something Food Truck VIENNA CHORAL SOCIETY SUPPORTS THE ARTS
INNOVATION and the WORKSHOP ISSUE #4 MAY14, 2012
COVER PHOTO BY AVRIL O’NEIL INVENTORS WORKSHOP ALL PHOTOGRAPHY AND GRAPHICS WITHIN THIS PUBLICATION RIGHTS RESERVED TO THE ARTIST
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HIGH TECH CORRIDORS AND THE STATUS QUO
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WE ARE LOOKING FOR WRITERS
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VCS CONCERT FOR FAIRFAX ARTS
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FOOD TRUCK WATCH
SOMETHING STUFFED
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INNOVATION AND THE WORKSHOP
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THE INFLUENCE OF WORK SPACE
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AVOIDING RETROFIT COSTS OF URBAN FARMING
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HIGH TECH CORRIDORS AND THE STATUS QUO This past week Richard Florida wrote an interesting article New York City: The Nation’s Second Leading Tech Hub which has some great graphics on how New York City is converting its economy from a financial and style economy to include several multi-million dollar startup tech firms. The story concludes that this rebirth of
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new industries is going to lead to some much larger industries for the city in the decade to come. I have to agree. While a vast majority of these start-ups will lose money, it only takes one Facebook, Google, or Apple to create an entire industry for a region. The density and total number of startups all but ensures that a future tech giant will come from the field.
I’ve always considered the Northern Virginia area to be rich in knowledge in the High Tech, IT, and computer engineer field however our technical prowess is starting to be usurped by the creative prowess of more innovative cities. In other words we are kind of stuck in a rut, and might be taking for granted the steady stream of federal work.
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there are regions of the country that have higher percentages in higher education, none of them include a study area of nearly 1 million residents. For example, Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley has a hugely educated population where 74.4% of residents hold a bachelor’s degree, and 43% hold a masters or greater. However, Palo Alto has a population of 64,000 residents. While impressive by percentage, this means only 27,500 residents hold at least a masters degree, one ninth of Northern Virginia. When compared with Santa Clara County as a whole, the bachelors percentage becomes lower than NOVA with only 40.4% holding a bachelor’s degree, and 16.4% at least a masters degree. When one considers the population, and the percentage of educated residents, Fairfax County demonstrates why so many large firms find an employee base unparalleled in the rest of the nation.
This area is still considered one of the most educated regions of the country. Silicon valley is argued by most to be #1, and Seattle/Takoma has some rights to the title as well. I have always considered this region to be the Silicon Valley of the east, supported by the top tier institutions of higher education as well as the best school districts in the Country. This is backed by our educational attainment in Fairfax where 55% of residents hold a bachelor’s degree, and 25% hold a masters or greater. That means almost 250,000 residents in this county hold at least a masters degree. While
What about our affluence? While there is significant class disparity in this region, compared to the majority of the country Northern Virginia remains one of the most evenly dispersed wealth bases. It isn’t that we have a few select rich residents (though there are a few). It is that we all enjoy a fairly consistent income indicative of upper middle class levels. We have the overall wealth, the highly educated populous, and the overall diversity of different knowledge/skills from the amalgam of people. These are huge indicators of why this area has been
successful in drawing both corporations and a steady inflow of new residents. Unfortunately, while we don’t need to fear an end to the good times, we are becoming dangerously dependent on maintaining this status quo.
Fairfax which was known as a small business hub and a high tech start up corridor for year has dwindled to a prototypical corporate structure. Which is fine, it helps keep our area consistent. However there is nothing that keeps these corporations loyal to our area except for the current characteristics. There is no guarantee in 20 years that they will remain, and in this vacuum we have not birthed any new industries organically in the same method that New York City and Palo Alto have accomplished. This region has become too comfortable with the steady good life to the point that very few want to take new risks and go for the big home runs. Menlo Park, the birth place of American innovation and the industrial workshop of Thomas Edison, began after the late 19th century economic crisis in central New Jersey. The land became so undervalued that Edison who had only $10,000 from the sale of his first invention could purchase the 35 acre industrial park outright. It shows that the biggest pushes forward in history found genesis in moments of collapse. Perhaps Defense and Government contracts slowing down is just the shock this area needs, though I think anticipating the benefits of growing might avoid the birth pangs that New Jersey experienced.
