Before I die is an interactive public art project that invites people to declare their hopes and dreams in a public space. The canvas is a simple black chalk board with a large Before I die... and rows and columns of stencilled I want to _________ with blanks to be filled. This encourages people to think of what is important to them and to acknowledge it publicly. Each line expresses the dreams of an individual, but the wall becomes a powerful and inspiring expression of the aggregated community values: love, hope, dreams, forgiveness...

I am thinking of an environment where I would like to see one installed. The closest one to me is the one in Portsmouth, NH, set on the verdant grounds of Strawbery Banke Museum. I'd like however to see it in a more challenging location, where the day-to-day struggles may have made people lose sight of the big picture. The hope is that the expression of a wish, the declaration of I want to, may mobilize a person to think and take action to make it happen, especially in conjunction with the grim reminder of the ultimate deadline, Before I die. I think this art project would be more relevant at...

- A busy commuter station; who would ever write 'I want to work 9 to 5?' Would this inspire some to quit their unfullfilling jobs to pursue their dream ideas?

- In a crime-infested city neighborhood: would anyone write 'I want to deal till I get kill'd?' Could this turn at least one person's life around?

- A campus of a top business school that is grooming the next generation of power-players. Perhaps a cynic may write 'I want to ruthlessly make gazillions for my corporation and its shareholders;' but might it shift the paradigm for at least a few?

Lily's inpiration stoke as she was climbing a blooming cherry tree on the Esplanade, last week; she spotted the thorns on a nearby locust and came up with this poem:

Trees Are Different

Spiky trees

Smooth trees

Bumpy trees

Cool trees.

Some pink

Some green

all are different

Don't forget that.

Some have flowers

Some have leaves

They clean the air

So we can breathe.

Happy Arbor Day!

A thought-provoking article on creativity on Mashable.com: How to be Creative. Mashable interviews Jonah Lehrer, Author of Imagine: a book on how creativity works.

A few notable insights from the article:

Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” I have written about this briefly in an older post, Creativity and Judgment, how our learned behaviors restrict our creativity. But it appears that we can recover the creativity we’ve stifled with time; we just have to pretend we’re a little kid (according to an experiment where participants were asked to imagine they were 7-year olds with a day off from school, and what they'd do with their time). The group whose task was to imagine that they are kids scored higher on creativity tests than the control group.

Direct quote: 'Productive daydreaming is an important skill.'

Direct quote: 'Creative success is not about the avoidance of failure. It’s about failing as fast as possible, going through endless iterations until the idea is perfect.'

Creative teams benefit from familiarity and an established working relationship, but also from a fresh voice.

Brainstorming is out, debate and creative dissent is in! (OK I already knew this, people like me in the Architectural Design profession have long relied on 'desk crits' and 'pinup crits.'). The last company I worked for did not have a culture of creative discourse and despite my efforts it never quite got established; this was surely a more comfortable environment for many designers than being put on the spot with Steve Jobsian "brutally honest" critiques, but not so great for producing remarkable design...

Direct quote: 'The creativity of an urban area depends upon its ability to encourage the free-flow of information.' The author asserts that horizontal flow of info, cross-cutting relationships between smaller-sized companies, employee turnover, and collaboration with other companies have helped make Silicon Valley into the innovation Mecca that it is today.

My question is how could this be translated into the field of Architecture and Landscape Architecture? Is a smaller firm that collaborates with other firms (i.e. brings in specialized consultants on a project basis) better, from a creative standpoint, than a large multi-disciplinary company that keeps the project entirely in-house? A single-discipline vs. a multi-disciplinary? My experience has been that a multi-disciplinary design environment offers more opportunities for sharing of knowledge and ideas. Likewise bringing in consultants on a project basis offers new perspective "the new voice in the room" that can be so beneficial to the design. But most importantly there should be a nurtured culture of sharing, collaborating, and design discourse.

My daughter and me are big fans of Dr. Seuss. One Fish Two Fish is our favorite; I know it by heart and she loves to read it.

Here's my early HTML exercise, I styled this in the old- fashioned HTML way, with tables.