#used office furniture south san francisco

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[dankusner]

You have not heard these priceless Texas stories about LBJ

Skip the profanity

You have not heard these priceless Texas stories about LBJ

In my line of business, you meet quite a few Texas storytellers. ●

One of the finest is Ken Ashworth. ●

Ashworth, 92, grew up in poverty, mostly in South Austin and East Austin during the 1930s and ‘40s, after his mysterious father abandoned the family. ●

His astonishing memoir about that strange but ultimately uplifting time, “Phantom in the Family,” has few peers. ●

State commissioner of higher education for 20 years — do people in Texas government last that long these days? — Ashworth served in the U.S. Navy before attending Syracuse University and the University of Texas, where he earned his Ph.D.

He worked in management in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco before taking top posts at UT campuses in Austin and San Antonio.

Along the way, Ashworth met captivating characters in places high and low.

Using his training as a historian, he collected and shared priceless stories about those people.

He could do so, in part, because of his quiet, amiable demeanor and his ability to listen actively.

Ashworth recently released another cache of tales, “Stories Better Not Told: Recollections from a Lifetime,” which one can purchase online or at BookPeople.

“Many of the stories here came from my seeming to be part of the furniture,” Ashworth writes with typical modesty, “while I was really a fly on the wall — and taking notes.”

With the author’s permission, I’ve taken this opportunity to share several short, funny tales from the book about one of the most outsized Texans of them all, President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Anyone who knew LBJ’s personality could predict that I’ve been forced to edit around the worst of the president’s profanity.

Unless you know Ashworth personally, you’ve probably never heard these LBJ stories before.

For the sake of history, thank goodness scores of them are preserved in this enlightening and entertaining book.

LBJ and the owl in the White House tree

A friend who had worked briefly as a military aide in the White House told me he got to swapping stories with a couple of the Secret Service agents who also spent some idle time around the mansion.

They told him late one night three agents on duty heard loud shouting at the back of the White House.

They dashed out and looked up to find President Johnson at his window, shaking his fist and yelling, “Goddamn it, shut the (expletive) up. Now, damn it. Now!”

“Mr. President, what’s going on?” one of the agents called out.

“Don’t you hear that goddamn owl hooting? He’s keepin’ me awake. Get a gun and shoot the son of a bitch.”

“I think we can scare him away,” an agent said.

Now that LBJ had an audience, he made a show of it.

“No, I want that son of a bitch dead. He’s keeping the president of the United States awake. Now get a shotgun and shoot the (expletive).”

“Mr. President,” the officer in charge said, “I don’t think we should be firing guns out here in the middle of the night. There will be stories all over town tomorrow. I don’t think we ought to shoot that owl.”

“Well then, one of you shinny up that tree and strangle the son of a bitch.”

The junior officer took off his coat and shoes and handed his weapon to a colleague.

He started up the tree.

The owl flew away.

In closing his window, LBJ said, “If you’d been quicker, you coulda caught the little (expletive).”

LBJ finds the right Secret Service agent

Secret Service agents working in the White House sometimes found it challenging.

One agent told my friend, “We all learned in a hurry LBJ liked to have people around who could give him straight answers, right away. One of our agents had to be transferred because LBJ complained he didn’t know what was going on in the White House.

“You might guess, our supervisors took him aside and asked him what could make the president say that. He said he didn’t know; maybe it was because he couldn’t answer some of the odd things LBJ would ask him about — things that had nothing to do with his work, like ‘Why is that picture crooked?’ or ‘What’s the matter with the grass there by the walkway?’

“The agent said, ‘So I had to tell him I didn’t know.’ The Secret Service immediately undertook to instruct all us agents in the White House on how to deal with unusual questions the president asked us.

They said, ‘Make something up if necessary, nothing outrageous, but don’t say you don’t know.’

“So later, when LBJ asked a new agent why a picture was crooked, he quickly said, ‘Mr. President, we’ve just debugged this room for listening devices, and that picture was one of the things we checked out.’

Another time LBJ asked, ‘Why’s the carpet wrinkled there in the corner?’ his answer might be ‘Sir, the termite guys were here today checking things out.’

When asked about a bare spot on the lawn, the agent said something like ‘It’s the squirrels, Mr. President; the little bastards are breeding like crazy and burying acorns everywhere.’

When LBJ demanded to know why a chair was out of place, he was told, ‘I regret to tell you, sir, it was your dog, J. Edgar. We chased him out of here; that chair must’ve got moved.’

“LBJ spoke to the new man’s supervisor. ‘I really like that new boy. He gives me the straight skinny. Be sure we keep him. He knows everything going on around here.’”

What happened to Walt Rostow?

Another friend told me that during a particular international crisis, none of the key staff to President Johnson had been able to get away from their offices for several days, wearing their same clothes and sleeping on cots.

National Security Adviser Walt Rostow asked one of his colleagues to cover for him for a couple of hours; the situation was dragging on too long; he just had to get away.

When President Johnson started trying to find Rostow and began yelling about where the hell were people when he needed them, Rostow’s confidant said, “Mr. President, Walt’s gone home to take a quick shower and have a drink with Elspeth.”

“Oh, poor Walt,” Johnson said. “Why didn’t he say something? He coulda had a drink with me.”

LBJ’s daddy was another Aristotle

Harry Middleton, one of LBJ’s speechwriters, told how they were going over a speech one day in the Oval Office when the president exploded.

“What’s this crap here, ‘as Aristotle said?’ I’m talkin’ to a buncha rednecks. I can’t say that. I don’t wanna sound like some sissy prissy pants. Take that out.”

After reading on, the president said, “No, I like what he said. Leave it in. I’ll figure some way to use it.”

Harry said, “When he gave the speech and arrived at that point, LBJ said, “An’ like my ole daddy use ta say” and he quoted Aristotle.

Don’t give (expletive) answers

Otis Singletary, President of the University of Kentucky and former vice chancellor of the University of Texas System, recounted for me an experience he had with LBJ.

“Following President Johnson’s dedication of the Job Corps Center in San Marcos,” Singletary said, “there was a delegation of us who’d been invited to his ranch. So there’s a couple dozen of us sitting out there on his deck eating homemade ice cream and talking.

“To regain the center of attention, LBJ calls to his wife, ‘Bird, that’s the best goddamned ice cream I’ve ever had. I’ll have another bowl.’

And Lady Bird says, ‘I’m sorry, Lyndon; the ice cream is all gone.’

“Everybody stops eating while LBJ proceeds to lean over, looking in everybody’s bowls. He points his finger around the group and says,

‘Bird, you mean you served all these people before I got all I want?’

“Now that he’s got everybody’s attention, he gets down to business with me. He turns to me — remember, he’d made me head of his Job Corps program — and says, ‘Now, Dr. Singletary, why is that camp near my university built for only 1,500 boys? Our cities are full of young men who will be dead or in prison in two years if we don’t find some way to get ’em off the streets. What I want to know is why that camp is for only 1,500 boys. Why can’t it be bigger? Why can’t it handle 3,000 boys?’

“So I said, ‘Mr. President, we brought in the country’s best educators and best social workers and psychologists, and they studied the needs of these boys and their problems. And they all agreed 1,500 is the optimum size for a Job Corps campus.’

“LBJ looks at me while everybody is sitting there in silence, and nobody has taken another bite of ice cream.

“Then he says, ‘Perfesser, when I was runnin’ the National Youth Administration for President Roosevelt, he asked me a question like I just asked you, and I gave him a (expletive) answer like you just gave me. You know what FDR did to me? Huh? He sent me to El Paso. Dr. Singletary, how would you like to go to El Paso?’

“I said, ‘Thank you, Mr. President; I’ve seen El Paso. I think we can find a way to accommodate 3,000 boys in San Marcos.’

“So, Ken, that’s why there’s 3,000 boys in the San Marcos Job Corps Center and 1,500 at all the other centers.”

‘Lady Bird’s gonna have you for lunch’

Some of us cronies were having lunch when one of our gang, right out of the blue, said, “I’ll never forget the advice LBJ gave me.”

That got our attention. I said, “How did you know Lyndon Johnson?”

“I didn’t know you knew him either,” one of the others said. “What advice did he give you?”

“Well, I was there the day they dedicated the LBJ Library. There was this enormous crowd in Austin from all over the country. All the big muckety-mucks. I was there with my boss.

“And after all the folderal and speeches outside, I was walking up a sidewalk toward the auditorium, and suddenly, behind me, here comes LBJ with a crowd of photographers and news reporters and Secret Service agents crammed around him. They’re in a hurry.

“I got shoved out of the way and pushed into a little tree they’d just planted. I was trying to get myself untangled from a limb I’d gotten caught in.

Just as LBJ stormed by, he turned and shouted, “Boy, if you don’t get outta that tree, Lady Bird’s gonna have you for lunch.”

[gellarsummers]

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[macbride01]

One way to save money on office furniture is to buy used ones. Buying used office furniture in San Francisco might benefit you majorly when you want to buy at cheap prices. Many people think that buying second-hand furniture would mean dealing with low-quality furniture. Source: http://macbridefurniture.over-blog.com/2020/12/debunking-myths-about-used-office-furniture.html

[architectnews]

"Taking credit for trees planted elsewhere is a whole lot of embodied irony"

Architecture firm Perkins&Will has gone too far with claims that a luxury timber home on a Canadian mountain removes more atmospheric carbon than it emits, argues Fred A Bernstein.