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VIENNA CHORAL SOCIETY SUPPORTS THE ARTS The Vienna Choral Society is preparing for their Concert For A Cause, May 19th, to support arts education in Fairfax County. As a product of the Fairfax County arts program I believe that the arts are a way of grounding the youth and teaching them the benefits of both analytic and aesthetic thinking. Music is a science and an art. While it is physically defined by the wavelengths of audible sound, the measured tempos of a cadence, and decibel volume emitted it is more gutturally experienced in the emotion that sound can invoke. In movies, while the acting and characters engage the viewer in the story, it is the music and soundtrack that pulls you in to the fictional world. It is important that we provide the opportunity for the next generation to continue this legacy. The Concert will perform a Tour Through Musical History, From Seikilos to U2. If you have a child that may have an interest in chorus or band or any performing arts, this is a great opportunity to show them the role that a community can take. The performance will be at the UUCF in Vienna at 7:30pm on Saturday and all are welcome. Help support the future of our arts programs by attending and follow the Vienna Choral Society’s blog for more information VCS blog.
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The Tysons Corner is a website in its infancy, started in 2011, created to discuss the local issues specific to eastern Fairfax including the regions of Tysons Corner, Falls Church, McLean, Vienna, and Merrifield. Our goal is to provide a deeper analysis of progressive topics centered around the new urbanism concepts of a 21st century Northern Virginia. We have seen the region grow from a quiet suburban community to a cultural and economic contributor of the east coast rivaling other more established cities. The area for many years grew without direction leaving a disconnected community of micro-developments without any coordinated design concept. Our goal is to create a unified, or cacophonous, voice of residents and interested parties to discuss what the future vision for the
region could or should be. We look to fill the questions that many have and provide the depth of coverage that is difficult for overall news publications to provide.
We are currently looking for interested bloggers who are looking for a forum to discuss their ideas as a writer for TTC. This could be done as an exclusive TTC format or as a cross post with other independent blogs. If you are interested in reaching a large base of readers specific to this region think about joining. Please feel free to contact us; navid@thetysonscorner.com
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Photo: Fiber Optic Toy, By AudioTribe
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Photo: Pure Abstract, Digital Art, © Ben Heine 2012
FOOD TRUCK WATCH Something Stuffed Follow us on twitter for daily food truck alerts The newest food truck to the Tysons Corner lunch market appears to be a hit. Something Stuffed brings a mix of asian and latin influences to create some really unique eats. The menu is dynamic and changes just about each time they come out, but on this occasion I enjoyed a Bulgogi Empanada and a Vietnamese pork empanada.
I wasn’t the only one who had to see what the new truck had to offer, the line was well formed before I got there. The chili was a popular item, which you can get with two empanadas for 12 bucks, pretty solid deal. It appears the Something Stuffed girls will be coming around Tysons either once a week or twice a week, so if you haven’t tried them out yet keep on the lookout.
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In modern terms a workshop has taken on a negative connotation as a factory of human labor, but the original concept had much nobler intent. In a renaissance workshop craftsman and artists would combine their skills to better understand the physical and optical world with mathematics and its relation to our visual representations. In the industrial era workshops became a space for innovators and inventors to create new machines and processes creating a better understanding of function and user experience. In the postindustrial era this concept faced emerging technology as the creative designs and concepts engaged with the robotic factory.
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In each of these shifts of design method the scale of the problem and solution grew. The renaissance workshops focused very much on individual studies, the improvement of gears, tools and processes for individual applications and artisan patronage. The industrial era focused on creating mass produced goods that would reduce the costs of durables and addressing an existing need. The post-industrial era created emerging markets through cutting edge technology which would become integral in the daily lives of all humanity. The negative impact of these shifts was the disintegration of the design/innovation process which solved smaller complications in lieu of the big home run solution. Today we see the disintegration in the form of junk technology
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and true technology. Junk technology being devices that are trinket in form and often times childish, and true technology being solutions to massive world wide problems. Innovation has given way to small and large invention. In many ways there has become little incentive for large companies to create more efficient systems if they believe that large scale invention will make their original product obsolete. While this is true with some elements of the world (telecommunication certainly comes to mind) it is not true in many physical sciences and products which have lagged.
