20:09 (The Plant)

Two (three!) things to close out '08:

Archinect has just gone live with 20 predictions for 2009, which is just what it sounds like: they've asked 20 people to call out the new year. Glad to have some speculations on design intelligence included among this diverse group. If there really are too many designers in the world right now, maybe it just means that we'll have to design more.

Thinking about design methods and financial development was heavily influenced by participation in another project: The Plant. Six of us met regularly all through the fall, with a mandate to invent a new kind of green development product for the city of Baltimore. We ended up proposing an infill strategy that was able to combine a kind of block scale micro-infrastructure with a cultural container designed to hold the micro-institutions that Baltimore seems so good at spinning off and sustaining.

Here's to more plants in the New Year. I was glad that name unintentionally resonated with the best movie I saw in 2008, WALL-E. I can't think of a more precise statement of optimism at the intersection of small-scale high-tech and urban agricultural living, even if I am kind of nervous about applying post-apocalyptic cultural models to real urban vacancy (which is of course, never really vacant). But in any case, let one hundred flowers blossom.