For much of last winter, Perkins&Will, an architecture firm with 25 offices from San Francisco to Singapore to Sao Paulo, used a photo of a wooden house in British Columbia as one of the "hero images" on its website.

The house, which sits alone on a mountaintop overlooking the Soo Valley 90 miles north of Vancouver, is certainly beautiful, but the firm had other reasons for splashing it across its homepage. The 321-square-metre dwelling, known as the SoLo House, is meant to be a model of sustainability.

Entirely off the grid, it is designed to operate with power from 103 solar panels on its south facade, a 96-kilowatt-hour battery pack to store electricity for nights and cloudy days (both of which are frequent in British Columbia), and a hydrogen fuel cell for winter.

With all that equipment, the house may well be able to function without utility hook-ups. But Perkins&Will has made a far more surprising and audacious claim: that the building's structure is "beyond carbon neutral," meaning that it will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emitted in the first place.

It seemed to be giving its clients permission to build willy-nilly at a time of climate crisis

In a slickly produced video on the firm's website, Perkins&Will architect Alysia Baldwin says the house "proves that buildings can counteract their negative consequences and act as a source of repair."

People listen to Perkins&Will, a firm that has positioned itself as a leader in green building. "For nearly a quarter of a century, we've been at the vanguard of the sustainability movement," its website declares. Journalists have tended to repeat its claims.

But this time it had gone too far. By constructing a showplace of a house on an otherwise pristine mountaintop, and claiming it had helped the environment by doing so, it seemed to be giving its clients permission to build willy-nilly at a time of climate crisis.

Looking at SoLo House, with its cathedral ceilings, its comfortable sectional sofas and its giant picture windows, then listening to Perkins&Will claim that its structure reduces atmospheric carbon, I'm reminded of the old punchline: "Who are you going to believe – me, or your lying eyes?"

Reducing a building's contribution to atmospheric carbon means making it small, keeping it simple, building it near existing infrastructure, avoiding the need for heavy equipment such as batteries and fuel cells and using the lowest-embodied-energy building materials.

Reducing a building's contribution to atmospheric carbon means making it small

Perkins&Will, normally an excellent firm, has done those things on other projects. But with SoLo House, it seems not to have even tried.

According to experts, 40 per cent of atmospheric greenhouse gases come from buildings. Some emissions are attributable to running appliances and systems – so-called operational energy. The rest comes from the power needed to produce the building in the first place, known as embodied energy.

Incredibly, Perkins&Will is claiming there is "no embodied energy" in the house's structure (by which it means the elements that keep the building standing). To its credit, the firm answered requests for information promptly, providing facts, figures and charts prepared by Baldwin and her colleague Cillian Collins, a senior architect.

Here's how Baldwin and Collins arrived at their no-embodied-energy claim: First they estimated the amount of structural wood, steel and concrete in SoLo House. And then they turned to Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings, an app that approximates the amount of energy needed to produce given amounts of each building material and the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of that energy use.

Athena told them that producing the steel and concrete, harvesting the wood and so on in SoLo House released 122 tonnes of CO2 (sometimes called CO2e, for CO2 and its equivalents) into the atmosphere.

That should have been the beginning – not the end – of the process of calculating the building's embodied energy. There are hundreds of other items that needed to be counted. Start with the roof. The walls. The windows (a massive item, given the need for triple glazing). The solar panels, the batteries, the hydrogen fuel cells. The furniture. The appliances. The plumbing. The heating and cooling systems. Lots and lots of insulation.

The list goes on. Each of those items has significant embodied energy. Transporting all of those materials to a remote mountaintop site adds more.

Perkins&Will failed to account for those sources of embodied energy. Baldwin was clear, in a letter to me, that the calculations were limited to the structure. But why would anyone stop there? According to Baldwin, it's because structure "represents the largest contribution to a typical building's embodied carbon impacts."

It may also be because Athena only applies to structure. (Athena is meant primarily for comparing how the choice of a structural material affects a building's embodied energy. An architect might enter plans for the same building, once with a concrete frame and once with a steel frame, and see how the embodied carbon figures differ.)

Of course, there are other ways to estimate the house's total embodied energy; one method is to use an online tool called Tally, which provides information on the embodied energy of numerous building components. Counting everything isn't easy, but other firms have done it.

Perkins&Will had a way of making it vanish, if not from the atmosphere then from the balance sheet

Even so, according to Athena, the house emitted 122 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. That sounds like a lot of carbon, but Perkins&Will had a way of making it vanish, if not from the atmosphere then from the balance sheet.

Much of SoLo House is made of wood. Wood, like all plants, is produced by photosynthesis from ingredients that include carbon dioxide. Thus trees are said to store (or sequester) carbon. They do, but probably not as much as people think, as I learned by studying the question at length.

Here's Perkins&Will's theory: If you cut down a tree and use the wood as a building material, that carbon sequestered in that tree becomes part of the building. Then, if you plant a new tree in place of the one you cut down, the new tree will sequester additional carbon as it grows. Thus the process (cutting down one tree, planting another) results, net-net, in carbon being removed from the atmosphere.

There are so many problems with that theory it's hard to know where to begin. To name a few:

1) You have to be sure a new tree will be planted in place of the one you cut down; will get to be as big as the one you cut down; and will live a long, healthy life. (If a tree burns, or decomposes, as billions of trees do every year, its embodied carbon is released right into the atmosphere.)

2) You can't waste any of the wood. That's a problem because converting a tree into lumber usually turns half the wood into sawdust or chips, which could end up being burnt or allowed to decompose. This problem alone suggests carbon sequestration figures should be cut in half.

3) The wood has to stay in or on the building for a very long time. If the building needs repairs, and lumber is removed, it may be recycled, but it may also be burnt or allowed to decompose. And who'll be watching in 20 or 50 years?

4) Let's be honest: You could have planted the new tree somewhere else, and not cut down the first tree to begin with. For that reason, no number of trees excuses a wasteful building.

5) Even if the new trees do sequester carbon, the process will take decades. Scientists who study global warming warn of tipping points and thresholds, some of which could be reached within the next ten years. If new buildings help push atmospheric carbon levels to a point of no return, the sequestration accomplished by newly planted trees will be too little, too late.

6) It's a logical impossibility. If you really believe SoLo House repairs the atmosphere, all you have to do is build enough SoLo Houses and climate change will go away. Now for our next trick ...

No number of trees excuses a wasteful building

No wonder the theory is highly controversial. A whole lot of things have to happen just right for it to become a reality. As Baldwin wrote in an email: "We acknowledge that not all timber sources perform equally in the realm of embodied carbon reduction."

"Much of the embodied carbon reduction achieved by timber is directly attributed to sustainable forestry management practices that ensure forestry operations are carried out in a way that allows forests to remain healthy and viable for future generations," she added. "These practices include conservation and protection, land use planning, regulation of timber harvesting, establishing practices to ensure forest regrow, and continuous monitoring and reporting to government."

She went on to admit that the tool used to determine the building's sequestered carbon, WoodWorks Carbon Calculator, a product of the Washington-based Wood Products Council, considers "much of this storage to be temporary and therefore [does] not give the building a carbon credit for the carbon dioxide that will eventually be released from this wood some time down the road, through decay or incineration."

But that didn't stop the firm from banking on the theory when it performed its embodied energy calculation. Using the Carbon Calculator, it determined that the amount of lumber in the building would result in the removal – through the planting of new trees – of 145 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. That's a bit more than the 122 tonnes the firm says the building's timber, concrete, and steel released into the atmosphere.

Converting a tree into lumber usually turns half the wood into sawdust or chips

So in this case, reducing E (embodied carbon) by S (sequestered carbon) produces a negative number – minus 22 tonnes, meaning that building the house decreased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (Indeed, the house's owner, Delta Land Development, refers to it as "climate positive.")

Perkins & Will firm produced a chart to make this clear:

As Baldwin puts it, SoLo House "is able to store more carbon in its structure than was released during the production, manufacturing, and construction of the project."

That's a highly suspect statement. Based on everything I've learned, E (embodied energy) may be much greater than Perkins&Will says it is, and S (sequestered carbon) much lower.

In a letter responding to points in this article prior to publication, Perkins&Will wrote the following (the client, Delta Land Development, did not respond to requests for comment):

"Through careful selection of low embodied carbon and locally sourced materials, the project prioritized a mass timber structure. The design team used industry-accepted LCA [life cycle assessment] tools to quantify the carbon sequestration potential of the structure, and the timber structure is modelled to sequester 145 tonnes of CO2e as biogenic carbon."

Reusing/recycling is always the greenest strategy

"Structural elements typically represent the largest embodied carbon profile of [a] project, and as such, the structure was prioritized from an embodied carbon perspective."

"As designers, we rely on reputable industry tools to estimate the impact of projects. We used the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings to complete this assessment. Athena uses ongoing research by the Athena Institute and complies with ISO 14040 (environmental management, life cycle assessment, and principles and framework) and ISO 14044 (environmental management, life cycle assessment, and requirements and guidelines)."

