species have been described. [1]

We haven’t made so much effort to observe them. Not even considering they’ve been here much longer than we have ever existed. 

The book Entangled Life, which deepens in the fascinating world of fungi, argues they are among the largest and oldest organisms in the world.

They served as the root system for plants 500 million years ago, allowing them to make it out of the water. There is even evidence of what may have been giant fungi, taller than a two-story building (when plants were barely one meter tall)—the largest living structures on dry land for at least 40 million years, twenty times longer than the genus Homo has existed.

Cover of the book Entangled Life (2020) by Merlin Sheldrake, which was the inspiration for this article🍄

What can we learn from these life forms that have survived through extreme temperatures, nuclear explosions, and other planetary challenges?

Across time they have evolved and continue to sustain plant life, through a wide variety of relationships, providing them with nutrients and communicating them in what is known as the Wood Wide Web.

Fungi excel in resilience (a desirable concept that has pretty much become a buzzword in urbanism, architecture, and politics), and perhaps we will get some clues on how to thrive and adapt if we pay attention to fungi and their intriguing qualities.

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species becomes at doing the things they need to survive.”

— Charles Darwin

Magical metabolizing

The ability of fungi to prosper in such a variety of habitats depends on their diverse metabolic abilities. Metabolism is the art of chemical transformation.

Fungi are metabolic wizards and can explore, scavenge and salvage ingeniously, their abilities rivaled only by bacteria. Using cocktails of potent enzymes and acids, fungi can break down some of the most stubborn substances on the planet, from lignin (an organic polymer in wood) to rock, polyurethane plastics, and explosives like TNT.

Few environments are too extreme. A number of radio-tolerant species (found in locations like Chernobyl’s blasted nuclear reactor) even grow towards radioactive 'hot' particles and appear to be able to harness radiation as a source of energy.

Voracious fungal appetites can be deployed to break down pollutants such as crude oil from oil spills, in a process known as 'mycoremediation', which could be helpful in managing our cities’ residues, digesting and cleaning up waste flows.

Ecofilter, a Mexican startup, found a way to degrade cigarette filters by letting oyster mushrooms feed on them.

Fungi transforms waste through its growth, cleaning up toxins and what remains is cellulose pulp that can be turned into paper products.

Super strength

A hypha is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth and are collectively called mycelium.

Fruiting bodies, such as mushrooms, arise from the felting together of hyphal strands. These organs can perform many feats besides expelling spores. Some, like truffles, produce aromas that have made them among the most expensive foods in the world.

Others, like the shaggy ink cap mushrooms (Coprinus comatus), use pressure to insinuate themselves. Fungi can push their way through asphalt and lift heavy paving stones, although they are not themselves a tough material. They develop special penetrative hyphae which can reach pressures of fifty to eighty atmospheres and exert enough force to penetrate the tough plastics Mylar and Kevlar.

One study estimated that if a hypha was as wide as a human hand, it would be able to lift an eight-tonne school bus [2].

A close-up of a mycelium network from the documentary "Fantastic Fungi” (2019).

Photography: Moving Art.

Environment and body sensing

We still don’t quite understand how they do it, but we do have proof of mycelium organisms being able to transmit electric signals and interconnect with each other, exchanging valuable nutrients and information.

They also have an exceptional awareness of their environment, responding to stimuli like light, wind, pollutants, humidity, and temperature.

What would it be like if we could also be more attuned to our bodies and our environment?

Observations of fungal behavior have also triggered a wave of scientific studies of its potential applications in a variety of fields such as sensors, medical devices, and soft robotics.

In the paper Fungal electronics, Adamatzky et. al. (2021) study the creation of living electronic devices made of mycelium-bound composites or pure mycelium. Fungal (flexible) electronics can be embedded into fungal materials and wearables or used as stand-alone sensing and computing devices.

The advantages are low production costs, simple maintenance, durability, and adaptability: a living fungal material patch can be as small as a few millimeters or it can be grown to several meters in size.

Image: Adamatzky, A et al. (2021), axriv. Experimental setup and response to chemical stimuli (dextrose)

Free-form rapid growth

Hyphae grow by getting longer. The hyphae of some species grow so fast that you could watch them extend in real-time.

Mycelium also has the unique capacity to use agricultural waste (e.g., sugarcane bagasse, rice husks, cotton stalks, straw, etc.) as a substrate for its growth, creating composite materials without energy input or generating extra waste in the production, through what is know as mycofabrication.

It can grow in any shape according to the mold, in a matter of days.

Growing mycelium in a gravity shaped DIY mold - Radical Craft, Mycomatters Lab @mycomatterslab Photography: Jonathan Dessi Olive

We can already find promising solutions and some commercial alternatives of mycelium based materials for the construction, fashion and packaging industries.

It can be used to create plastic films and sheets, foams, and semi-structural materials (e.g., paneling, flooring, furniture, decking) that can also be compostable and disintegrate as nutrients in biological cycles.

The material function of these composites can be further tuned by controlling the species of fungus, the growing conditions, and the post-growth processing method to meet a specific mechanical requirement in applications (e.g., structural support, acoustic and thermal insulation).

Samples of mycelium acoustic panels (pink) and composite resilient and tiles flooring, commercially available for interior applications. Brand: Mogu

Mycelium facade panels, The Growing Pavilion, Company New Heroes (2019)

Mycelium packaging by Ecovative

Clothes made from vegan, lab-grown Mylo™️ mushroom leather. Collection by Stella McCartney

From growing more sustainable materials to learning to communicate with other senses, fungal life shows us a new perspective of doing things.

Our definitions of intelligence use humans as a measure against all other species, placing ourselves at the top of the rankings. Because these organisms don't look like us or have brains like us, they have traditionally been placed somewhere at the bottom of the scale. They are thought of as the inert backdrop to animal life. Yet fungi’s sophisticated symbiotic behavior suggests intelligence forms beyond our understanding, that could inspire us to be more connected to the roots of life.

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References:

1. Merlin Sheldrake (2020) Entagled Life. The Bodley Head, London.

2. Nicholas P. Money (2004) The fungal dining habit: A biomechanical perspective. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222422488_The_fungal_dining_habit_A_biomechanical_perspective

3. Adamatzky et. al. (2021) Fungal electronics.

7 Tools for Productivity, Inspiration and Creativity

Ideas are central to creativity. But the infrastructure we use to build and transform them is also an important part of the design process.

Tools are not the sexy part, but unavoidably, we spend hours jumping between many of them throughout the day. Some are fun to use, some are plain but get the job done, and some of them, you feel you just can’t live without.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the tools I use, just a small selection of some favorites that I’m using a lot lately:

Still from “Weathering with You” - Director: Makoto Shinkai (2019)

Airr:

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Not only for entertainment but because in many cases I’m curious to learn about the topics they are talking about. Since I’m mostly listening to them on the go (on the bus, walking, or moving somewhere) it’s hard to take notes.