So why has technology been defined as only “high tech�? It begins with research and development funding. A large corporation could find hundreds of small innovations that could
sell well but does not have explosive growth potential. Therefore they invest large funds into fewer concepts in the hope that one could create a complete paradigm shift. The net result to the public becomes a market in which we can converse around the world in a split second, but systems in our own lives remain inefficient (cheese on the bottom of a toaster over, planter pots that lose half of their water from the bottom, etc). There have been moments which have proven that innovation remains addressing market needs. The creation of the collapsible/briefcase bike, vertical planting walls/seat walls, and residential rain barrels are a few that come to mind. These have been widely celebrated as concepts that were long overdue.
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If this is the case, and these products have become quite profitable for their creators, why doesn’t this happen more often? The world is corporatized, very few of us work for independent and creative organizations, and when we do it is in a very niche concept. It is almost unheard of to see a workplace with multiple, diverse knowledge sets sitting together working on a problem. It is even more rare for those people to be in direct contact with a client or person who sees a gap in the available solutions. When we see the world through only one set of possible answers, we view the problem with horse blinders and become oblivious to possible innovation by other means. We are witnessing a new class of technology rising in urban settings where the very spatial layout of the cities are helping foster discussions between various disciplines, and at the convergence of the creative class (inventors) and the technical class (innovators) we are attaining products that actually benefit everyday people. What makes Apple and Google so brilliant is the fact that they have understood this for a long time. You must have technically proficient, financially reasonable, and aesthetically beautiful products to meet what the market expects. This provides an avenue and a reprieve from the now traditional post-industrial process via the virtual communication between disciplines. By reducing the cost of owning a physical facility to its bare essentials, think tanks or crowd sources can now be utilized to both gather problems and solve them. The new workshop creates an opportunity to integrate telecommunication and crowd sourcing into this gathering and solution process, and it allows the technical design to focus on the creation itself. Because of the reduction in the space necessary and the limited partnership of the community through incentives not salary, the scale of operations is far smaller and could theoretically occur on a grass roots level. The few instances of innovation we are encountering could be indicators that we are standing at a watershed in a true renaissance of technology and the design process.
This was the best salad I have ever eaten.
Photo: Yamaguchi Frame Building School, By Dancing Weapon of Mass Destruction PAGE 11
THE INFLUENCE OF CROWD SOURCING ON THE DESIGN PROCESS
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THE
INFLUENCE OF
WORK SPACE The modern cubicle form office has been an effective method of reducing the space allotment for employees and reducing the costs of operations, but employees routinely complain about the confining nature of the layout. Studies have shown that the very arrangement while being efficient decreases the productivity and quality of work created. Some corporations which promote original thought and
communication have evolved to the use of open and free flowing spaces, clustered project teams, and integrated disciplines to analyze problems through multiple points of view. The benefits of this new concept of office layout has been reviewed for decades and the empirical data generally shows that employees are happier and more productive. However beneficial this has been to the commercial world, innovation in mechanical and design processes have lagged. The problem has become a separation between the creative and technical perspective.
Designers have become increasingly unaware of practical applications and manufacturing processes have become increasing reliant on exact specifications. This works well when research and development funding can support several iterations of quality control, but when a solution is needed for smaller constraints this method becomes inefficient.
It is rare to find a designer who can build or a builder who can design to proficient levels. So what will the office layout become in order to address this trend?
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OFFICE LAYOUT CONSTRAINTS •
•
•
•
MOST DISCIPLINES ARE SEPARATED BY FLOORS OR ROOMS WORK SPACE IS EXPENSIVE, FORCING CONSERVATION OF OPEN/COMMON AREAS PHYSICAL MATERIALS AND OBJECTS ARE UNAVAILABLE TO DESIGNERS AND REPLACED WITH COMPUTERS LACK OF PRODUCTION SPACE TO PHYSICALLY TEST DESIGN CONCEPTS
SOLUTIONS MUST HAVE • • • • •
TECHNICAL RESOURCES AND PHYSICAL RESOURCES 20 OFFICE SPACES 8 WORKSHOP SPACES MAXIMUM OF 2500 SQUARE FEET ANY UNIQUE FURNITURE SHOULD INCLUDE AN EXAMPLE IMAGE
We’d love to see your concepts of what an office that meets these needs would look like? Sketch it, put it in cad, or render it up. All we care about is the concept not the graphics.