"Per our previous correspondence, we shared the Athena Institute's definition of biogenic sequestered carbon, which considers the whole life cycle of the material, including extraction, manufacturing, forms of transportation, installation, repair and maintenance, and end of life (assuming reuse of the wood)."

However, if Perkins and Will had really wanted to reduce embodied carbon, it would have thought about some of these strategies:

1) Putting the house in an easily accessible location, thus cutting out hundreds or thousands of trips by delivery people and construction workers. (Perkins&Will points out "that the wood was sourced from within British Columbia, and the building panels were manufactured in Pemberton, BC, which is located 30 minutes from the site.")

2) Renovating an existing house. Reusing/recycling is always the greenest strategy. Renovation typically generates 50 to 75 per cent less atmospheric carbon than new construction.

3) Choosing a site where there are no trees to cut down. According to Perkins&Will, "A clearing was required for a driveway, solar access, and fire protection. It required harvesting 180m³ of second-growth hemlock timber. This wood was put into the BC forestry chain, becoming useful lumber." Taking credit for sequestration by trees that may have been planted elsewhere, while cutting down enough trees on site to fill a five-meter by six-meter by six-meter container, is a whole lot of embodied irony.

4) Making the house a lot smaller. When it comes to saving energy, less is definitely more.

5) Choosing versions of steel and concrete with the lowest embodied energy (a lot of research is being done on ways of making those materials less "carbon-intensive").

Perkins&Will appears not to have done these things — the actual work required to reduce carbon emissions. The danger is that people will believe its claims.

Fred A Bernstein studied architecture at Princeton and law at NYU and writes about both subjects. He has published articles about embodied energy – a significant component of the climate crisis – in Oculus (a primer), in Architect Magazine (an admonition to architecture critics) and in the Architect's Newspaper (a warning that efforts to make buildings resilient are often detrimental from an embodied energy standpoint).

Carbon revolution

This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.

The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.

The post "Taking credit for trees planted elsewhere is a whole lot of embodied irony" appeared first on Dezeen.

[hms-chill]

RWRB Study Guide: Chapter 7

Hi y’all! I’m going through Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue and defining/explaining references! Feel free to follow along, or block the tag #rwrbStudyGuide if you’re not interested!

Crêpe-eating tourists (157): Crepes are a thin, flat pancake traditionally filled with sugar, but commonly filled with other toppings. They are an iconic French dish and are popular with tourists both for this reason and because they are typically inexpensive.

Place du Tertre (157): A square in Paris, it is in the Montmarte district, which is known for its art history.

Crusty baguettes (157): Baguettes are a French bread that is meant to be crusty on the outside and soft on the inside.

Le Monde (158): The most popular French newspaper.

Fromagerie Nicole Barthélémy (158): A famously wonderful cheese shop in Paris.

Parisian cheese shop (158): French cheese are known for being fancy and especially good.

Pisces (159): A zodiac sign known for being compassionate, artistic, and intuitive. (more)

NYU (159): New York University.

The Met (159): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a famous art museum in New York.

Joanne (160): JK Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, and has been pretty consistently homophobic and transphobic on twitter. 

Freddie Mercury (161): Lead singer of the band Queen, Mercury never officially came out, but he had long-term relationships with both men and women and was known for his camp performances, and there are claims that he was “openly gay”. His flamboyance and camp performances, as well as his relationship with partner Jim Hutton, essentially demanded that people simply take him as he was. He died of complications from AIDS in 1991, one day after admitting openly that he had been diagnosed four years earlier. (More)

For context within the book, he wrote “Don’t Stop Me Now”

Elton John (161): A famous British musician. He came out as bisexual in 1976, then as gay in 1992. He and his husband, David Furnish, became civil partners in 2005, the day they became legal in the UK. They were officially married on the ninth anniversary of their civil partnership, the year that gay marriage was legalized within the UK. (More)

Bowie (161): David Bowie, who was a bi British musician and actor who, in 1976, described his bisexuality as “the best thing that ever happened to me”. His wife (who was also bi, and with whom he often shared partners) claimed that he had a relationship with Mick Jagger, though his bisexuality has been consistently erased, both during his life and since his death. (More)

Again for book context, Henry’s dog is named for David Bowie

Jagger (161): Mick Jagger, an English singer/songwriter and member of the Rolling Stones, known for his promiscuity. As mentioned above, he and Bowie pretty clearly had a relationship, though his Wikipedia makes no mention of queerness. (More)

Oakley Street (161): A street that runs through an affluent borough of London.

Stonewall (161): The Stonewall Inn in New York City is a gay bar. The riots against police brutality there in July of 1969 are heralded as the beginning of the gay rights movement.

SCOTUS decision in 2015 (161): The Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage across the US.

Walt Whitman (161): An American poet who wanted to become The American Poet and saw himself as the quintessential American. His poetry often deals with his queerness, and he absolutely slept with Oscar Wilde in the late 1800s. 

Fun fact; he is celebrated in the movie The Dead Poets Society, which is incredibly popular with Sad Gay English Majors and which Henry would definitely have seen.

Laws of Illinois 1961 (161): In 1961, Illinois became the first state in the US to repeal its sodomy laws.

White Night Riot (161): A series of riots in San Francisco protesting the lenient sentencing of the man who killed Harvey Milk, the first openly queer politician. The riots were the most violent queer uprising since the events at the Stonewall.

Paris is Burning (161): A 1990s movie celebrating drag ball culture in New York. It celebrates in particular queer communities of color in the late 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was at its peak.

“If I die of AIDS...” (161): This is a real photo; you can find it here. The man’s jacket could refer to a form of protest called “die-ins”, where people with AIDS would go to a homophobic politician’s office or another public place where they were refused treatment and simply not leave until after they died. (see it here)

Chop my own tit off (162): Fun mythology fact; the Amazons (warrior women from Greek mythology) actually did this to make themselves better archers.

H fucking W (162): George HW Bush, a former US president.

George (163): George Villers was the boyfriend of King James the I/VI, and Prince George, Duke of Kent, was rumored to be in a polyamorous relationship in the 1920s. 

Edward (162): Edward II was a famously gay king. He was may have been "wedded brothers" with Piers Gaveston and may have also had a relationship with Hugh le Despenser the younger following Gaveston's death. (More)

James (162): The British king known for translating the Bible and being just... indescribably gay and very deeply horny. He promoted his boyfriend, George Villers, to the highest non-royal position in the UK within a few years of starting to date him. James’s friends actively tried to set him up with hot guys for their own political gain.

Alexander (163): Alexander Hamilton was an incredibly bi founding father. He’s remembered for founding our current national banking system, having the first ever American sex scandal, and for literally never shutting up or knowing how to stop being A Lot All The Time. 

Catalina (164): Catalina is an island near Los Angeles. On a more meta level, St. Catalina was a respected writer.

June (164): June Carter Cash was an American singer/songwriter/director/comedian.

Tricky Dick (164): Richard Nixon, a president remembered for wiretapping his opponent.

Taft (165): 27th president of the United States.

Eisenhower (165): 34th president of the US.

Baby (166): this is what Henry’s mom calls him; I wrote a thing about it here.

Daily Mail (166): A trashy British tabloid.

Lollapalooza (167): A music festival in Chicago known for setting fashion trends and having lots of drugs.

Joni Mitchell (167): A singer/songwriter known for her innovative use of the guitar, including unique tunings, chords, and a unique fingerpicking/strumming style. (Listen here)

Cocaine (168): A highly addictive drug. It is snorted, smoked, or injected, and while it makes people feel more confident or forget their problems, the highs from it last only up to about 30 minutes, which often drives people to take it more frequently. Side effects (aside from addiction) include a loss of appetite, irritability, and increased mental health issues. 

Spitfire (168): Someone with a quick temper or willingness to fight.

High as a kite (169): Someone who’s “high as a kite” is on a lot of drugs and is still enjoying the high.

Clean (169): Drug/alcohol free.

Stiff upper lip (170): Ability to seem determined or hold it together in the face of hard times.

A levels (170): A UK test taken for admittance to college, similar to the ACT/SAT in the US

Henry V at RSC (171): Henry V is a Shakespearean history play about the life of Henry V, especially focused on the events of the Hundred Years’ War. RSC, or the Royal Shakespeare Company, is a Shakespeare theater company in London.

Travis County (171): The Texan county where Austin is located.

Surfside (171): A beach in Texas.

Adderall (172): A prescription drug taken for ADHD but commonly abused by students to help them stay awake for all-nighters or focused for unhealthily long study sessions. However, given McQuinston’s claim that Alex has undiagnosed ADHD, it likely helped him to be able to focus and helped his brain work the way it was expected to.

Almond milk (vs. dairy) (173): Texas has a huge dairy industry, and almond milk is not great for the environment.

The Gun File (173): American gun law is so deeply broken.

WASPy Hunter’s Harvard pencil cup (175): Harvard is a prestigious college in Boston; it has a reputation for being mostly rich white folks.

Iron curtains of gerrymandering (175): Gerrymandering is a form of drawing lines for voting districts to disenfranchise marginalized voters. It is a form of skewing elections to keep power in the hands of the powerful that divides marginalized votes, making people of color or poor folks the minority in their districts, therefore erasing their votes on a broader scale.