Airr is a podcast player app where you can highlight audio clips and create notes about episodes. When you hear something great, you can save it with one tap.

I’m not a big fan of their “sharing to social media” options, but it’s a great tool to clip valuable quotes, references, and concepts that I would otherwise forget.

Currently available for iOS only.

Readwise

Readwise is an app that helps you integrate and revisit your reading highlights.

While I’m reading a physical book I can take a picture of what I want to highlight and it automatically converts it into text, so I can have easily accessible notes without having to scribble in the pages of the book (I’m that sort of person—books are almost sacred to me).

This way, I have the best of both worlds: heavy notes and the tactility and beauty of experiencing and preserving physical books or magazines.

I also like their review feature, which resurfaces quotes you’ve highlighted in the past so you can revisit ideas and knowledge.

Personal highlight of “Designing Design” - Kenya Hara (2007)

Notion

My personal wiki and basically my second brain. I use Notion to collect ideas for my newsletter, notes from courses, spontaneous recommendations, and also to track goals.

I also send my reading highlights from Readwise, Instapaper, and my Kindle to Notion so I have everything in one place.

There’s so much you can do with it because it works through customizable blocks. I’m not an advanced user, but it already helps me achieve a lot.

If you want to learn tips on how to use it, you can check out Daniel Canosa’s or August Bradley’s Youtube channels.

Screenshot of one of my pages: my book notes library.

Forest app

Looking too much at my phone is a bad habit that I want to break. Forest is a mobile app that helps me gamify that.

Whenever you want to stay focused, you plant a tree. If you exit the app to go anywhere else: Twitter, your e-mail, or watching puppy pictures on Instagram, the tree dies.

As simple as that.

I find it satisfying to see the trees I’ve grown during the day (I use different species of trees and tags to visualize different activities: work, reading, etc.).

And once you reach a certain amount of points while growing virtual trees you get a real one planted for your efforts :)

Flim

A cool tool for iconographic search.

It’s an online database where you can find images from sources like films, documentaries, music videos, and ads, which is great for brainstorming, finding visual references, and embellishing presentations.

Supported by AI, you can search through filters like genre, color, year of release, and format. There’s still room for improvement, but the concept of making visual culture searchable is pretty exciting.

Mural

Mural is a digital workspace for brainstorming and visual collaboration.

You can create virtual canvases, and add sticky notes, drawings, diagrams, links, and images. It’s quite intuitive to use.

I’ve been using it a lot collaboratively at work (to map frameworks, and strategies) but I also create my own private Murals for the divergent stage of research, to compile key concepts and references. This way, I can see patterns and put ideas in order in a visual way.

Another similar tool (that I haven’t used but I’ve heard good things about is Miro).

A Mural of an ongoing research project.

Connected papers

Connected papers is a visual tool to help professionals and students find and explore relevant papers to their field of work.

Starting from one paper of your interest, you get a graph of other papers related to the original one. The similarity metric is based on the concepts of “Co-citation” and “Bibliographic Coupling”. According to this, two papers that have highly overlapping citations and references have a higher chance of being connected.

A wonderful research tool.

Do you use any of the tools I mentioned? Which ones do you frequently use and enjoy? There’s a universe of great tools growing daily, and I’m curious to hear from you.

Please let me know in the comments or via Twitter DMs :)

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Pleasure by Design

Vitruvius’ famous treatise to address the ethos of buildings, “De architectura”, declared that the three principles for good architecture were a combination of utility (utilitas), strength (firmitas), and beauty (venustas). 

However, there is a less static aspect in design (not only architectural) that is central to creating a positive perception of it: its emotional effect and its capacity for pleasure. 

Pleasure gets a bad press, frequently portrayed as “too much” of something, hence the existence of “guilty pleasures”. But pleasure by definition represents “a source of delight or joy”, and there are many situations where we could use more of that, no matter how small.

The interactions and relationships between us, the environment and experiences we are surrounded with, can be intentional facilitators of pleasure for our bodies and minds if we design for it.

Photography: Franck Courtes

What would happen if we radically prioritized our own wellbeing and fed this vessel of senses that we are? What would happen even to our minds if our bodies were fed more fundamentally and given its deepest pleasures.

We underestimate humans when we assume they respond to punishment over desire. I think punishment can bring temporary behavior change. But punishment ultimately shrinks us, whereas desire, especially desire for those things that feed us, expands us, and we continue to grow in it.

House of Beautiful Business - “The Language of Pleasure” Living Room Session (2020)

But how can we begin to dimension something so abstract as pleasure?

A way of classifying different types of pleasure has been proposed by Canadian anthropologist Lionel Tiger. Tiger has made an extensive study of pleasure and has developed a framework for addressing it, where he outlines four conceptually distinct types of pleasure –social, physical, psychological, and ideological. [1]

Socio-pleasure:

The enjoyment that comes from relationships with others. Products and services may help to enhance or facilitate particular social interactions, or they may confer some kind of social or cultural status.

Designing social interaction includes creating common interests and activities, triggering conversations, and giving people a reason to come together.

Spaces for gathering. Burano, Italy. Photography: Chiara Dalla Rosa

Physio-pleasure:

This has to do with the body – pleasures derived from the senses. Physio-pleasure would cover, for example, tactile and olfactory properties as well as ergonomic issues.

Touching a silk scarf

Ideo-pleasure:

This type of pleasure is related to values and beliefs. It is important that the values embodied in products, spaces, and experiences are consistent with the values of those for whom they have been designed. 

If we look at Maslow's Hierarchy, idealism tends to be higher up the scale and may either be a form of self-actualization or a requirement by a group in order to belong.

Reporters without Borders built a library inside Minecraft to fight for freedom of press, and give countries across the world access to banned articles.

Psycho-pleasure:

This type of pleasure is derived from cognition, discovery, knowledge, and experiences that satisfy the intellect, which could be promoted through design experiences that celebrate progression and achievement.

Reading. Photography: @yosigo_yosigo

These may or may not be a starting point for your next design. But keep them in mind, because pleasure is deeply linked to our desires and actions.

It gives us energy and fuels our insides.

And maybe we can design chains of pleasurable experiences in unexpected places, and create upward spirals.

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References:

1. Tiger, Lion. (1992) The Pursuit of Pleasure.

2. Fetter, Ingrid. (2021) The Power of Upward Spirals

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Recycling 101: What Everyone Should Know About Recycling

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to recycling. It’s enough to just peep into your nearby recycling bins to see it’s all over the place, even though there are some generic guides on which things to put in each bin.

