Announcing The Finalists Of The 2014 Innovation By Design Awards

A healthier, brighter, more efficient world doesn’t just happen--it happens by design.

That’s proven by the finalists from our 2014 Innovation by Design competition, chosen from 1,587 boundary-pushing entries. All are listed here, and category winners will be announced at our conference in New York on October 15. Learn more atfastcodesign.com/ibd.

---

PRODUCTS

• Aros Smart Window Air Conditioner By Quirky and GE
• August Smart Lock By Fuseproject 
• Kano Computer Kit By MAP
• littleBits Space Kit By littleBits and NASA 
• Nike Magista Football Boots By Nike 
• Pencil By FiftyThree 

See category >>

---

EXPERIENCE

• McDonald’s 21st-Century Operating Platform By McDonald’s 
• MyMagic+ By Walt Disney Parks and Resorts 
• PillPack By PillPack
• The Scarecrow By Chipotle and Creative Artists Agency 
• SmartWalk By TransitScreen 

See category >>

---

HEALTH

• Melon By Melon and Ideo
• PillPack (second category) By PillPack 
• PullClean By Altitude Medical
• Reebok Checklight By Reebok and MC10
• Restoring Natural Sensory Feedback in Real-Time Bidirectional Hand Prostheses By EPFL and SSSA Labs

See category >>

---

DATA VISUALIZATION

• Immersion By César Hidalgo, Deepak Jagdish, Daniel Smilkov (MIT Media Lab) 
• LEED Dynamic Plaque By Ideo 
• Major League Baseball Team Values By Bloomberg Visual Data 
• Mapdwell Solar System By Mapdwell 
• The Solar System: Our Home in Space By Kurzgesagt 
• Timescape By Local Projects

See category >>

---

SOCIAL GOOD

• 20K House Product Line By Rural Studio
• 24hoursofhappy.com By i am OTHER
• BioLite HomeStove By BioLite 
• Color + City By CUBOCC
• The Miraclefeet Brace By Ian Connolly and Jeffrey Yang 
• Tiny Miracles Foundation By Pepe Heykoop

See category >>

---

EXPERIMENTAL

• inForm By Sean Follmer, Hiroshi Ishii, Daniel Leithinger (MIT Tangible Media Group) 
• KissCam By taliaYstudio 
• The Machine to Be Another By BeAnotherLab 
• Morph By Seymourpowell 
• Project Loon By Google X 

See category >>

---

APPS

• Monument Valley By ustwo 
• NYT Now By The New York Times 
• Plotagon Mobile By Plotagon 
• Reporter for iPhone By Nicholas Felton 
• Storehouse By Storehouse Media 

See category >>

---

GRAPHIC

• 40 Days of Dating By Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman
• Divvy By Ideo 
• Everytown for Gun Safety By Purpose 
• Munchery By Munchery 
• WalkNYC By PentaCityGrou

See category >>

---

STUDENTS

• CityHome By Oier Ariño, Phillip Ewing, Daniel Goodman, Hasier Larrea (MIT Media Lab Changing Places group) 
• inForm (second category) By Sean Follmer, Hiroshi Ishii, Daniel Leithinger (MIT Tangible Media Group) 
• Pocket Printer By Zuta Labs 
• Puzzle Facade By Javier Lloret
• Rapid Packing Container By Chris Curro and Henry Wang

See category >>

---

SPACES

• CityFarm By Caleb Harper (MIT Media Lab) 
• Gammel Hellerup High School Multipurpose Hall By BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)
• Memory Wound--July 22 Memorial Site By Jonas Dahlberg Studio
• People St By the L.A. Department of Transportation 
• Street Charge By Pensa 

See category >>

Norway's Moving Terrorism Memorial Will Be A Gash In The Landscape

THE WINNING DESIGN PROPOSAL WILL CREATE A PHYSICAL WOUND THAT CAN NEVER HEAL.

By Dan Nosowitz

Norway recently approved a design proposal from Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, who usually works in video installations, to memorialize the 2011 attacks perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik. It's bold and poignant and very beautiful in its simplicity: an 11-foot chasm that will be carved into the land near the massacre. It's due to be unveiled on the fourth anniversary of the attacks on July 22, 2015.

In 2011, Breivik carried out two consecutive acts of violence, first killing eight with a bomb and then moving to the island of Utøya, where he killed 69. It was the most violent day in Norwegian history since World War II and sent shockwaves through the country; by one estimate, one in four Norwegians knew someone personally affected by the massacre.

Dahlberg's concept was chosen for the memorial after the country held an open competition for designs (no word on whether he's being paid for the design, though the country clearly has a significant budget for public architecture). His calls for an 11-foot-wide gap to be gouged in a narrow peninsula near Utøya, permanently separating the end of the peninsula from the mainland. Says Norway's public art office:

Here he proposes a wound or a cut within the landscape itself to recreate the physical experience of something being taken away, and to reflect the abrupt and permanent loss of those who died on Utøya. The cut will be a three-and-a-half-metre wide excavation running from the top of the headland at the Sørbråten site to below the waterline and extending to each side. This gap in the landscape will make it impossible to reach the end of the headland.

The names of those killed will be carved into the cut side of the earth, but viewers won't be able to physically touch them, unlike most memorials, including the 9/11 memorial here in the U.S. "The names will be close enough to see and read clearly, yet ultimately out of reach. This cut is an acknowledgement of what is forever irreplaceable," said Dahlberg. The land removed from the side, trees and all, will be transported to Oslo to serve as the base of the city's memorial, which, according to the public art site, will be a "memorial pathway."