Vision-boarding his funeral (175): a vision board is typically made to inspire someone to pursue a goal.

Parks & Recreation (175): A popular American sit-com focused on the parks and recreation department in a small town in Indiana. 

Leslie Knope (176): a Parks & Rec character. One of her defining traits is an aggressive, overwhelming love for the people in her life.

Mid-century rug (177): Mid-century furniture and style is characterized by lots of color and playful patterns (following the more reserved WWII period in the 1940s); it is rising in popularity again as a classy yet fashionable look.

J14 (178): A teen fashion/celebrity magazine.

Sacramento Bee (178): The largest newspaper in Sacramento, CA.

Southerness (180): In positive lights, the American South is known for its genuine, warm, unselfish hospitality.

Jane Austen my life (180): Jane Austen is a British author whose novels star lower/middle class women who fall in love with rich men. They typically try to avoid these men for large portions of the book, or at least have rather negative feelings about them due to a misunderstanding or other failure to communicate.

LSAT (181): the test taken for admittance to law school.

Carmarthenshire (183): A largely agricultural county in South Wales. As a tourist destination, it is known for its wide range of outdoor activities.

Llwynywermod (184): A royal estate in Carmarthenshire, the biggest building of which is a renovated three-bedroom farmhouse. It is surrounded by the rolling green hills common to south Wales.

Finals (in the US) (185): At US colleges, a semester’s final tests (typically worth up to 30-40% of a final grade) take place the week after classes end.

Stamp on his forehead at The Tombs (185): Tombs is a bar near Georgetown. According to reviews, and “Tombs Night” parties, where students celebrate their 21st birthday and get their foreheads stamped at the end of the night, are a Georgetown tradition.

Jumped in Dalhgren Fountain (185): Dalhgren Fountain is in the center of Georgetown’s campus. Swimming in it is a Georgetown tradition.

Summa cum laude (186): “with greatest honor”.

Ceviche (186): A seafood dish native to Peru that spread to Mexico, where it contains lime, avocado, chili peppers, onions, and cilantro.

Palm Room (187): The gateway to the West Wing, the area of the White House where most politics happen.

Hoe Dameron (190): A reference to Star Wars character Poe Dameron, a rebel pilot and the first Latino main character in the series.

Prince Buttercup (190): Princess Buttercup is the heroine/love interest in The Princess Bride, 

West Hollywood (190): One of the most prominent gay neighborhoods in the US.

“Call Me” (191): The most popular song of 1980; it was originally written for the film American Gigolo and inspired by the film’s opening sequence of a character driving along the coast of California. (Listen here)

“So Emotional” (191): An absolute bop about enjoying being in love. (Listen here)

“Don’t Stop Me Now” (193): A Queen song where Mercury sings to both a man and a woman; it’s a huge bop. (Listen here)

In-N-Out (194): A fast food restaurant/burger chain native to California and unavailable in other states.

Animal style (195): Animal style burgers are an In-N-Out staple; it includes the typical burger toppings, along with mustard fried into the patty, pickles, onions, and extra spread.

French-fries-dipped-in-milkshake (195): a truly god-tier American dessert tradition.

“O captain, my captain” (196): A reference both to the idea of a lacrosse team captain and to Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain” (as mentioned above, Whitman was a deeply gay American poet).

Burberry (200): A posh British brand of clothing known for its classy, traditional pieces.

Cats that caught the canaries (200): A cat that caught a canary is a person who looks smug or satisfied.

Mother hen (201): A “mom friend” or someone who will do everything they can to look out for people they care about, sometimes to the point of it being annoying.

—-

If there’s anything I missed or that you’d like more on, please let me know! And if you’d like to/are able, please consider buying me a ko-fi? I know not everyone can, and that’s fine, but these things take a lot of time/work and I’d really appreciate it!

—–

Chapter 1 // Chapter 6 // Chapter 8 

[boyedouglas3-blog]

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[kimhorowitz25-blog]

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Online Classified Ads - Better Than Newspaper Ads?

Online Classified Ads are promotion websites that uses the Internet and World Wide Web as the main media for promoting products and services. These online sites work the same with traditional advertising media like Newspapers, Magazines, Radio and Televisions.

Typical online classified ads contain a lot of categories such as such as Computer and Computer Accessories, Vans & Trucks, Antiques & Collectibles, Jobs & Services, Office Supplies, Dating, Furniture, Personal Services, Pets & Supplies, and Sports & Fitness, among many others. Ads can be search according by category, city, and price.

Some of the advantages of Online Classified Ads are ads can be posted immediately fast which take only a couple of minutes to get you ads publish, reach a wide range of customer over wider geographical areas, some classified ads site offer free services, can generate sales query within the day of posting, and more cheaper than publishing an ads compared to a local newspaper.

There are a lots of classified ads website over the internet. You can type "Classified Ads" in Google search engines and there will be 45 millions websites to choose to market your products and/or services.

Many Newspapers nowadays are re-evaluating its income strategies by putting up their online version of their classified ads. Reasons of doing the change are that online ads cost are vastly less than a print ad cost, so the net revenues are much greater.

More and more small business advertise online through online classified ads because still vast majority of newspapers are focus on the print media as their major income revenues and they never really court those small business owner so they ended up going directly to Google to advertise.

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Bamboo Furniture Market To Surge Beyond $14.38 Billion By 2025

The global bamboo furniture market size is expected to reach USD 14.38 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 5.2% during the forecast period. The growth is primarily attributed to rising investments in infrastructure developments and use of sustainable raw materials for furniture.

Bamboo is also gaining an increasing traction in terms of application in the commercial sector such as hotels, offices and recreational areas. Companies focus on crafting environmentally friendly products using bamboo as the major raw material. This factor is anticipated to drive the market in near future.

Asia Pacific is a one of the major markets, with China and other Far East countries as the major hubs. India is also expected to be a lucrative market for the manufacturers supported by the rising preference for sustainable and elegant furniture. Ikea has made India its global sourcing hub for bamboo products with an aim to expand its product portfolio.

Bamboo stools accounted for the highest market share of about 44% in 2018. Rising usage of bamboo furniture for both indoor and outdoor purposes is anticipated to drive the segment growth. Increasing demand from outdoor restaurants, cafes, and bars is projected to further fuel the product demand in near future. Foter offers a wide range of bamboo bar stools for both residential and commercial purposes in various designs.

The global bamboo furniture market is majorly driven by the residential application. Rising demand for elegant furniture to complement the living room and bedroom décor along with the rise in real estate constructions initiated by governments, especially in the urban areas is projected to drive the segment growth.

Asia Pacific accounted for the largest market share of about 59% in 2018. It is also expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 5.8% from 2019 to 2025. Majority of the growth is driven by China and other Far East countries. Improving living standards in China are resulting in higher investments in home décor and furnishings, which in turn is anticipated to fuel the market.

Request a free sample copy or view report summary: Bamboo Furniture Market Report

Bamboo Furniture Market Report Highlights

APAC is estimated to be the fastest market accounting for a share of more than 55% by 2025, driven majorly by the high demand from China and India

In terms of revenue, residential application accounts for a market share of more than 70% in 2018. The segment is expected to continue leading over the forecast period

Some of the major players operating in the global bamboo furniture market include Jiangxi Feiyu Industry Co. Ltd., Moso International B.V, Hadicomex VietHa Jsc, Ole Bamboo, Tanyee company Ltd., Shenzhen Vincent Handicraft Co., Limited, CBG Bamboo, and Greenington LLC

Bamboo Furniture Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global bamboo furniture market on the basis of type, end user, and region:

Bamboo Furniture Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Chairs & Tables

Stools

Beds

Others

Bamboo Furniture End User Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Residential

Commercial

Bamboo Furniture Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Central & South America

Middle East & Africa (MEA)

U.S.

U.K.

Germany

India

China

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

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Eichler Brought Back to Life, San Jose

An Eichler Brought Back to Life, Midcentury Interior, San Jose Renovated Home, North California Architecture

An Eichler Brought Back to Life in San Jose

Mar 4, 2022

Renovation Design: Blaine Architects + Marshall Interiors

Location: San Jose, Northern California, USA

Photos: Jean Bai and Rina Movsisyan

An Eichler Brought Back to Life, CA

After losing out on offers for other Eichlers, a young family sent letters to homeowners expressing interest in moving in to their Eichler development. Not a day later, they got a response from an elderly woman who was planning to move to be closer to her son.

And there, the project to renovate an Eichler plastered in wallpaper was born. The homeowner, Karina Marshall, was an aspiring designer and this project launched her design career. She and her husband renovated the 1400sf home, thoroughly restoring any existing original wood paneling and even borrowing paneling from the closets to use in the kitchen.

Before:

Once becoming an Eichler owner, Karina tried to get as much information on these homes as possible. She located a collection of brochures and correspondences donated to UCLA and traveled to the Special Collections library in LA to view and photograph original Eichler letters, site plans, and more. Some of these photos are included here.