Nobody really teaches you how to do it (at least in the contexts where I’ve lived, as well as talked about it with friends and acquaintances) and still, we all pretend to know because at this point of industrial development and climate emergency we should already know, right?

Or everyone expects us to know, so we dispose of almost everything we classify as waste in the recycling bin we think makes more sense and just wish for the best. It makes us feel good to think all of that garbage is going to a better place. Waste managers often call this wishful or aspirational recycling.

Unfortunately, putting incorrect objects in with the rest of the recycling can do more harm than good (no matter how good the intentions). Too many of these items can contaminate an entire truck of recycling and it can all end up in a landfill.

According to Waste Management, an American trash collecting company, the average recycling contamination rate — or disposal of trash or recyclables in the wrong recycling bin — is 25%, meaning 1 in 4 items thrown in a recycling bin isn’t recyclable.

Even recyclable materials, such as plastic and other paper products, can act as contaminants.

Considering the lack of education and clarity about how and what to recycle, I put together this basic, sort of Recycling 101 article to offer some practical guidance, as well as a brief consideration of current challenges and a perspective of how recycling fits in a more sustainable model of consumption (which is complex enough to be a separate or even a series of articles in the future).

Workers separating paper and other contaminants at Alpine Waste & Recycling. The Denver Post (2018)

Key things to have in mind when sorting out your waste:

1. Check what is recycled in your system

Every city has a different waste management system, so what may be classified as recyclable by the facilities in Barcelona might not be accepted in New York.

Plastic bags and items made from plastic film (i.e. shrink wrap, bubble wrap, Ziploc bags, trash bags, etc.) are not accepted by many waste facilities. Their machines are not designed for these types of materials so they can clog the machine. Most recycling facilities are set up to handle predominately rigid (hard) materials that are easier to separate using machinery.

You should manually separate elements according to what is accepted in your curbside recycling bins.

For instance, a plastic bottle can be made from Polyethylene terephthalate (PET, PETE), or plastic #1, commonly used for carbonated beverages, water bottles, and food packaging, while the lid is generally made from a different material, like polypropylene (PP), plastic #5, which may not be recyclable in your area. The adhesive label of the bottle is probably not recyclable either.

In Catalonia, you can keep the lids on the plastic bottles but you should take off the labels, while the glass containers should be divided: the glass jars should go in the green (glass) bin and the metal lids should go in the yellow (light packaging) one according to Ajuntament de Barcelona.

Since global efforts for recycling have increased in the past years, you may find detailed information about what to dispose of where according to where you live, like this waste sorting guide developed in Catalonia (which strangely I don’t see promoted to citizens publicly, so you may find something similar in your city if you do a bit of research). I was doing several things wrong before I saw it.

2. The numbered triangle “recycling” symbol on packaging does not mean that it is recyclable

Shocking, I know. One of the biggest points of confusion in recycling might be that triangle with the number in it. That symbol can be found on most plastics, and you would think that means that it’s recyclable.

But it doesn’t. In the plastics industry, that little triangle is known simply as the “resin stamp,” a marking plastics manufacturers use to indicate the type of plastic it is.

Unfortunately, even though it is printed in a chasing-arrows symbol, this stamp does not mean that the plastic item is recyclable in any given program. It only tells you what it is made out of. 

Also consider that even if the packaging states its recyclability in some explicit way, it may have been manufactured in another country (with a different recycling system) so you have to learn about your local waste management program to see what they actually classify as recyclable.

Read more: some recycling symbols explained.

Recycling Decoded, ProfessionalBeauty.co

3. Know that some things are not really recyclable (at least at the moment)

• Disposable coffee cups: most single-use cups are lined with a fine film of polyethylene, which makes the cups liquid-proof but also difficult and expensive to reprocess (because the materials have to be separated). Most waste management facilities will treat the cups as trash.

“Millions and millions of people every day try to do the right thing by putting their cups in a bin to be recycled. […] These cups are made of high-quality fiber and they could be recycled” — if they didn’t have the plastic lining.” Jim Ace, Stand.earth (2018)

• Pizza boxes: the problem is that oil often seeps into the cardboard. The oil cannot be separated from the fiber, making that material less valuable, and less marketable, to buyers. If there’s a side that’s not oily, tear that off and dispose of it in the paper/cardboard bin.
  

• Food-contaminated plastic containers: even though the food doesn’t permeate as it happens with cardboard, if you leave scraps of noodles in a plastic tray it’s recycling contamination. Washing out food scraps from recyclables can be just as important as putting the right thing in the recycling bin.

  You don’t have to scrub containers until they are sparkling — that could waste water — but rinse and leave them empty, clean, and dry. What can’t be rescued goes to the general trashcan. If your home recycling bin is smelly it’s an indicator of contamination.
  

• Hazardous waste: containers for paint, automotive fluids, or strong chemicals must be disposed of separately or, for some facilities, cleaned out before they can be recycled. Check with your local recycling waste program manager to learn about the methods necessary to make sure these items can be recycled.
  

• Diapers: okay these may be obvious to a lot of people, but it’s still getting into plastic recycling bins so I’ll leave this here.
  

• Plastic pens, used pencils, plastic toothbrushes, disposable razors: in general, most products that mix many materials (even if they contain some recyclable materials such as different kinds of plastic) that are bound chemically cannot be recycled. Please do not put them in any kind of recycling bin.

In the United States, over a billion toothbrushes — equal to 50 million pounds of waste — are discarded into landfills every year.

4. Should you crush the materials?

Ever feel the need to crush things before you recycle them? Well, it’s often the right instinct, as it conserves space and is more efficient for pick-up by recyclers.

Aluminum cans, however, can be an exception. According to Matt Meenan, the senior director of public affairs at the Aluminum Association, when crushed cans enter the recycling stream, they can become more difficult to sort out and can contaminate other recyclable materials.

A flattened soda can be sorted as “paper,” for instance, thus contaminating the paper recyclables. “Crushed aluminum cans may fall through the spaces of the sorting equipment and either be lost entirely or improperly sorted,” he added.

Whether you crush materials or not depends on your recycling infrastructure. If you’re in a city with multi-stream recycling, you’re probably fine to recycle them in any way you want. If you’re participating in a single-stream recycling program (the kind where you throw all your recyclables in a single bin at the curb) it could be best to leave them uncrushed.

5. What about the rest?

Just because some products don’t go into common domestic recycling bins doesn’t mean they can’t be recycled. Check if there are other pickup points in your location.

For example, mirrors are not just glass and the reflective chemical components they contain are not fit for the traditional glass recycling stream.