NYC To Install Free Cellphone-Charging Stations

A CLEVER SOLAR-POWERED CONCEPT WE ENCOUNTERED JUST A FEW MONTHS BACK WILL BE INSTALLED ACROSS NYC STARTING THIS WEEK

By Mark Wilson

Not so long ago, we featured a Pensa concept that we called a rest stop for the urban age--a system called Street Charge that could attach to any sign, then top off cellphone batteries through a solar panel (all while providing a convenient ledge for your coffee).

Following the concept’s release, Pensa received a lot of interest in making Street Charge a reality. And now, through a partnership with solar company Goal Zero and AT&T, Street Charge will be installed in 25 locations across New York City, then repositioned two more times over a three-month run.

The concept has seen a few changes. For one, Pensa had to test their concept. So they set up a bunch of normal umbrellas connected to solar chargers, and they collected user data on the streets of New York. They learned things like: How much power does the average person need? Do people bring their own power adapters? (They almost never do.)

Then Pensa took feedback from city policy to heart. So rather than building Street Charge as a modification for existing signs, which would require a whole other level of negotiations, the system has been redesigned to serve as a self-sufficient battery-filled pole that can be dropped anywhere--from a swatch of unused asphalt to a patch of grass in a city park. And in fact, the majority of installations will be in these natural, electricity dead zones, Pensa’s founder Marco Perry tells me, as Street Charge’s solar panels mean they don’t require the expense and eyesore of digging up grass to lay wires under parks.

As for Street Charge’s new look, which has evolved from a single curved solar panel to a helicopter-like segmented trio of panels, that was made in order to generate more solar surface area while blending in a bit better in parks.

“We wanted something that looked like it fit naturally in those natural environments,” Perry says. “It’s a little bit organic, but it’s a little bit industrial. It kind of looks like a flower, but so little that it’s not kitschy. It’s more of an abstraction.”

Street Charge units will be on the ground for a run of 90 days in an exclusive deal with AT&T. But as they’re classified as temporary structures, and the promotion will come to an end, Street Charge could expand more permanently to other cities in the future. It’s not a bad idea, though I have one request: Fit a mini cell tower on this thing, and I’m sold.

L.A. Offers DIY Urban Design Kits

PEOPLE ST MAKES IT WAY EASIER FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS TO GET A PEDESTRIAN PLAZA, MINI PARK OR BIKE PARKING APPROVED.

By Shaunacy Ferro

Transforming formerly car-dominated public spaces into pedestrian- and bike-friendly parks and plazas is all the rage in urban design. These projects are typically instigated by folks within City Hall, like former New York transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, who spearheaded efforts to turn busy tourist destinations like Times Square into pedestrian havens. The sheer bureaucracy involved in city planning makes it a heady task for a lowly community group to put up a pedestrian plaza.

In Los Angeles, a city rarely heralded as a pedestrian-friendly place, the process is going to get a whole lot easier. The department of transportation just launched People St, an initiative that offers what are essentially DIY urban design kits to create pedestrian plazas, mini parks, and bike parking to re-appropriate any of the 7,500 miles of street within the city.

Through the People St Program, most of the heavy bureaucratic lifting has been removed, putting the ability to redesign a community into the hands of the people who know it best. The downloadable kits offer pre-approved design configurations (tested in six pilot projects) for each type of space, and streamline the process for getting a permit. The community need only apply, pay for materials and installation, and agree to maintain the project, rather than shuffle through red tape from multiple municipal departments.

In an ideal world, this sort of thing wouldn't be necessary. The city would organize, pay for, and maintain public spaces that enhance the quality of life on its streets, and residents would not need to raise thousands of dollars to build their own plaza. But in places where that reality seems impossible, programs like this could help give community groups some say over what gets built in their neighborhood.

Revamping public spaces around pedestrian traffic has proven to be good for people--in New York's Times Square, the new pedestrian plaza reduced air pollution by 40%--and good for business, too, as these initiatives attract plenty of customers and give them a reason to linger. It's worth any city's while to make them as easy as possible to get off the ground (or into the street).

The Finalists Of The 2014 Innovation By Design Awards: Spaces

A healthier, brighter, more efficient world doesn’t just happen—it happens by design.

That’s proven by the finalists from our 2014 Innovation by Design competition, chosen from 1,587 boundary-pushing entries. All are listed here, and category winners will be announced at our conference in New York on October 15. Learn more atfastcodesign.com/ibd.

Photo: Kent Larson, courtesy of MIT Media Lab

CITYFARM

By Caleb Harper (MIT Media Lab) 
CityFarm lets you grow pounds of produce in a month in what’s essentially a glorified closet. Open-source software calibrates light levels, humidity, temperature, and pH to create an easily replicable, soil-free urban farm.

GAMMEL HELLERUP HIGH SCHOOL MULTIPURPOSE HALL

By BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)
This school gym is underground—which lowers indoor temperatures—and creates a new student hangout on the hilly courtyard of a roof.

MEMORY WOUND--JULY 22 MEMORIAL SITE

By Jonas Dahlberg Studio
Norway’s Utøya island will be cleaved in half, to commemorate the 2011 massacre there. From an underground station, visitors will see victims’ names inscribed on the other side.

Read story >>

PEOPLE ST

By the L.A. Department of Transportation
The LADOT’s kits for pop-up parks let communities create pedestrian plazas, mini parks, and bike racks without navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth.

Read story >>

STREET CHARGE

By Pensa 
This free, public device-charging station features plugs for a variety of mobile devices, topped by three-electricity-generating solar panels.

Read story >>