Three years later, this home was completed with the Eichler Ensuite Retreat project: Eichler Ensuite Retreat

Key products used: – Heath Ceramics tile in kitchen – Nanimarquina rug in living room – Newport Brass East Linear kitchen faucet – Vintage furniture and accessories: Sonneman floor lamp, slat bench, wall-hung shelving unit, fireplace tools

An Eichler Brought Back to Life in San Jose, California – Building Information

Design: Blaine Architects + Marshall Interiors – https://blainearchitects.com/

Project size: 1400 ft2 Project Budget: $60000 Completion date: 2015 Building levels: 1

Photography: Jean Bai and Rina Movsisyan

An Eichler Brought Back to Life, San Jose images / information received 040322

Location: San Jose, California, United States of America

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Big Ranch Road Retreat in the Napa Valley Design: WDA (William Duff Architects) photograph © Matthew Millman Photography Napa Valley Barn Renewal

Bing Concert Hall, Stanford, south of San Francisco Design: Ennead Architects with Fisher Dachs Associates and Nagata Acoustics photograph © Jeff Goldberg Bing Concert Hall Stanford

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Comments / photos for the An Eichler Brought Back to Life, San Jose designed by Blaine Architects + Marshall Interiors page welcome

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Lost Chicago Building 1: The Edison Shop, 1912

This is the first in a series of posts about historic Chicago buildings that have disappeared.

THE EDISON SHOP

Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, 1912

By Roger E. Jones

The Edison Shop, 1912, Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, architects. Illustration from The Western Architect, Vol. 19 No. 5 May 1913.

Introduction

The Edison Shop, completed in 1912, was a small commercial building of four stories housing a store that sold Edison phonographs.  My first knowledge of this building, which stood at 229 South Wabash Ave. in Chicago’s Loop, came as I was browsing an issue of The Western Architect of May 1913, with a series of pages devoted to this structure.[1] As an example of Chicago’s early 20th-century commercial architecture, much of which has been lost, this small building seemed to show design influences from the Chicago School, Prairie School, the arts and crafts movement, and echoes of European modernism. It existed, I found, at the intersection of various architectural careers, including those of William Purcell, George Elmslie, George Feick, Jr., Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and interior designer George Niedecken.

The Edison Shop, 1912, Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, architects. Illustration from The Western Architect, Vol. 19 No. 5 May 1913.

The only downtown Chicago office building designed by Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, of Minneapolis, the building was notable for its use of buff brick and terra-cotta ornament, combined with large expanse of glass on its west-facing facade.[2] Its geometric design and tension between vertical and horizontal elements, its stark appearance relieved by sparing ornamentation in its fourth story and toward the cornice, gave the building a striking appearance. The top illustration shows the shop’s deeply recessed entry, drawing visitors in, as well as plantings that give its front a welcoming look as well as softening its severity. Large display windows opened the facade visually and would have offered views from the elevated Loop structure which the shop faced.

Designated a Chicago Architectural Landmark 1959, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks described the shop as "a place of dignity and beauty."[3] Nevertheless, the building was demolished a decade later.

The Edison Shop was owned by Henry B. Babson and sold Edison phonograph machines. It was one of three buildings designed for this purpose by Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, which and have been described as “high points in their commercial design.”[4]

Carefully placed display windows were intended to entice the customer within the store, where the integrated treatment of furniture, light fixtures, and other decorations created a unified merchandising space. From time to time, Elmslie designed instrument panels or whole cases to replace the awkwardly styled factory made cabinets. Other comparable Edison Shops were built in Kansas City, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.[5]

The Chicago commission apparently involved a new facade and new interior architecture; it was not, then, a completely new building.[6] During its history, in addition, it was known by different names: Edison Building, Edison Phonograph Shop, and the Babson Brothers Building.

The building’s vertical grouping of large entrance and window openings, as well as its terracotta capitals and central ornament below a shallow cornice, lead the eye upward, and show some influence of Louis Sullivan’s commercial work. A comparison of The Edison Shop to Sullivan’s Gage Building (1899), on Michigan Avenue, shows a similar interplay of horizontals and verticals, and sparing use of ornament above the ground floor. The Edison Shop’s design would employ these elements on a smaller scale and in a more severe, abstract manner.

The Gage Building, 1898, 30 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago Louis Sullivan, architecthttp://bldg51.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/fty_51.jpg

A comparison to Sullivan is appropriate, as Both Purcell and Elmslie had worked in Sullivan’s Chicago office, Elmslie designing some of the ornament on Sullivan’s buildings.

Fortunately, there were some good visual resources available for The Edison Shop, some of which are reproduced here. Sources include the Art of Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Library, architectural periodicals such as The Western Architect, Explore Chicago Collections, and the University of Minnesota Libraries, Northwest Architectural Archives, William Gray Purcell Papers. The three versions of the architectural firm (Purcell and Feick 1907-1910; Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie 1910-1913; Purcell and Elmslie 1913-1921) achieved great notoriety during and after their periods of practice.

 Rendering by the architects; Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/search/searchterm/Babson%20Brothers%20Building/field/altern/mode/exact/conn/and

Frieze panel, photo c. 1964, Historic American Buildings Survey.

https://organica.org/pejn170_13.htm

Henry Babson

Henry Babson (1874-1970), a native of Nebraska, had a career in many areas of the sound recording industry. Starting in 1903, he traveled worldwide as a representative for the Victor Talking Machine Company, reportedly selling over $100,000 worth of phonographs. He subsequently started the Babson Brothers Company in Chicago with his brothers, Fred and Gus.  It was a catalog mail order company and a major seller of the Edison Phonograph. Babson would become a major stockholder in the Victor Talking Machine Company, maker of the popular Victrola phonograph; the company was later acquired by RCA. Babson enjoyed racing custom sailboats, and, in the 1930s, began to import Arabian horses to the United States.[7]

Left: Chicago Talking Machine Co., “H.B. Babson, Prest.,” Catalog, c. 1898

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Talking_Machine_Company 

Right: Edison phonograph and records advertisement, c. 1915.F.K. Babson was Henry’s brother, Fred.

In 1907, Henry Babson had commissioned Louis Sullivan to design a 28-acre estate in Riverside, Illinois.

Henry K. Babson residence, Riverside, Ill., 1908, Louis Sullivan, architect (demolished)

http://chicagopatterns.com/louis-sullivan-frank-lloyd-wright-charnley-house-part-3/

 Purcell and Elmslie would design two subsidiary buildings for this estate, in 1914 and 1915. Though the main residence has been lost, the other two buildings remain.[8] Among furnishings designed by the firm for the Babson residence is a Tall Clock, 1912, now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tall Clock, 1912, Designed for the Babson Residence by George Grant Elmslie

(of Purcell, Feick and Elmslie); Manufactured by Niedecken-Walbridge, Milwaukee. Mahogany with brass inlay

Art Institute of Chicago 1971.322

The Interior: George M. Niedecken

George Mann Niedecken. George Mann Niedecken Archives, Milwaukee Art Museum

https://mam.org/collection/archives/prairie/

George Mann Niedecken (1878–1945) was a well-known designer of furniture and a self-called “interior architect,” who worked in Milwaukee from 1903 to 1945. His Milwaukee Art Museum biography notes that

Niedecken’s designs were based on a synthesis of styles: Arts and Crafts, Prairie School, Art Nouveau, and Vienna Secessionist, among others. His philosophy was to unify interior furnishings with the building as a whole by working collaboratively with the architect and the client.[9]

Niedecken studied art in several locations in Europe, and after meeting Otto Wagner, leading member of the Secessionist group, became influenced by the group’s simple, geometric motifs. He subsequently studied at the Académie Julien in Paris, under artist and designer Alphonse Mucha. Returning to Milwaukee in 1902, he taught decorative arts at the Wisconsin School of Arts, and exhibited designs at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he came to the notice of Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he would work on 12 commissions. In 1907, Niedecken started his own interior design firm with his brother-in-law, John Walbridge, and by 1910 had established his own furniture shop.[10]

The interior of The Edison Shop, credited to Niedecken in The Western Architect, May 1913, was amply illustrated in this issue. The shop seemed designed for the comfort of its customers: upholstered wooden armchairs, tables, sofas, and elegant rugs seem to belong to a club interior or luxurious waiting area. There is hardly an item of merchandise in sight in the illustrations in The Western Architect of May 1913; a couple of tall phonographs are just visible in the first- floor display window. This was certainly an interior much different from any of today’s audio or electronics stores.

George Mann Niedecken, mural for the Meyer May House, 1908-09, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect. Source: https://meyermayhouse.steelcase.com/

Plans of first and second stories, The Edison Shop

The Western Architect, May 1913

 A look at the first and second floor plans shows how narrow and deep the building’s footprint was. Seating areas at the front of each story are illuminated by the large front windows. The middle section of each story contains listening booths – 5 on the first floor and 7 on the second – where customers could listen to phonographs in comfort. The first floor, in addition, featured a Concert Room,for musical performances or auditions of Edison phonographs.

Stairs and an elevator linked the floors. It is unclear, however, what purpose the upper two floors served; they may have housed offices, stock, or been leased. Microfilm images of the original plans in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Art Institute of Chicago, are quite indistinct, the writing indecipherable.

The furniture, designed by Niedecken or in cooperation with the architects, includes upholstered armchairs with angular arms, and appear as wooden frames filled in partly with wood panels, boxy and somewhat severe-looking, apart from legs that curve at the bottom. Wooden tables echo influences of the contemporary arts and crafts or mission style, and side chairs with upholstered seats, quite plain in treatment, are arranged along the long side wall.