The same happens with Pyrex and ceramics. These are types of glass that have been treated with chemicals to withstand high temperatures so they don’t melt at the same temperatures used for traditional glass recycling.

As a guideline, the domestic recycling points for glass and plastic are mostly for plastic and glass containers. If you have a glass window that is broken (if it’s not, it’s better if it can be reused), that is recyclable but goes elsewhere.

Metals such as aluminum and steel can also be recycled but usually have different collection points around the city. For more convenience, I collect them in separate containers and dispose of them when there is a reasonable amount (such as with the steel blades of the safety razor, which should go in a metal container for disposal with other metals, or in a sharps container).

Glass recycling process - Suez recycling and recovery

Knowing what is and what isn’t recyclable can give you some ideas of elements to try to stay away from, which you can substitute with reusable alternatives according to your lifestyle.

For example, paper bags for pastries can have an interior plastic film like disposable coffee cups, be covered in wax or, if untreated, they will easily absorb grease, which in any case would discard them for recycling. Instead, you can use cloth bags to buy fresh bread (which I love to do in local bakeries).

It may seem like a lot of effort at first, but it only requires a little bit of planning. I rarely will buy bread randomly. I will probably know what I’ll be using it for and what I want to eat it with (because I’m always thinking about food but that is another issue).

In any case, these are very lightweight items that you can carry in any bag you take with you, together with containers for things you buy more spontaneously or frequently (like takeaway coffee).

Cloth bag to transport fresh bread.

The crucial thing to understand about recycling is that it is not the solution to the waste problem.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), even though 75 percent of our waste is recyclable, only 30 percent actually makes it into the recycling stream, and recycling requires a tremendous amount of energy. What really makes a difference is to reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place.

Reducing and reusing has a much better environmental performance than disposing and recycling, and those should always be the firsts options.

Therefore, recycling is not a magic cure-all but a last resort. And if we add the fact that there is a recycling crisis around the globe, we can see why we should focus most of our efforts on generating less waste altogether.

Seeing the general picture of how our recyclables may go to a landfill anyway can, to say the least, generate mixed feelings about recycling.

Recycling is good when it really works, which is what we should contribute to and demand as citizens (keep an eye on local reports, make pressure on government institutions and waste recycling facilities, and hold manufacturers responsible for their products).

Even though the current recycling system lacks efficiency (and in most cases transparency), which by itself can disappoint people enough to not want to separate their waste, it’s still advisable to do it.

Recycling has been an improvement compared to the management of waste in previous decades where almost 100% of the waste was filling and contaminating our lands.

Nowadays, when people speak of “zero-waste” they mean zero trash that is not recyclable, but they still dispose of other elements like food scraps, metal, glass, etc. There is always some percentage of remains that should be transformed, and recycling is still an important part of extending the life of resources and closing the loop.

The waste hierarchy of most preferred to least preferred waste management actions. Zero Waste Network (2020)

The recycling crisis is (as most issues) a systemic problem, caused by a scarce education about how local recycling works and the lack of information of the global management of the waste we generate (maybe it’s been sent to other countries where they may or may not be recycled), which altogether leads to high percentages of contamination and a narrow perspective where we continue shifting the problem (it doesn’t hurt if you don’t see it anymore, right?).

When we do recycle, we might as well be informed to do our part correctly while demanding better systems along the way.

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How to Speak Machine

Technology is a wonderful, truly, magical thing.

Because of its nature, it’s also quite mysterious. We know how to use it, but we don’t know very much about how it really works.

But computation is made by us, and we are collectively responsible for its outcomes; something to be aware of now that computing impacts virtually everyone, and new kinds of interactions with increasingly intelligent devices and surroundings are being more common in a growing digital world.

Therefore, we should have at least a basic understanding of how computing works, to maximize what we can make and be more mindful of how we shape it.

Based on the wonderful book “How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us” by designer and technologist John Maeda, this article is a distillation of key ideas of the first three chapters of the book, that aims to explain (to nontechie people) the properties of computation, which he describes as being “an invisible, alien universe”.

The Three Alien Properties of Computation

1. Machines run loops:

There’s one thing that a computer can do better than any human, animal, or machine in the real world: repetition.

A computer running a program, if left powered up, can sit in a loop and run forever, never losing energy or enthusiasm. It’s a metamechanical machine that never experiences surface friction and is not subject to the forces of gravity like a real mechanical machine—so it runs in complete perfection.

This property is one of the reasons why it’s tricky when tech companies operate computational systems, that never take lunch breaks or vacations and get down to extreme levels of detail, to know everything about you based on your data (especially when you are unaware of how and what exactly is being collected).

Of course, it is also being used positively, to increase comfort and convenience by anticipating needs and automating processes, (which we all benefit from nowadays) making everyday operations seamless and easy.

You may also take advantage of this relentless property to use it in innovative ways, like the Seoul Digital Foundation, which is employing robots to teach older adults to use KakaoTalk, one of South Korea's most popular messaging apps (if you have explained technology applications to your parents or grandparents, you already know it requires a lot of patience and repetition😅).

A Möbius strip, or loop, is a simple object that can be made out of folded paper and reveals surprising properties as you play with it. How to Speak Machine (2019)

2. Machines get large

Exponential growth is native to how the computer works. This is how the amount of computing memory available has evolved. The same can be said about processing power.

“So when you hear people in Silicon Valley talk about the future, it’s important to remember that they’re not talking about a future that is incrementally different year after year. They’re constantly on the lookout for exponential leaps”

— How to Speak Machine (2019) p. 39

Loops inside loops open new dimensions. In short, it’s a means to open up spaces that are much larger than the ones that surround us as the physical scale of our neighborhoods or cities. There are no limits to how far each dimension can extend, and no limits to how many dimensions can be created with further nesting of loops.

Computation has a unique affinity for infinity; however, you are in complete control when you write the codes and construct the loops to your liking.

“There is a certain comfort as you come to realize that, with eventual ease, you can craft infinitely large systems with also infinitely fine details”. (p.52)

This is unnatural to those of us who live in the analog world, but it’s just another day inside the computational universe. 

A magical aspect of the Koch snowflake, a fractal curve, is that its perimeter is infinite but its area is finite. Image: Matthias, LaTeX Stack Exchange (2017)

3. Machines behave like the living (originally stated as machines are living but corrected here)

The traditional approach to creating AI was to teach a computer how to reason through if-then rules. Deep learning (a technique used in machine learning), on the other hand, uses a model of the brain—neural networks in particular—to teach a computer how to think by observing a desired behavior and learning the skill through analyzing repeated behavioral patterns. 

For it to work well, the computer needs to observe our behavior. Preferably constantly and interminably.

