Tip Toe-ing to a more Efficient Life

(Above: Frank Lloyd Wright house/ Shoreview, MN)

Minneapolis is a city based on modern ideas, surrounded by Midwestern structure and raised by tradition of ‘medium-sized’ change. Many people that live here, especially in the Calhoun lakes area take on styles that promote efficient and beautifully designed futures. Yet many homes are still very old-fashioned, inefficient and to build a home of true, unique modern thought can be considered unfit for the aesthetic of a neighborhood or just too damn expensive. But why should this keep people from dreaming up interesting designs for their living. Is it cost, yes perhaps, but if $ signs aren’t an on-going symbol in your mind, let’s allow somebody else to kill the dream and have a good look at some sweet living.

Publications like Dwell give a look at upscale living with efficiency built in every nook and cranny. The good stuff comes from the hard to come by roof gardens, all-home filtration systems, other energy features, and the bold beautiful look of it all. Most people on a normal budget can’t imagine how to begin designing, purchasing or generally installing these systems without the aide of an architect or engineer. So let’s look at it a different way. How can we take integrate the aesthetic of clean, modern glass, stone and plant life without spending a fortune? Start simple with open spaces. The key element to many of these designs is not just the materials used, but the openness of the floor plan combined with storage and surface space that is built to compliment this. Check out some airy designs with modest square footage.

Minneapolis dwellers and builders do understand the cost effectiveness of tearing down old and building new. That is in a large part what differs the newer city from it’s twin counterpart St. Paul. But as a building and more importantly designing community we can capitalize our design sense by integrating simple principles about space and function. Open is more, light can double your sense of stretch room and most importantly, storage and surface can always be integrated tightly into the bones of the home. Most modern houses use the main structure walls, stairs and surfaces to double as shelving and structure support. So look harder and think about that when building any structure. How can this be smarter and look hot!

The Next 60 Years | Advertising | Entertaining our Actual Space

What will advertising be in the future…

It will be pure entertainment. That is where it’s been heading for the last decade, and now we’re finally practicing that seriously. People don’t want to interrupt what they’ve decided they like, unless it’s equally or more entertaining than what they’re doing.

Youthful college grads with a new, nice budget don’t watch T.V, or rarely. Maybe they want a promotional Wii that is uploaded with movie-mercials that are entertaining movie versions of commercials that would be generated for THEIR favorite cars or products. Perhaps people don’t want Mcdonald’s in their face unless McDonald’s is using the city landscape as a message.
“Alright McDonald’s, I’ll look and buy if you promise to turn my train ride home into a giant straw zooming through a cup-bridge.”

Now that’s entertainment, and a message. But perhaps the future will hold these aspects in principle with causes that matter to the next generation. Sure you can put a billboard up, but it better be made of only materials that grow the environment around me, and are not wasteful.
“Yeah, in fact I only want outdoor advertising made of real grass that grows to make the message and then feeds the natural surroundings when the message is finished.”

Why not? If you want to send a message to people that have a main concern with making the place they live in better, you better think about that in every idea or execution you make. The point is that Advertising will become completely creative to the ideas that people are thinking, not interrupting them, but adding to them in a very imaginative way.

THE BOTTOM LINE |
-Entertain them
-Make their environment a better place (Any environment digital, real, or otherwise)
-Be purposeful to the point of taking a smart idea, and encouraging people to think too.

Final Commitment

Final Commitment

I’m committing to finding a place in this sustainable system. My career choices are just so damn contradicting. I love to write about everything that needs a personality. To come up with the ideas that power it, give it a new image, and give it a future. This can be anything powerful, it just has to move people and move myself to mean anything to me. On the other hand I love simple, natural things as well, and can’t understand why they aren’t represented in a way that makes more people feel personally connected with them. I suppose all this rambling really gets down to why things that sustain and redevelop the environment can’t be seen as a personality rather than a forced cause. I spent so much time not seeking out knowledge of sustainability because I have such an interest in objects that are seen as destructive to the environment. Why can’t they be combined?

I’m committing to combining these 2, because now it feels just weird to see them as separate. Both areas are so important to creating powerful ideas that move people that aren’t convinced of our current situation.

After discussing Denmark and its more than different lifestyle, it was apparent that the group of people we need to be talking to are those in the American culture that bend their lives around the assembled nostalgia of our excessive lifestyle. Why wouldn’t they, when there is nothing in their faces that convinces them of the dire situation, and there is no common practice that makes it a reality? There needs to be an element of everyday life for everyone that constantly reminds what life has really become. I’m committing to living this way myself, no matter where it is.

Commitment 8 | Celebrity influence

Commitment 8 |

This commitment is devoted to understanding the funding that happens from online conversation publicity. Where does the money come from? Where does the money go? Why are certain pop-culture icons involved, and what do they personally contribute that makes them poster children of this ‘sustainable design’ revolution? They celebrities that people respect are focusing their efforts on sustainable issues. Now how can that be taken further, and maximized to create a real ‘image’ around this idea.

Commitment 7 | Cultural Change-Over

Commitment 7 |

My commitment must CHANGE! The reason being is that there are many other people far more talented at the art of gardening than I, and I’d really prefer to hone in on my skills of convincing people about the social and cultural benefits of changing to sustainable ways. My specialty is Advertising and everything from the brands to the conversation techniques that surround it. I should be committing to the time to create a cultural ‘sexiness’ that surrounds the idea of sustainability. Right now it’s a cute, trendy thing to do. Perhaps it’s my job to market this lifestyle to the people that lean towards professional, sexy, and social advertising. It could be very powerful.

Commitment 6 | The Ecosystem Experiments

Commitment 6 |

The terrarium is the only way for me to really commit to observing what happens to a natural environment when exposed to common growing products. It’s everything from rocks, dirt, moss, and the purified water that goes into caring for the mini-ecosystem. Now that I’ve made this time commitment, I see many dilemmas in the building of a whole new ecosystem. It’s not even a matter of implementing the technology, it’s the cost of the technology, and then finding other alternatives to pest control. IT would appear that my commitment has created fruit flies. Therefore I must commit to finding the origin of everything that is happening in the terrarium.