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DEFINING THE SPACE WE SPEND 1/3
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My experience in land development has taught me a lot about planning, developers, and the economics of a project but one thing I have always questioned is why more clients would throw away money that could be available to them with proper design. I saw projects that would excavate 200,000 cubic foot ponds, but for the same cost could have implemented a rainwater cistern that has an equivalent cost, achieves permitting requirements, and reduces the potable water usage required for functions such as irrigation. I watched as they constructed 5 foot wide parking islands with plants that everyone knew would die shortly there after instead of providing adequate space and saving money in the long run by losing 1 parking space. Recently I have seen a new asset that most developers and planners haven’t opened their eyes to, roofs.
When LEED was introduced to the construction field by the U.S. Green Building Council a lot of developers first reactions were, how do we skirt the requirements to get the most points possible and make our building more marketable? One of the first elements that almost every project introduced was a green roof. It is exactly what it sounds like. Roofs are designed to incorporate small ground cover form landscaping (grasses, flowerbeds, small shrubs) which helps reduce the runoff which is generated from rain storms. The concept actually does work pretty well as long as the plants are appropriately installed and once in a while someone checks on it. Unfortunately it ignores the potential of this roof space. Luckily all it takes is a bit of imagination to fix that. A typical urban building roof can be anywhere from a half acre to two acres of completely under utilized space, outside of a few mechanical and HVAC functions. Anywhere except for on top of a building, this land would be considered an asset, something that could be rented or sold for some sort of rate.
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For years this space was obviously devoid of any marketable function, but with the introduction of green roofs they became prime land, well elevated, drained and in direct sunlight perfect for agricultural uses. Forget the fact that it is up in the air and this would become a very intriguing location for a small time farmer or perhaps space for restaurants to grow their own produce within an elevators distance. Talk about farm to table. Considering that the green roof is going in place anyways, wouldn’t any return on this be a vast improvement from the $0 revenue that they currently attain?
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So what would an architect need to incorporate if this was a design criteria up front? One might consider putting in a separate freight elevator, though I would argue that the regular freight elevator could do the job, but the best way might be the simplest. If window washing apparati where utilized to serve both functions it would add no extra construction cost and still provide for the needs of a small time farmer. The client could attain a marketable space with a marginal and negligible rise in cost. So what is marketable? Well it’s nothing to write home about, most large scale farm rentals go for approximately $100 dollars per acre per year. Why is it so cheap? Because most farm lands are measured in the hundreds, if not thousands, of acres. When you start renting out at that scale you can still make a good return even with a low cost per acre average. Clearly the market for this form of farming will be high end urban suppliers, ie restaurants, independent grocers, and individual farmers market vendors. Providing this nearly no transport cost agricultural land drastically improves their profit margin. The roof land would clearly favor higher return cash crops that industrially are not possible due to labor needs. An entrepreneur could see the profitability of these prime locations, low rental rates, and the fact that their small operation would not be machine based for a large part anyways and turn the opportunity into a great source of income. So why even have the green roof? Storm water runoff pollution is a big problem for watersheds, and caused serious problems to the fisheries and wildlife of the Chesapeake Bay in the middle part of the last century. The regulations in place are widely supported by
both political parties and are not likely to be revoked in our lifetime, therefore some form of control is needed. When you are building high density projects, where land is at a premium, putting your storm water management on a roof is still the most cost effective, especially when you consider ALL storm water management practices require extensive maintenance. With a rate of $200 per year per acre you could find a market. Heck if you have a restaurant downstairs you might be able to incorporate a higher lease rate into that space if it comes along with planting access to the roof which could fetch an increase in lease rates on the order of $200 per month. Regardless, let’s ignore the actual return, as any return is greater than 0, and focus on the cost saving. By creating a passive maintenance crew to the green roof, the building management can avoid costly annual maintenance when some plants are left without inspection. The leaser becomes a zero cost partner in ensuring the health of the green roof. How much can this save? The replacement or remediation of green roofs can easily surpass $10,000 per acre per year if not properly maintained, which is a bargain compared to contracting an outside maintenance crew. The passive inspection, regardless of what the leaser pays, helps save real money. Every new project requires an intensive cost analysis which is performed on everything from energy usage to marketability to grounds keeping costs. When it comes to multi-hundred million dollar buildings everything is checked ten times over to make sure all assets are profitized. Developers shouldn’t just stop at the top floor though when they could be making money and saving a whole lot more up on the roof. PAGE 17