This is how we can obtain products like Open AI’s GPT-3, a system released last summer that was trained on a vast corpus of text and that can create text to order that is close to writing created by people, based purely on pattern matching and analysis at massive scale.

OpenAI recently launched DALL·E, a 12-billion parameter version of GPT-3 trained to generate images from text descriptions, using a dataset of text–image pairs. OpenAI website (2021)

Computation’s potential for connection, not only allowing them to process massive amounts of information but facilitating machines that connect and collaborate at speeds that fast surpass ours, is another of its outstanding qualities.

Inventor and scientist Ray Kurzweil predicted that by 2015 computing power would surpass the brainpower of a mouse, and by 2045 there would be more computing power than all of the human minds combined on earth (p. 96), which makes learning to speak machine an imperative need.

“The fact that computers can talk with each other means that they are collectively as smart as the most brilliant computer that they can access.”

— How to Speak Machine (2019) p. 93

Similarly, the social networks and tools we have created now connect us to an expanding network of knowledge and possibilities. 

Whether in the real world or the computational world, connecting work is the catalyst for making changes happen at a scale that’s larger than just the doing work that an individual can perform. (p.89)

How can we figure out ways to collaborate and leverage the full power of our collective intelligence, inspired by how computing works? 

I believe too, as Maeda affirmed in the book, that computers won’t replace us if we remain audacious.

We are creative, complex beings that have created (and are continuously creating) marvelous tools with technology and its special computational powers.

It really feels almost magical, although we are getting used to it by now, to be able to connect, learn, teach, communicate with, observe, and in a close future, possibly even feel, locations, people, and objects all around the world.

What a time to be alive.

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References:

1. Maeda, J. (2019) How to Speak Machine. Penguin Publishing Group.

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Why Small Pleasures Matter

We often drive ourselves in pursuit of large pleasures: traveling to a foreign country, shipping a disruptive project, going to a once-in-a-lifetime music event.

A cult of the exotic or unusual.

But there are other, many small pleasures lying around us that can bring us a wealth of joy, comfort, and creativity with little cost and effort.

“Small pleasures” as portrayed by the book of the same title written by The School of Life, are those things we enjoy but are currently underrated, or those we fail to pay enough attention to.

One fundamental issue with small pleasures is that we tend to get used to places, people, or activities, and things that are familiar lose their power to entice the imagination if we stop being aware.

Personal archive (2020)

“If anyone can have it, if it’s easy to come by at home, if it’s a pleasure that’s best repeated, then it can’t be important. Yet the fact is, many of the things that do give us satisfaction have just this character.”

— Small Pleasures (2016) p. 237

As a practice of noticing, after reading this book and also seeing Austin Kleon’s logbook, I started journaling random things or happenings on a daily basis, and here are some in no particular order:

1. Deep breaths

2. Feeling warm sunlight hitting you on a cold winter day

3. Flowers

4. Fresh bread

5. Long hugs

6. Sitting at a bench and people-watching

7. Old photos

8. Trying food ingredients or meals you have never tasted before (like nutritional yeast which I had never tried until recently but is amazing on popcorn)

9. Laughing loudly

10. A beautiful ceramic plate

11. Being awake at dawn

12. The voice of loved one

13. Going to a park

14. A glass of cold water

15. Guessing the exact word someone was going to say

16. A good night’s rest

17. Lighting candles

18. Fresh orange juice

19. A well-made bed

20. Lying on the grass

21. Long walks

22. Reading a book in one sitting

23. Gazing at the sky

24. Dancing

25. A good stretch

26. Twinkle lights

27. A bicycle ride

28. The sound of waves

29. Fresh herbs

30. A day with no plans

31. Walking barefoot

32. Nice stationery

33. Chocolate

34. A nap

35. Falling into research rabbit holes

36. A facial massage

37. Figs

38. Movie night

39. The farmers market

40. Learning a new word

41. Fixing something

42. Starting a conversation

43. Dressing up for no reason

44. Watering plants

45. A refillable fountain pen

46. Reading poetry

47. Essential oils

48. Music playlists

49. Observing trees

50. Discovering the work of someone inspiring

And the list could go on forever.

What is important is that we begin to map the things that bring us pleasure and enjoyment, no matter how small they are (step 1). The point isn’t simply to note them but to understand why we like them – which intensifies and deepens the satisfaction they offer.

The map of our personal delights probably speaks greatly about what we love, and ultimately, who we are.

These pleasures give us more creativity, happiness, and inspiration.

But we tend to leave the reality of experiencing them very much to chance. We need to make a consistent space for small pleasures in our daily life, making them part of our plans (step 2).

As pointed out in the book, “our collective model of a good life tends to focus on career progress and financial management”. Those are things we actively seek out. Why don’t we do the same for small pleasures?

Ideally, we’d schedule more appointments. We’d put it in our plans: Sunday 10 am, staring at the sky. We’d create rituals from them so we can experience them with more frequency when we work, play, and rest.

The normal attitude to small pleasures is to think that they are, individually, perfectly nice but that they are rather insignificant. They come at random into our lives. We savor them for a moment, and then they’re gone.

However, “small pleasures turn out not to be small at all: they are points of access to the great themes of our lives.” (p. 9)

@silviagilroldan

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References:

1. The School of Life Press. (2016) Small Pleasures.

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Caring for our planet: practical advice towards a greener life

Sustainability is a buzzword right now, in any creative field you may work in. Everyone wants to claim they are doing something good for the environment, and we have more information than ever before about how much we have messed up our planet.

Who is responsible for this?

A satellite image of Batemans Bay, Australia, on New Year's Eve, 2019.

The hard truth is that we all share responsibility.

Yes, several companies have been doing terrible things for decades and have a huge part behind all of it, with political and commercial agendas that I can’t even begin to unravel. But the way we live our lives, the people we vote for, the companies we give our money to, and what we demand as citizens and customers, also shape our world massively.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this the last couple of years, when I also took a Master’s degree in Material Design (which led me to research a lot about sustainability since it was the main area I wanted to focus on). I realized that it made no sense to advocate for sustainability through my work while ignoring the environmental impact of my daily habits. One thing does not offset the other.

One idea that basically guides my life is trying to be as consistent and coherent as I can in relation to my principles and the way I act in the different spheres of being.

In the end, it all adds up, and if we have the opportunity to live in this beautiful planet we should at least have a respectful way of doing it.

So, after all this rant I would like to share some of the things I’ve been doing from the beginning (I’m still in process of making many changes) to transform my lifestyle towards a more sustainable way of living, in case it serves to guide or inspire you:

• Take a test to assess your environmental impact:

  WWF-UK developed a carbon footprint calculator as a way of showing your carbon emissions, compared to other people and other countries. It’s your impression on the planet. You can access it here: https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/
  
  While it does not deliver a very detailed report, it gives you an initial idea of the categories that have a bigger impact in your footprint, together with some tips to reduce it.