Edison Shop, interior, first floor

University of Minnesota Libraries, Northwest Architectural Archives, William Gray Purcell Papers

https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll109:1578

 First-story walls are partly paneled in wood to about half the wall height, the panels framing painted wall surfaces. Wooden bands continue to the top of the wall, which angles inward at the top, and then across the ceiling. Stenciled decoration is evident the entire length of these bands of wood, giving continuity to the design and enclosing the space. Lighting on the first floor is from wall-mounted fixtures with downward-pointing prism shades; the second-floor fixtures are hanging glass bowls, suspended by metal rods from the ceiling.

The first-floor Concert Room featured wicker furniture, a small stage with an Edison upright cabinet phonograph, and upper walls decorated with a mural of tree branches, leaves, and hanging lanterns. It seems an elegant environment in which to audition sound equipment. In this room, one wonders whether, as in period Edison advertisements for “The Phonograph with a Soul,” audience members tried to guess: Is it an opera singer, or is it an Edison?

 1919 Edison Phonograph advertisement

“Concert Room, Edison Phonograph Company Building, Chicago.”

The Western Architect, May 1913

Concert Room (detail of previous illustration), showing the mural decoration of tree branches, leaves, and hanging lanterns.

Perhaps the most fascinating object designed for The Edison Shop is a hanging electrolier, over the main entrance and outside the large display window. This enormously complex light fixture seems designed to attract customers into the shop beyond.

Electrolier, The Edison Shop. The Western Architect, May 1913

https://organica.org/pejn170_5.htm

 A detail of the facade shows the shop entryway with the electrolier. A large display window in the center attracted the attention of passersby, while the entrance was to the left, behind a display case filling the area between two piers. Illustration from The Western Architect, Vol. 19 No. 5 May 1913.

The Architects: Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie

Top: “William Gray Purcell, left, sits in an office with George Feick Jr. in 1908, the year the two Cornell classmates established their own Minneapolis firm.”https://web-b-ebscohost-com.chipublib.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=a98fb521-cf99-496e-b86c-580ca23d7327%40pdc-v-sessmgr03 

Bottom: George Feick, Jr., William Gray Purcell, and George Grant Elmslie Photo: Northwest Architectural Archiveshttp://artsmia.org/unified-vision/introduction/credits.cfm 

Left: William Gray Purcell. Source: pcad.lib.washington.edu

Right: George Grant Elmslie. Source: prairiestyles.com

  William Gray Purcell (1880-1965) and George Feick, Jr. (1881-1945)[11] had been classmates at Cornell, traveled in Europe together, and in 1907 formed the partnership Purcell and Feick. Purcell’s family had moved to Oak Park, Illinois, and he would have been familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright’s work there. Feick, Jr. was the son of George Feick, an Ohio contractor. The partnership lasted until 1910, when the firm became Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie.

Purcell met George Grant Elmslie (1869-1952), then the chief draftsman for Louis Sullivan, at a dinner in Oak Park, Illinois. Elmslie secured a position in Sullivan’s office for Purcell.

After his first sight of Sullivan's newly-built Auditorium at age 10, the awestruck Purcell resolved to become an archi­tect. He studied at Cornell from 1899-1903, and following graduation, he returned to Chicago where he entered Sulli­van's office. Although he spent only five months there, it was a profound experience: he was exposed to the organic philos­ophy of the Master's architecture which was to infuse his own work thereafter, and he became a close friend of George Grant Elmslie, Sullivan's chief draftsman.[12]

Elmslie was born in Scotland and migrated to the U.S. with his family in the mid-1880s. The family settled in Chicago, and Elmslie started his architectural career in the office of Joseph Silsbee, and later spent 20 years in Louis Sullivan’s (Adler & Sullivan until 1893) practice. Elmslie “designed most of the ornamentation that graced Sullivan's buildings,”[13] including that of the Schlesinger & Mayer (later Carson Pirie Scott) store. Due to Louis Sullivan’s declining business fortunes, in 1909 Elmslie searched for a more reliable situation, and by 1910 had moved to Minneapolis as a full partner in Purcell, Feick & Elmslie.[14]

Feick left the partnership in 1913, when he returned to Sandusky, Ohio to join the building firm George Feick and Sons Company with his father and brother Emil. The partnership of Purcell & Elmslie endured until 1921, though both men operated offices in separate cities. The firm produced designs for buildings in twenty-two states, Australia, and China, with offices in several cities. Viewed as among the chief 20th-century prairie school designers, or more generally, as "progressive" architects, the firm was responsible for a huge number of prairie-style houses and a variety of commercial work; they are credited with receiving “more commissions than any other firm of progressive architects after Frank Lloyd Wright.”[15]

Purcell and Feick's architecture is marked by buildings rarely accompanied by decoration beyond opportunities afforded by building materials. Elmslie's entry into the partnership brought an added complexity of composition and ornamental design, tying their work more directly to Louis Sullivan's decorative tradition. Purcell contributed an imaginative sense of space and the ideal of developing a better living environment for the middle class, quickly establishing a national reputation for the firm.[16]

The William Gray Purcell Papers, housed in the Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, document much of the firm’s work.[17] Documents relating to the design of The Edison Shop in Chicago are available both in online archives, and in digitized volumes of architectural periodicals, all listed in the Notes and in the Online Resources / Links section.

Preliminary designs, Edison Shop / Babson Bros. Building, Chicago, Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie, architects

University of Minnesota Libraries online U Media Archive https://organica.org/pejn170_5.htm

Elevation, The Edison Shop; Source: Explore Chicago Collections

https://explore.chicagocollections.org/image/artic/85/qv3cs85/

Designs for The Edison Shop (Babson Brothers Building), Chicago, “A building designed to meet the various especial requirements for the display and sale of phonographs”

The Western Architect, January 1913

Left: A Purcell and Elmslie advertising brochure featured The Edison Shop, Chicago.

Right: “Edison Phonograph Shop, Chicago, Original drawings by G.G.E.” Detail of central façade ornament https://organica.org/pejn170_5.htm

 The building’s later years

Sanborn Map of Chicago, 1927: The Edison Shop, 229 S. Wabash, Ave., is indicated with EDISON.

The Edison Shop in 1917 with its neighbor, building for the John Church Co., Mundie & Jensen, Architects

The Western Architect v. 24 no. 4 April 1917, p. 25

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuc.1845007v25&view=1up&seq=77

Hung Fa Village occupied the building in the 1960s. The lighter building on the right, at 243 S. Wabash at the corner of Jackson, is now occupied by the DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media.

 The Edison Shop was evidently remodeled in 1933.[18] Although the building had been listed a Chicago Architectural Landmark in 1959, by August 1964, when a Historic American Buildings Survey was conducted, its condition was listed as “fair.”  The building’s owner, J. & R. Investment Company, indicated that the building would be demolished when the current occupant’s leased expired. Hung Fa Village Chinese Restaurant and Key Club occupied the building. By this time, the buildings on either side had been razed.[19]

The building was demolished in 1967, and the site on S. Wabash Ave. where it, as well as adjacent buildings, stood is now a parking area directly behind Symphony Center. Its unfortunate loss further erased some important links to Chicago’s commercial and architectural past.

 View of The Edison Shop from above.

Photograph: Richard Nickel. Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago

https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/search/searchterm/Babson%20Brothers%20Building/field/altern/mode/exact/conn/and

  Notes:

1 “The Edison Shop,” The Western Architect Vol. 19 No. 5 May 1913, no page numbers.

2 Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress), HABS IL-1044, 1959, data sheet.

3 Lowe, David Garrard, Lost Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Illustration caption, p. 226.

4 Biographical Notes: William Gray Purcell (1880-1965); Purcell and Elmslie, 1913-1921. Hammons, Mark, in Guide to the William Gray Purcell Papers, 1985.

5 Ibid.

6 Historic American Buildings Survey ILL-1044, 1964: “The date of the original structure is unknown….The permit lists the Babson Brothers as owners, but their name appears nowhere on the chain of title.”(p. 3)

“Original drawings (on microfilm in the Art Institute of Chicago) carry notations which indicate that another building existed on the site, and that the present structure was remodeled with the present front added.” (p. 5)

7 “Henry Babson.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Babson

8 The Frederick Law Olmsted Society. https://www.olmstedsociety.org/events/housewalk/housewalk-2010/babson-estate-service-buildings/

Although Sullivan designed the 1907-08 residence, a large part of the scheme—including the built-in and freestanding furniture—was actually executed by Elmslie, who was then working for Sullivan. In 1912 Elmslie and his firm made additions to the house, including eight pieces of furniture. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/36161/tall-clock

9 Milwaukee Art Museum,  George Mann Niedecken Archives https://mam.org/collection/archives/prairie/

10 Ibid.

It is unclear what role Niedecken played in the design of The Edison Shop, Chicago. It’s possible that his furniture manufacturing firm, established 1910, executed the furniture from the designs by Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie. The George Mann Niedecken Archives indicate that he “worked on” the Edison Shop commission.

Gebhard, David, Purcell & Elmslie, Prairie Progressive Architects, 2006, p. 127, notes that “The furniture they [Purcell, Feick, and Elmslie] designed for the interior was executed by George M. Niedecken....”

