Project: Julie Lasky

DesigNYC

A star-powered matchmaking organization pairs New York designers with social causes. According to co-founder Wendy Goodman, DesigNYC focuses “on one simple idea: Good design, effective design, makes people feel better.”

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Report: Ernest Beck

The Cotton Club

Your T-shirt label may say "organic," but what really does that mean? Combing through the tangle of sustainable standards for the world's most popular fiber.

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Project: Ernest Beck

GlobalTap

More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water. The rest of us have an unlimited flow from the tap. Daniel H. Whitman, a Chicago architect and social entrepreneur, wants to link these two extremes.

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Opinion: Tony Whitfield

Prepared for Haiti

As a designer, I know there are tools we use daily that could be deployed in response to situations like this. I am also wise enough to recognize the conceit in thinking that I would have the right skills and resources to address these issues effectively. Responding to disaster was not what I imagined or embraced as my life’s work, and this is not the time to entertain dabblers.

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Report: Ernest Beck

State of Shelter

As aid and relief supplies reach Haiti to help earthquake victims, attention is focusing on immediate needs such as food, water, medical care and temporary shelter. Shelter plays a critical role in emergency relief as a way not only to protect victims from weather conditions but also to provide a semblance of family and community life amid horrific conditions and collapsed infrastructure.

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Program: The Editors

Aspen Design Summit: Update 01.15.10

Dateline Aspen. An on-going report on progress on the six projects developed at the Aspen Design Summit in November 2009.

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Project: Jane Margolies

Rising Currents

Five teams of architects, landscape designers, urban planners and artists propose how sites along New York Harbor might prepare for rising sea levels and catastrophic storms.

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Essay: Karrie Jacobs

A President and His Dog, Part 2

Unlike Barney, whose role was to “humanize” the Bush White House, Bo’s isn’t the face this administration is most eager to put forward.

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Interview: Alexandra Lange

Casey Jones

A conversation with the federal government's design excellence czar.

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Observed

Project M is accepting applications for its next session, in Hilo, Hawaii. [JL]

Observed

You really know media ad dollars are hard to come by when the Super Bowl gets political. [JL]

Observed

Alissa Walker on the calamity of a product called iPad, why Apple should have known better and what you really ought to be thinking of when you hear that word. [JL]

Observed

Examples of rebuilding infrastructure in disaster areas from the bottom up. [JL]

Gallery: Mitch Epstein

Why Not in My Backyard?

Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond City, West Virginia 2004 from American Power.>>

Observed

"On a trip to Haiti in 2006, my three-hour ride from Port au Prince to the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer was punctuated by perhaps the most vibrant street life I'd ever witnessed. It was as if all life was lived out on the road." Rick Landesberg's video footage from that day. [JL]

Observed

Up-to-the-minute information about Haiti disaster via crowdsourcing. (Thanks to Paul Polak.) [JL]

Observed

On view at Material ConneXion in New York: a show of award-winning fibrous, springy and spongy stuff, including the company's "Material of the Year," a cement-impregnated flexible fabric that can be used for "rapidly deployable shelter and food storage structures in disaster relief situations," among other things. Until February 19. [JL]

Observed

Architecture for Humanity's response to the crisis in Haiti. [JL]

Observed

New York's Pratt Manhattan Gallery will present “The Sustainability Equation: Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Fashion,” a free panel discussion in conjunction with the gallery’s “Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion” exhibition at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26. Panelists include Julie Gilhart, fashion director of Barneys New York, designer Mary Ping of Slow and Steady Wins the Race and designer Caroline Priebe of Uluru. Read a review of the show here. [JL]

Gallery: Rick Landesberg

The Bleating Edge

Yoked goat, Haiti, 2006.>>

Observed

Helen Walters interviews Antony Bugg-Levine, managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation, about his Accelerating Innovation for Development initiative. [JL]