My results from the WWF Footprint Calculator.

• Ditch disposables:

  It’s not that plastic is a bad material (it’s wonderful for certain purposes!). It’s that it’s absurd to use a material that lasts hundreds of years (and will literally outlive you) for something you need to use just one day or even a few minutes.

  This may lead to absurd and sad consequences, like there being more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050 (by weight).

  We need to redesign the systems of production and consumption to embrace a circular, post- disposable world, were we design out waste from the beginning. 
  

  A list of basic things to reduce disposables:

• Reusable water bottle (I take this everywhere).

• Reusable cloth and mesh bags to buy vegetables. fruit and nuts in bulk.

• Cheesecloth bag to make almond, hazelnut (this one is amazing with cocoa) or oatmeal milk.

• Textile napkins.

• Reusable silicone bags and lids to store food in the fridge or freezer.

• Stainless steel safety razor.

• Menstrual cup.

• Reusable cup for coffee and tea. 

• Stainless steel straw.

• Compostable toothbrush (check that the bristles are also made from a compostable material because some bamboo toothbrushes still have them made from plastic).

• Compostable sponges for washing the dishes and cleaning (there are a variety of materials from coconut fibers to luffa).

• Home water filter to stop buying bottled water.

If you do the math of how much you will spend in a lifetime in disposables, the investment of buying something that lasts decades will be not only more ecofriendly but cheaper. Pay special attention to things that you replace and buy frequently.

My home water filter by Ecofiltro💦

• Buy in bulk from local stores:

At bulk stores and some regular grocery stores, you can pay for your goods by weight, so you buy just what you need while reducing packaging waste, which cuts down what we accumulate and throw away in the kitchen. 

You can buy lots of things in bulk, from food (rice, beans, dried fruits, spices, etc.) to cleaning supplies (dishwashing soap, laundry detergent, etc.) without all the toxic chemicals industrial ones generally contain (both the planet and my lungs appreciate this change). 

Please remember to bring your own containers to buy what you need. I see a lot of people that stop by to shop and put everything in disposable paper bags which can be just as bad as plastic bags (plus sometimes they add their own label in the store but if you really don’t need it it’s better to refuse it).  

Bulk store in the center of Barcelona (Casa Perris).

• Review what you eat:

The world’s food system is responsible for about one-quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse gases that humans generate each year. 

While I’m not vegetarian I have reduced the amount of meat in my meals (especially red meat), and I really enjoy discovering new recipes to diversify what I eat, by consuming more protein-rich plants like beans, legumes, nuts, and grains.

In general, what you eat matters a lot more than where it comes from since transportation accounts for only about 6 percent of food’s total climate footprint. That being said (of course it’s always better to support local commerce when you can), there are a few things to consider.

The average greenhouse gas impact (in kilograms of CO2) of getting 50 grams of protein from different sources. Poore and Nemecek, Science (2018)

Anything that’s in season where you live, whether you buy it at a local farmers’ market or a supermarket, is usually a good choice.

Apps like TooGoodtoGo and Phenix (available in Spain) are also a great option, where you can buy leftover (but still in perfect condition) groceries and food at a cheaper price.

Because food waste is a gigantic issue: as much as one-third of the total food production.

“In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.”

— U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That means that all the resources it took to produce this amount of food were wasted. Therefore, one key way to cut your food-related emissions is to waste less. Buying what you need and actually eating it — instead of tossing it out — means that the energy used to produce your food has been spent efficiently.

Plan your meals smartly so that everything gets used. One hack I like is freezing the leftover peels and scraps of vegetables to make stock for rice and soup. They are still full of flavor and nutrients. 

Be vigilant so you eat, or otherwise freeze, the food in your refrigerator (I freeze many things from rice to arepas), instead of letting it spoil. Order your fridge so you can easily see everything (especially the food that doesn’t last too long or has been there for a while). Store fresh food properly so it can last longer or share it with someone who may enjoy it.

Another thing I like to do is using the leftover pulp from preparing almond / hazelnut milk to make yummy snack balls. Basically, try to get the most out of everything @aknamarquez

• Buy smarter:

Buying secondhand is a great option to find affordable clothes and home items. I’ve got some beautiful clothing pieces for prices as cheap as 1 euro in a perfect condition, to wear for many years to come. When I’m looking for something specific (color, size, or design), I will probably buy something new but I now I try to focus more on the quality and the durability, even if it may be more expensive.

Encants Vintage Market (2019)

• Share your ride:

  Public transport, cycling and walking around the city are the best ways to move around. Walking is also a great opportunity to discover new places around that you may love and is not only good for your body but also your brain. I also like to use the spare time while commuting on the metro to make time to read every day.

• Use resources more efficiently:

There’s a lot you can improve by changing appliances in your house.

Some changes that we’ve added recently at home are shower head filters that create more pressure so you may use about 30% less water while removing chlorine, which also helps to have healthier skin and hair.

Another easy shift is washing your clothes less. It may sound gross and of course, it all depends on the intensity of the activities you have done wearing them but companies like Levi’s have launched initiatives to educate consumers where they advise exactly that: spot clean instead of tossing them in the washing machine if unnecessary, or soak and line dry.

Your clothes will last longer and you will use less water.

• Share what you are learning:

  Talk with your friends and family about the subject. What do they think about our environmental situation? Share tips and thoughts instead of shaming people around you for not thinking the same. Gift items that make a more sustainable lifestyle easier (perhaps they won’t buy these things themselves but if they have them around they would use them for daily things like buying groceries or having coffee).

  I’m no zero-waste guru either, I’m just learning. Please share any thoughts or experiences you may have! :)

• Take advantage of what you already have:

We can’t shop our way into sustainability. Because of sustainability marketing, there is this notion that products can be 100% sustainable if just the right materials are chosen. Yet, any item, even the most “sustainable” one, say made of recycled fibers, still has an environmental footprint and it is fundamental to keep that in mind. Walking and cycling, for example, is always going to be more sustainable than any electric car they try to sell you.

We don’t need all the hippest stuff we see influencers using (even zero-waste influencers).  We can reuse a lot of things that are already made. If you have plastic containers don’t throw them away to buy new stainless steel or glass ones. Reuse everything you can or give it away responsibly.

I’m a big fan of reusing glass jars in all sizes and shapes!

One of my teachers used to say in class that sustainability doesn’t exist because the most sustainable thing would be to not exist at all. It’s a reasonable statement. But since we do, let’s make our best to take care of this place we call home. We have more information than ever before and finally, the pressure towards brands is growing. 