A table for one of the Edison Shops (possibly San Franciso), “executed by George Mann Niedecken,” was recently listed for sale on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Purcell-Elmslie-Monumental-Table-from-Edison-Phonograph-Room-Prairie-School-/323814086099

The Niedecken and Walbridge firm (est. 1907) are credited with the design of yet another Edison Shop, wholly or in part, in Detroit, 1915-16. https://organica.org/peniedecken1.htm

11 “Prairie Vision: The Architecture of Purcell, Feick,and Elmslie in Bismarck,” by: Sakariassen, Emily. North Dakota History. Fall 2016, Vol. 81 Issue 3, p16-31. 16p.

Other sources for George Feick, Jr. include:

George Feick, Jr. http://barbfeick.com/FeickHistory/George_Feick_Jr.htm

 Sandusky Library Historical Collections

https://sandusky.pastperfectonline.com/library/A0E9675B-D7B1-46AB-AF75-636173886281

12 Lathrop, Alan K., “The Architects,” Purcell and Elmslie, Architects, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. https://www.lib.umn.edu/scrbm/purcell-and-elmslie-architects

13 Ibid.

14 “William Gray Purcell.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gray_Purcell

15 Unified Vision: The Architecture and Design of the Prairie School. Accessed 12/17/2020 at http://artsmia.org/unified-vision/collection/purcell-elmslie.cfm.html

16 Ibid.

See also Organica.org, Purcell and Elmslie, “The Compleat Commission List.” Accessed 12/15/2020 at https://organica.org/pejn170.htm

17 University of Minnesota Libraries, Archives and Special Collections, Purcell and Elmslie, Architects. Accessed 12/14/2020 at https://www.lib.umn.edu/scrbm/purcell-and-elmslie-architects

See also Hammons, Mark, “Purcell and Elmslie, 1913-1921,” Guide to the William Gray Purcell Papers, 1985. Accessed 12/13/2020 at https://organica.org/pewgp6.htm

18 Historic American Buildings Survey ILL-1044, index card (no date),  supplement to 1964 report

19 Historic American Buildings Survey ILL-1044, 1964, p. 7

   Online Resources / Links:

Architecture in the Spirit of Democracy: Purcell and Elmslie, research courtesy Mark Hammons. Accessed 12/12/2020 at https://organica.org/purcellandelmslie.htm

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Archives. Digitized images of Babson Brothers Store (The Edison Shop)available at https://digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/search/searchterm/Babson%20Brothers%20Building/field/altern/mode/exact/conn/and

Explore Chicago Collections: The place to discover the history and culture of Chicago. Accessed 12/12/2020 at https://explore.chicagocollections.org/

Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress), HABS IL-1044, 1959, data sheet. Accessed 12/12/2020 at https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/habshaer/il/il0100/il0111/data/il0111data.pdf

Milwaukee Art Museum, George Mann Niedecken Archives. Accessed 12/17/2020 https://mam.org/collection/archives/prairie/

“Prairie Vision: The Architecture of Purcell, Feick,and Elmslie in Bismarck,” by: Sakariassen, Emily. North Dakota History. Fall 2016, Vol. 81 Issue 3, p16-31. 16p. Accessed 12/17/2020 at https://web-b-ebscohost-com.chipublib.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=a98fb521-cf99-496e-b86c-580ca23d7327%40pdc-v-sessmgr03

University of Minnesota Libraries, Archives and Special Collections, Purcell and Elmslie, Architects. Accessed 12/14/2020 at https://www.lib.umn.edu/scrbm/purcell-and-elmslie-architects

Hammons, Mark, Biographical Notes: William Gray Purcell (1880-1965); Purcell and Elmslie, 1913-1921., in Guide to the William Gray Purcell Papers, 1985. https://organica.org/pewgp6.htm

 “The Edison Shop,” The Western Architect Vol. 19 No. 5 May 1913, no page numbers. [Click on title for archived article.] Available online at HathiTrust Digital Library.  

 The Work of Purcell and Elmslie, The Western Architect Vol. 19 No. 1 January 1913, no page numbers. [Click on title for archived article.] Available online at HathiTrust Digital Library.  

The Work of Purcell and Elmslie, The Western Architect Vol. 22 No. 5 May 1915, no page numbers. [Click on title for archived article.] Available online at HathiTrust Digital Library.  

The William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. Accessed 12/12/2020 athttps://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/8/resources/2215

 University of Minnesota Libraries online U Media Archivehttps://organica.org/pejn170_5.htm

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

19 Oct 2020: Keeping retail within the last mile. Second-hand Ikea. Remote work panopticon.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash]

Keeping retail within the last mile

Subship is a “weekly drop of local goods. Delivered free to your door, every Thursday.” It’s South-east London only at the moment. You might think of it as a different take on Near.St, which wants to make all of local shop inventory searchable - Subship makes a curated list (local, ethical, independent etc) and delivers from it.

Elsewhere in delivered goods, a one-woman food-to-offices delivery service has reinvented itself as Pedalling Pantry, a plastic-free, fruit and veg delivery service.

Second-hand IKEA

With resale, Ikea is trying to find new ways to acquire customers - IKEA is testing out a new way to incentivise customers to come to its stores during the holiday season. It will host a Black Friday event called Buy Back in 27 countries, where it will encourage customers to bring in old furniture for Ikea to resell. “All products must be returned completely assembled” says the website, which might cause a few rueful chuckles.

Remote work panopticon

74% of ~1,000 companies plan on maintaining the increase in home working. And San Francisco hits highest office vacancy rate in nearly a decade as workers stay home.

Stripe will pay workers $20,000 to leave New York and San Francisco. But there’s a catch: the workers who take up the offer will have to take a 10% cut to their compensation. This might make sense if you’re only planning to stay employed at Stripe a short while. But if your share options are based on your salary though, it might make less sense.

Some employers don’t trust their people working from home. 'I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots' and Corporate snitches are using screen monitoring to find and fire slackers. Maybe a second team could monitor whether the first team’s productivity monitoring is itself ruining productivity and trust.

“Omni-shopping”

“We’ve updated the Walmart signage on the exterior and interior of stores to reflect the Walmart app icon, creating an instant omni-shopping experience in the customer’s mind.” - Walmart’s deploying a new look in stores that emphasises their app, and adds self-checkout and contactless payments. One thing all retailers want the customer to think is “Omni-shopping”.

Platforms

A government service running well:

Been a busy few days for GOVUK Notify... With almost no notice, we helped the NHS send nearly 40 million emails and text messages to help in the fight against coronavirus.

If you ever needed a case study on the value of common platforms...

A government service running less well: that Test and Trace numbers thing with the Excel file. It shouldn’t have happened, and it’s not good using spreadsheets to move data around. (No disrespect intended to the spreadsheet gods, who will receive an offering so their dream-like grid continues to watch over us and admit all calculations.) 

The underlying cause may have been some historic organisational make-do meeting a new public health need which suddenly turned every dial to eleven. From the outside it is hard to tell, and too easy to judge - we do know that many working on these services will be doing their utmost.

Disability

Plastic straws and cotton buds banned in England. Businesses can no longer sell or supply the single-use items as part of efforts to reduce pollution - this is great for the environment. Except that there are unintended consequences: it will disproportionately affect disabled people for whom single-use straws are the way they drink fluids :(

In thinking about how to create services or a world for inclusion, this is very simple but profound: ability is temporary. Or putting it another way: 

I need access, accommodation and equity. These are not special needs. They are the needs of every human being.

Working conditions

“We’re building the first comprehensive data set about the quality of hourly work in the UK and helping workers use that information to make decisions about what work they want to do and for whom.” - How Breakroom uses data to make hourly work better for everyone.

Regulation

“Today, the rules come from Apple, or California, both of which are increasingly becoming America’s privacy regulators by default. But they will also come from the EU, which is increasingly writing laws that, intentionally or not, change how American companies do business in America, and the more different rules we have in different places, the more fragmented and complicated things get. Regulation is an export industry, and a competitive industry.”

Co-operation

“Cooperation Town is a new network of community-led food co-ops, providing free and affordable food” - it also helps you start your own co-operative.

Co-op Digital news and events

How dividing into smaller delivery teams has improved delivery.

Switching to a career in digital is the best decision I ever made.

Co-op is extending free school meals through half term at its 25 academies.

Free of charge events at Federation house (and elsewhere): 

Allegory calling for participants to inform green economic recovery. Allegory is working with Icebreaker One to connect private and public sector leaders to help deliver net-zero and transform the climate crisis into economic innovation. They’re holding a panel discussion to discuss how to drive a green economic recovery from Covid-19 but are keen to understand the views and policies of local government. They are reaching out for those interested in engaging with the project, through research interviews, sharing details of local initiatives, events or future panels. They are preferably looking for councillors, or officials from local government with an interest in green recovery. If you know anyone who could represent Greater Manchester email jo@allegoryagency.co.uk.  

Social Media for Business Influence – Webinar – 21 Oct – 1.30pm 

Volunteer with Code Your Future – Meet Up – 21 Oct – 6pm 

Federation presents: Wellbeing During Uncertain Times – 4 November – 5pm. A new event series by The Federation, focusing on navigating wellbeing through 21st century challenges. In this first session in the series we will be joined by Amity CIC, which will coach us on how to maintain positive wellbeing. Sign up here.  

