Hasta La Ideas

If you want one of the hottest tickets going for the start of next month, that usually means you’ve already missed your chance. However, that’s not the case this time around. As you might have caught wind of earlier this month, social networking giant, Facebook, announced that it would be moving from its current headquarters in Palo Alto, California to the town not made famous by Thomas Edison, Menlo Park. The company is moving into the 57 acre campus that once housed Sun Microsystems before it was purchased early last year, with the first employees heading over in June (they also picked up 22 adjoining acres just to make sure they have enough room to stretch out a bit). The Palo Alto Daily News is now reporting that on March 5th, Facebook has invited “more than 100 architects and other design professionals” to spend a full day wandering their new headquarters and deciding what can be done to improve it. While it’s likely unexpected that they’ll have a fully fleshed out master plan or new architectural renderings all rendered, the marathon sessions, something its coders are familiar with, is an interesting concept to bring to what amounts to urban planning. Here’s from the Daily News about how the session will function:

The design professionals have been divided into four teams that will approach different elements of the area around the future Facebook campus, [AIA spokesperson Noemi Avram] said. One team will look at existing businesses, another will scope out the perimeter of the campus, a third will focus on an area northwest of the campus near two Constitution Drive properties Facebook recently bought for future use, and a fourth will explore housing possibilities.

The paper goes on to explain that residents of Menlo Park will be invited to share their own ideas and the public is welcome to come watch. The whole thing starts at 8:30am, Saturday March 5th, at the decidedly Silicon Valley-esque address, 10 Network Circle.

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After a rough patch there the last couple of months for the Smithsonian, it’s nice to read a press release with something a bit more positive; and it doesn’t get much more lighthearted than video games. The American Art Museum has announced an exhibition to launch in mid-March of next year called The Art of Video Games, which will highlight both background art and interactive, moving pieces as well. Beginning this week, the museum has asked for a bit of curatorial help, launching a site for the exhibition and asking visitors to vote for eighty games from a collection of 240 currently considered titles, presumably with the interest of floating the most popular to the top, which will then find a home in the show itself. A fun idea, though we’re guessing the museum didn’t think it would be as wildly popular as it has apparently gotten. As of this writing (and observed last night), the exhibition’s site is still up, but with a note reading “Eek! Your enthusiasm has overwhelmed us and we’re experiencing technical difficulties! Please have patience while we fix this.” Assuming they’re able to get all those overloaded servers back up and running, you’ll have until April 7th to pick your favorites. Here are the details on the exhibition itself:

The Art of Video Games is the first exhibition to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early developers such as David Crane and Warren Robinett to contemporary designers like Kellee Santiago and David Jaffe. It also will explore the many influences on game designers, and the pervasive presence video games have in the broader popular culture, with new relationships to video art, film and television, educational practices, and professional skill training. Chris Melissinos, founder of Past Pixels and collector of video games and gaming systems, is the curator of the exhibition.

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More than likely, judging from the fact that you’ve landed on this site, you like both designers and reading. So why not combine the two (well, more than reading great UnBeige content each and every day)? So has happened with the launch of the new collaborative project, Designers & Books. Founded and edited by Archetype‘s Steve Kroeter, along with Stephanie Salomon, and helped brought to life by a team of others, the site says it “is devoted to publishing lists of books that esteemed members of the design community identify as personally important, meaningful, and formative.” As of their launch this week, we’d say that they’re off to a pretty amazing start, collecting book picks from 50 of the top names in the business, including Robert Venturi, Elizabeth Diller, Peter Eisenman and Paula Scher (who was likely one of the easier gets, along with Michael Bierut, considering Pentagram handled the site’s design). While there are a small handful of essays available on the site, it’s largely lists of books and no more than that. What’s more, the books picked by these famous designers aren’t all design-related either. They’re just their favorites, or ones that influenced their work in some way. Though there is some sparse commentary about selections here and there, by and large, most participants haven’t added notes explaining their choices. And this won’t hinder your browsing in the least. If anything, it makes you feel a little more connected to these industry luminaries. “Hey, I’ve read that book and so has Norman Foster!” we thought to ourselves more than a couple of times while scanning his picks. It’s early days for Designers & Books, and we’re looking forward to watching it grow.

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Thoughts of Walter Benjamin‘s famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction aside, yesterday Google launched Art Project, an online gallery holding a collection of art compiled across seventeen high-profile museums, ranging from London’s National Gallery to New York’s MoMA, the Met, and the Frick, to the Palace of Versailles. The site allows users to wander around the galleries, Google Street View-style, bouncing around from room to room and spinning in 360-degree circles. More impressive is the ability to zoom into a large assortment of pieces from each museums’ collection, some all the way to what feels like near microscopic levels. We were particularly happy to see the Van Gogh Museum included in the mix, having the ability to zoom very far into the artist’s The Bedroom, the restoration of which we’d enjoyed following throughout last year. If you’re trapped at home today due to any assortment of blizzards that are likely hitting your town, it’s the perfect way to while away the hours. Here’s some behind-the-scenes on how Google created the project:

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A workshop led by the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project and a brochure for Green Map, two of the organizations selected for desigNYC projects.

Socially minded design projects work best with a matchmaker: someone to connect the organizations serving the public good with the design talent ready to help (at no charge). Enter desigNYC, the volunteer-led organization founded by Edwin Schlossberg and Michelle Mullineaux of ESI Design and New York‘s Wendy Goodman. Launched last year with a successful round of pilot projects, desigNYC has just revealed its line-up of collaborations for 2011. A panel of expert judges considered submissions from the NYC nonprofit and design communities, selected the top projects, and matched nonprofit needs with design firm skills.

The nine new projects span the design disciplines and focus on addressing issues such as sustainable development, social justice, human health, and local food systems. Designer Rodrigo Corral will work with the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project to design a multi-language financial rights guide for new immigrants in NYC, while architects 590BC and Studio L’Image will create architectural enhancements and interpretive experiences for PortSide NewYork‘s Brooklyn boathouse and community center. Communication designers Language Dept. and developers Rubenstein Technology Group have been matched with Educating Tomorrow to create an identity and website that will act as a resource hub for the NYC educational community on sustainability issues. Meanwhile, Otto NY will partner with Green Map System, which marshals user-contributed mapping of local green resources, on a redesign of the Green Apple Map website. Other projects include greenhouse development on unused lots in East Brooklyn and a communications framework for a new urban and industrial ecology center in Gowanus.

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