Instead of feeling doomed with the news, which paralyzes and makes us feel powerless, we must see that our actions matter, and constantly push for a systemic change.

Our daily habits shape not only the way we live and work, but they also influence others around us and create consumer demands that companies respond to. We have a voice (that we should be using more) in demanding an ethical behavior from governments and brands.

All of it matters.

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Design for the Long Time

The (pandemic imposed) slow pace of this year has carved a space to reflect on how we make sense of time. Our frenetic lifestyle is regularly filled with numerous daily tasks and decisions that keep us busy, making it easy to get caught into narrow, short-term thinking.

But…

what do our lives contribute to in the long run? 

In the past month, I participated in a virtual workshop hosted by Bea Karol Burks and Ella Saltmarshe, during the Re_Festival event (organized by CIVIC SQUARE), with the focus of “Creating the Long Time”. The session inspired rumination in me (and perhaps in many of the participants) and led me to write this post based on my notes.

Picture I took during the virtual event “Creating the Long Time”.

One of the key takeaways I got from the event was learning to see a wider time span for understanding and designing our impact as communities, based on two concepts:

• Long-termism: planning and forecasting for the future.

• Long-timism: cultivating care for the world beyond our lifetimes.

While as designers we probably already gravitate towards imagining what the future may look like, using forecasting as a tool to conceptualize and predict trends, we rarely make creative decisions that extend beyond a few years, much less a lifetime period.

“In politics, the dominant time frame is a term of office, in fashion and culture, it’s a season. For corporations it’s a quarter, on the internet it’s minutes, and on the financial markets mere milliseconds”

— Esther Dyson

Our wealth and rights, as individuals, depend on the efforts and achievements of the many generations who came before us. However, we tend to underestimate our relationships and lineages with past generations and future populations.

This may be caused by a “systemic and psychological inability”[1] to see beyond immediate consequences and results, as well as the difficulty to understand our lasting footprint beyond our deaths (which may be caused by a refusal of death itself).

We may suffer from a limited “human-centric” view of the world (which is why many creatives are already pushing towards a planet-centric view of design over the popular human-centered design model). Homo sapiens represent just a fraction of history, and of the creatures that have been (and will be) alive on this planet. 

Promotional video for the book "The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World" by the philosopher Roman Krznaric (2020).

From Krznaric’s video for the book (which I haven’t read yet but it’s on my wish list), I loved the idea of passing on gifts for future generations.

It’s hard to grasp the immensity of time but we could use different references to project scenarios that help us to expand our thinking (such as a dear person’s grandchild, which starts from someone you already know and care about). 

We could also learn from indigenous cultures with worldviews that connect their communities to long lineages, creating a sense of responsibility to care for the future of their descendants, and thanking their ascendants for what they have given them.

Even trying to shift beyond short time spans and immediate gratifications in benefit of medium to longer-term impacts in our own lifetime could be a start (in general, I try to apply ideas in a gradual manner and it works for me; if I can’t think about time a couple of months or years in the future, I’ll hardly adopt the custom of seeing decades or centuries from now). 

In my personal life, I like to think about how to make thoughtful decisions and actions in the present that will make the life of my future self better. It can be small things like cooking ahead yummy food that “future Akna” will enjoy next week or getting a letter from “past Akna”, all the way to finding the motivation to invest, exercise and stay healthy in the present, which I hope will allow me to enjoy life and be active and present for my loved ones in future decades. 

From The Good Ancestor (2020). Graphic by Nigel Hawtin.

In a longer span, initiatives such as the Rights for Future Generations, are attempting to advance environmental protections for future populations in relation to the climate crisis. Others are trying to imagine how can we construct post-mortem interactions with these future generations, like the concept of Willed Futures, a platform that automates acts of care that transcend death. 

Users are able to send a flower every year to a loved one after the moment of passing, extending the presence of self-hood well beyond bodily material decay, by digitally coding and planning gestures of generosity that are executed in the afterlife.

Valuing the long-term is about understanding our place in the wider web of life: [2]

1. Caring about the richness of life on Earth and its evolution during the geological history of the universe (Deep time)

2. Developing a connection to future and past generations (Multigenerational emotions)

3. Respecting the value of nature and non-human species of Earth (Interconnected worldviews).

4. Dealing with the fact that our lives will end and facing this reality by living more intentionally (Mortality consciousness).

5. Building the desire and agency to leave a positive legacy (Legacy stance).

These are key mentalities (presented in the workshop) through which we can live our lives and reframe our relationship with time. We need to develop the will, motivation and instruments to escape the prominence of the present, and realize our power and responsibility for the future. 

What things could we do now, that would bring benefits in the long-time future? What strategies can you think of to extend our time horizons?

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Footnotes:

1. EIT Climate KIC. (2020) Persistent selves. Retrieved from: https://www.climate-kic.org/opinion/persistent-selves/

2. Summary from my notes of the event “Creating the Long Time”. The namings in bold and brackets for each idea was presented by the workshop hosts: Bea Karol Burks and Ella Saltmarshe (2020).

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Architecture and COVID19—tips for creating safe and healthy indoor spaces

Architecture shapes the quality of our environments and can contribute (or cause harm) to our health and wellbeing. Topics concerning health have always been stimulating architectural innovations at different scales:  territorial and urban development projects as well as architectural and interior design.  

Amid COVID-19 space has been in the center, with mandatory physical distancing that has kept most of us locked down in the same rooms for weeks, making us aware of space as a place to provide not only comfort but safety.

Lockdown measures have started to ease all around the world including people going back to work and social gatherings, but there is still uncertainty of the exact risk involved: how contained is the virus and what is the possibility of a second wave of infections?

While there are some aspects of the virus transmission that are not completely clear, there is sufficient data to indicate that the risk of infection indoors is the highest: in one study of more than 7,300 cases in China, only one was connected to outdoor transmission. [1]

Therefore, as we bring people inside our buildings once again it is crucial to design and adapt spaces to protect their health and safety, and in this regard, I compiled a list of recommendations, ideas, and resources that might be helpful:

PANDEMIC ARCHITECTURE International Ideas Competition - archisearch.gr (2020)

Make your spaces breathe better:

To make building more energy and heat efficient, many spaces like offices, stores, and apartment blocks don’t have operable windows and this can cause what is called the “sick building syndrome”, which is what happens when buildings are entirely sealed and they start recirculating pathogens through their systems.

COVID-19 is mainly spread by droplets—produced by coughing, sneezing, or even just talking—that can travel up to 6 ft (2 m). There is early evidence that smaller particles may be able to float even longer distances (airborne transmission), in which case proper ventilation and simple airflow strategies can help.