Paid for events 

Tech Ethics – Meet Up – Various Dates & Times 

Ales & Alleyways – Virtual Tour of Manchester – 21 Oct - 5pm 

Book Club – Discussion on Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch – 22 Oct – 5.30pm 

More detail on Federation House’s events.

Thank you for reading

Thank you friends, readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[localbizlift]

Over 100 Goodwill stores are bringing their inventory to OfferUp

Goodwill and mobile marketplace app OfferUp have announced a new partnership focused on bringing Goodwill’s secondhand inventory to the millions of OfferUp shoppers, for both local pickup and delivery. The deal sees more than 100 Goodwill stores listing their inventory in OfferUp in New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties, South Florida, Greater Detroit, San Antonio and Central and Southern Indiana.

The move brings Goodwill’s pre-owned inventory to a modern mobile e-commerce platform, allowing staff to track sales and view the real-time flow of products, payments and data in one interface.

However, it’s not the first time Goodwill has gone online. The organization today runs its own e-commerce site, ShopGoodwill.com, and many of its local stores have a presence on eBay.

Via OfferUp, mobile users will now be able to browse their Goodwill’s local inventory in the app alongside other sellers’ content. New items will be uploaded regularly, and listed under the regional Goodwill handles so customers know they’re buying from Goodwill as opposed to an individual seller. These handles will feature a “Verified Business” badge, as well, and the profiles will include helpful information like the store hours, address and an “about us” section.

The partnership is powered by OfferUp’s new API, currently in beta testing, and Upright Labs’ Lister software, which handles the inventory uploads to OfferUp.

Goodwill will be responsible for managing its listings, including the product images, shipping, order management, financial reporting and auditing. It’s largely using OfferUp as another sales channel, instead of relying largely on foot traffic to its brick-and-mortar locations.

Like any other OfferUp user, Goodwill doesn’t have a financial relationship with the mobile marketplace.

If a customer buys a Goodwill item, they can go to their local store and pay with cash with no fee. However, if they choose to have the item shipped, OfferUp charges a 9.9% fee to cover shipping and handling across the 48 contiguous U.S. states. This is the same fee any other seller would pay on OfferUp.

The individual Goodwill stores can choose whether or not to offer shipping, the company also says. Some may opt to ship smaller items, like tech, games or jewelry, but only allow for local pickup if it’s a larger item, like furniture.

The two organizations had already been testing the system ahead of today’s formal announcement about availability. Though early, several Goodwill locations are reporting positive outcomes.

“We started to list furniture and other items from our stores on OfferUp in January, and the early results have been great. The majority of the items we post on OfferUp sell within 72 hours, and some have sold in as quickly as 10 minutes after being listed on the app,” said Jay Lytle, vice president and chief information officer, Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana. “The exposure of our high-quality donations to so many new customers, coupled with the feedback and engagement we’ve experienced on OfferUp, has been tremendous for us,” he added.

“Potential shoppers were unaware of the great inventory that our local stores have for sale,” said Goodwill South Florida CEO David Landsberg, in a related statement. “OfferUp allows us to showcase large, pickup only inventory and increase foot traffic to stores. This also translates into new donors, and helps us fulfill our mission of training and employing people with disabilities and other barriers to work here in South Florida.”

OfferUp says it forged the deals with the individual stores in the supported regions, not at a national level, because Goodwill stores operate independently and because employee bandwidth and resources vary by store.

“Every store is looking to increase foot traffic, along with sales, and the leaders we’ve worked with manage multiple stores in heavily trafficked markets,” an OfferUp spokesperson explains. “With the OfferUp API and Upright Lab’s Listing Tool, employees can take a picture using a mobile device and instantly upload to OfferUp, so it’s improved the flow of receiving and selling their items,” they added.

[architectnews]

Ten architecturally impressive hospitals that aim to redefine healthcare

Following The Friendship Hospital in Bangladesh being named the world's best building, we have rounded up 10 other architecturally impressive medical facilities from across the globe.

Photo is by Iwan Baan

Tambacounda Maternity and Paediatric Hospital, Senegal, by Manuel Herz Architects

Characterised by its lattice-like brickwork, this maternity and paediatric clinic designed by Swiss studio Manuel Herz Architects, is an extension to an existing hospital.

It has a distinctive S-shape which curves around other buildings on the site to create new courtyards as well as encouraging airflow to manage temperatures in the scorching Senegalese climate.

Find out more about Tambacounda Maternity and Paediatric Hospital ›

Photo is by Rubén P Bescós

Centro Psicogeriatrico San Francisco Javier, Spain, by Vaillo+Irigaray Architects

Spanish studio Vaillo+Irigaray Architects modernised this 19th-century psychiatric centre in the city of Pompolona.

The designers added concrete structures shaped and dyed to mimic the older buildings on the site, cantilevered above glazed walls to create sheltered walkways and give the impression that the heavy volumes are floating.

Find out more about Centro Psicogeriatrico San Francisco Javier ›

Photo is by Irfan Naqi

Bamyan Provincial Hospital, Afghanistan, by Arcop

Nestled in a valley in Afghanistan's highlands, Bamyan Provincial Hospital is organised around a series of courtyards that become increasing private the further one ventures into the complex.

"Overall, our attempt is to take a 'biophilic' approach to design," said Pakistani architecture studio Arco.

"Through natural light and ventilation, views of mountains and gardens and access to outdoor courts, an architecture is created which fosters healing and well-being."

Find out more about Bamyan Provincial Hospital ›

Harvey Pediatric Clinic, USA, by Marlon Blackwell Architects

Located in the suburbs of a small city in northwest Arkansas, Harvey Pediatric Clinic has an irregular shape and a bright red facade intended to make it stand out from its surroundings.

American firm Marlon Blackwell Architects said the design reinforces the progressive identity of the clinic, which takes a holistic approach to treating children.

The project was shortlisted at the 2017 World Building of the Year awards, hosted by the World Architecture Festival.

Find out more about the Harvey Pediatric Clinic › 

Photo is by Elizabeth Felicella

Bayalpata Hospital, Nepal, by Sharon Davis Design

Created by New York-based Sharon Davis Design, the  Bayalpata Hospital medical campus is located a 10-hour drive on mountain roads from the nearest manufacturing centres in one of Nepal's poorest and most remote regions.

To make the project feasible the designers focused on using local materials, including rammed earth made with soil from the site itself for the walls, stone for the foundations, and wood from the indigenous sal tree for the doors, window louvres and furniture.

Find out more about Bayalpata Hospital ›

Photo is by Andre Cepeda

Epilepsy Residential Care Home, France, by Atelier Martel

This facility in the northeastern French town of Dommartin-lès-Toul provides both long- and short-term care to people living with epilepsy.

Designed by Paris-based practice Atelier Martin in collaboration with American artist Mayanna von Ledebur, the building's concrete facade is covered in hundreds of soft indents in reference to the markings found on an ancient tablet from 600 BC believed to be the first written record of epilepsy.

Find out more about Epilepsy Residential Care Home ›

Photo is by Tristan McLaren

Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital, South Africa, by Sheppard Robson and John Copper Architecture

Designed by London studios Sheppard Robson and John Cooper Architecture in partnership with local office GAPP, this 200-bed children's hospital in Johannesburg is deliberately divided into six separate wings linked by a single spine.

"By breaking down the mass of the building into six elements, the design has a domestic, human scale that is reassuring and familiar to children," said Sheppard Robson.

Find out more about Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital ›

Photo is by Peter Landers

Kachumbala Maternity Unit, Uganda, by HKS Architects and Engineers for Overseas Development

Kachumbala Maternity Unit, in rural eastern Uganda, is entirely self-sustaining, generating its own power from solar panels and collecting rainwater from roof runoff to create its own water supply.

HKS Architects and Engineers for Overseas Development designed the birth centre to be built using local skills, technology and materials, including external walls made from terracotta screens.

Find out more about Kachumbala Maternity Unit ›

Waldkliniken Eisenberg, Germany, by Matteo Thun & Partners and HDR Germany

Milan-based design studio Matteo Thun & Partners and German architecture firm HDR Germany designed this new wing of the Waldkliniken Eisenberg orthopaedics centre to feel more like a hotel than a hospital.

Surrounded by trees in the Thuringian Forest, the circular building has shared winter gardens between adjacent rooms, while pervasive use of wood, green roofs and planted courtyards are intended to enhance the connection with nature.

Find out more about Waldkliniken Eisenberg ›

Cancer Centre at Guy's Hospital, UK, by Rogers Stirk Harbours + Partners

This dedicated cancer treatment clinic at Guy's Hospital in London was built in the inimitable style of Rogers Stirk Harbours + Partners, made famous by its co-founder, the late Richard Rogers.

Services are arranged in four stacked "villages" designed to make the environment feel human-scaled and non-institutional, while bare concrete walls contrast with pale timber walkways and exposed metalwork.

Find out more about the Cancer Centre at Guy's Hospital ›

The post Ten architecturally impressive hospitals that aim to redefine healthcare appeared first on Dezeen.