To dilute and remove contaminated indoor air, open windows for cross ventilation (if the space allows), or use exhaust fans or mechanical systems to pull air outside. Air cleansing strategies are also an effective option, such as Germicidal Ultraviolet (GUV) air disinfection units or air filters. [2]

Avoiding closed-off hallways, waiting areas, and other spaces designed without airflow in mind — or, if possible, keeping people outdoors — while maintaining safe distancing can also radically help.

Rethink material selection and treatment of surfaces:

Surfaces contaminated with infected droplets can transmit disease. Hospitals and kitchens use non-porous surfaces (e.g., stainless steel, plastic, composites) for infection control and ease of cleaning. However, these are proving to be materials where COVID-19 has been shown to live the longest. Take special care to regularly clean high-touch non-porous surfaces.

Surprisingly, porous materials like wood, cardboard, fibers, cotton, and leather seem to be a less stable material for the COVID-19 virus, which lasts less than 24 hours on these surfaces. We need to rethink guidelines determined by previous diseases, in the face of new realities.

Consider materials related to their health properties, like copper which is having a come-back thanks to its natural antimicrobial properties (killing a range of bacteria and viruses), with a long-lasting power during its lifetime. [3]

Copper-coated door plate. Reuters.

Reevaluate flows:

Communal spaces like hallways, waiting areas, lobbies, and elevators are the most contagious because that is where crowding occurs. Meet, interact, collect, and connect outdoors if you can.

Sequence the flows of people to limit unnecessary overlaps. Separate clean and dirty entrances when possible, ensure areas for putting and taking off personal protective equipment (PPE), and consider how people and materials will be moving through space. [2]

Determine ingress/egress to and from restrooms to establish paths that mitigate waiting, proximity for occupants, and face-to-face convergence between those entering and exiting.

Circulation diagram - Rudolph M. Schindler (1922)

Suggest physical distancing:

Around the world, people have devised various ways to denote the prescribed social distancing protocol using chalk marks, tape, floor stickers, signs, furniture, and other crafty means. Graphic cues are useful because people are generally terrible at approximating distances (or simply ignore it unless stated).

You can also fill the space creatively to generate ambiance in the room with a significantly reduced capacity.

The restaurant at Izu Shabonten Zoo in Shizuoka, Japan is using stuffed animal Capybaras that have been strategically placed throughout the restaurant to maintain appropriate social distancing.

Touch-free interactions:

Touch-free design is a growing trend to avoid being in contact with potentially infectious elements (since SARS-CoV-2 can spread through contaminated inanimate objects known as fomites).

Designing touchless experiences can be especially helpful in areas that have high usage among crowds like doors, bathroom fixtures, elevators, or light interfaces, with a wide range of options available: revolving doors, elbow-to-push plates, voice activation, mobile phone controls, and proximity sensors.

Whole buildings like the Bee’ah waste management company in Sharjah, UAE by Zaha Hadid Architects, are being designed around “contactless pathways”, meaning employees will rarely have to touch a surface with their hands to navigate through the establishment, including smartphone operated lifts, automated doors and facial recognition sensors which allow for security without the need for keys or fingerprints. 

Keychain Touch Tool to open doors and press buttons without touching them - @peel.

Scanning spaces:

One of the biggest problems in the face of COVID-19 has been the insufficiency of tests and realtime analysis of risk exposure.

This is an area where technology and scientific knowledge could combine, and there are already some interesting initiatives like the one of architect Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, who has recently launched a project to test buildings for SARS-CoV-2 by swabbing surfaces, air filters, and air return grills. It’s like doing a health check for the spaces we occupy.

“You can’t test every person every day,” he says. “But comparatively, it’s an order of magnitude easier to test the air handler. You might gain knowledge of 100 people with that one swab.” Similar environmental surveillance projects have been launched by other groups to swab subways and hospitals.

Some buildings are also beginning to deploy temperature screening to identify people who might be ill. China and several other countries are currently measuring occupants’ temperatures prior to entering a building using an infrared thermometer, or alternately, utilizing thermal imaging.

Design for adaptability:

Modularity is already a well-known practice among designers, with the added benefit of a bigger capacity for change, now that we need to rearrange room layouts to increase the spacing between zones and people.

Avoid permanently fixed elements and instead utilize temporary, movable partitions to subdivide spaces, keeping in mind how you can design for recovery and reuse of elements to avoid waste.

Illustration by Emma Roulette

Build trust through design:

Design can help rebuild trust in the public realm. Use signs and graphics to reveal the systems that are working behind the scenes: publicly display safety standards and protocols for restaurants and places of convening, construction sites, and job sites.

Evaluate the safety of your space before you invite people in:

Knowing that indoors suppose a much higher risk than meeting outdoors it is fundamental to assess and adapt the environment before you invite people back into office spaces, schools, and the many places where we share life.

In order to provide guidance for the reopening of spaces, The American Institute of Architects published the Re-occupancy Assessment Tool, which helps businesses determine if their buildings are safe to return to and, if not, the ways they can improve. [4]

Re-occupancy Assessment Tool, AIA (2020)

“There are spatial decisions that are being made today that will have long-term implications a year from now. If the spatial disciplines are at the table, we can help in the decision-making process as we respond in the coming weeks. There’s an incredible amount of need for designers and architects to be of service.”

— Michael Murphy from MASS Design Group (2020) [5]

COVID-19 will (hopefully!) not stay with us forever, but designing for extreme scenarios can provide many benefits for all circumstances (such as designing for extreme users brings advantages for everyone), especially when focusing on essential aspects like health and safety.

Even basic things that enhance our indoor space—fresh outdoor air, sunlight, filtration, and ventilation—are also helpful in reducing transmission risk.

The design of our spaces has the power to hurt us or to keep us safe. From floor layouts to the choice of materials, and the circulation of air, every decision we make matters.

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References:

1. QIAN, H, et al. (2020) Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Retrieved from:

   https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf

2. MASS Design Group (2020) The Role of Architecture in Fighting COVID-19. Designing Spaces for Infection Control. Retrieved from:

   https://massdesigngroup.org/sites/default/files/multiple-file/2020-03/Designing%20Spaces%20for%20Infection%20Control_MASS%20Design%20Group_200327.pdf

3. Smithsonian Magazine (2020) Copper’s Virus-Killing Powers Were Known Even to the Ancients. Retrieved from: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/copper-virus-kill-180974655/

4. AIA. (2020) Re-Occupancy Assessment Tool. Retrieved from: http://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2020-06/STN20_%20344901_ReOccupancyAssessmentTool-V02_sm_v09.pdf

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