Zoë Keating
4:30pm
Thanks for reading, following, tweeting and generally paying attention to a great day at Unboundary and TEDxAtlanta. We’re going to have some canapes and then Zoë Keating will take us out.
4:26pm
Steve Mugiri: Enable kids to stretch beyond their experiences.
4:24pm
Kevin Salwen: Give kids the opportunity to understand how people outside of their experience really live.
4:23pm
Hannah: Give us the skills and opportunities to lead.
4:22pm
Q: What should schools do in order to encourage more of this kind of action?
4:19pm
A comment from the guests: How connections go from inspiration to application.
4:13pm
It’s in development and we should see something hopefully by the end of the year.
4:11pm
Q (for Melissa): When will we see non-profiteering.org?
4:09pm
Kevin and Hannah Salwen: We want to see a million people start their own power of half projects.
4:08pm
Steve Mugiri: Just read the blog (afrigadget.com)!
4:07pm
Melissa Kushner: Start with your own company. Look for the excess goods in your life.
4:06pm
Q: What can we do to help each of you individually and your programs?
4:04pm
Thanks Kevin and Hannah. Q&A up next.
4:04pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Explaining how cutting your spending in half, could help out a lot of people. How much do you spend on coffee a week? What could you do with that extra cash if you cut it in half? I’ve thought about this as it relates to having more money for my family. Admittedly haven’t thought about giving that extra to someone else.
4:02pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
I’m horrible at ping-pong.
4:02pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
While helping out in Africa, began to notice how much closer the family was becoming. Never played ping-pong in the big house with the big basement. Put the ping-pong table in the small house. Played six times a day. I bet these guys are good at ping-pong.
3:57pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Spent a year trying to figure out a NYC non-profit. that helps people in Africa follow a 5-year program to improve their lives. Stressing the “Help themselves” part. We didn’t want to tell people how to do it, or do it for them. We wanted to help them do this for themselves. Teach a man to fish...
3:55pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Decided to head to Africa for a few reasons. Already in the U.S., already doing stuff in the U.S. Money goes much further there. And “there's no safety net” No soup kitchens, no YMCA. In Africa you live where you live and get what you get.
3:55pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Kids have just as much say as the adults in this experiment. That’s awesome. Innocence is so powerful.
3:54pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Ask themselves big questions. Do we want to help a little for a lot... Why not a lot for a lot instead?
3:53pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Hannah notices a homeless man to her right, a very wealthy man to the left on the road while driving. Ponders what might compel the wealthy man to help the not so wealthy man. Thinking further, they look inward. Poof. The power of half.
3:52pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
They’re talking about how they noticed the family losing connections. I can related to that. My 4 year old is all about Wii and movies and youtube.
3:50pm
Currently speaking: Kevin and Hannah Salwen
Kevin and Hannah. Cut their lives in half. Introducing their family now. Interesting that the experiment involved the entire family. Makes it that much more worth doing I suppose. Not about a promotion at work or govt. grant.
3:49pm
Just got off a plane so I’m spinning a bit. Here goes...
3:48pm
Finishing the day of talks: Kevin and Hannah Salwen.
Kevin Salwen is a writer and entrepreneur. Hannahh Salwen is his 15-year-old daughter, and co-author of The Power of Half, due out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 10, 2010.
Their book is the story of Hannah helped the Salwen family commit to reducing their consumption by half. They started by selling their house and moving into one half its size.
Kevin wrote for the Wall Street Journal for 18 years. He covered two presidential administrations. He was National Small Business Editor and an weekly guest on CNBC. He is now the expert on small-business issues for Yahoo!
3:45pm
By the way, Jarod blogs for WhiteWave at The Grazing Mind.
3:45pm
This is Peter, again. I'm signing off for the day. But I'm being replaced one of Unboundary's good friends, Jarod Ballentine, who works for WhiteWave Foods. You know, Silk Soy, Horizon. He’s going to add his perspective and opinion to the last part of our day.
3:45pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
Another example is Philip Isohe who builds beautifully designed model airplanes from repurposed materials.
3:43pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
One great example is William Kamkwamba, who built a windmill. He dropped out of school because he didn't have the means to stay in school. In order to keep educating himself, he built a windmill to power a reading light. The idea had legs and has since been able to power his entire village.
3:41pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
Utlmately, AfriGadget’s best stories are about the people who are doing this work.
3:38pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
The purpose of repurposing is not to create an end product, but a tool that then helps to repurpose other materials.
AfriGadget has a lot in common with the idea of Design for the Other 90%.
3:37pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
Steve is telling us a story about metal scrap and how many different, useful products that improve people’s lives can be made from that pile of scrap.
3:36pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
It’s about creativity, functionality and whimsy. Making something creative in Africa means making something useful and playful.
3:35pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
Steve is talking about creativity, yes, but also using the materials around them in order to be creative. For example, what to do with plastic water bottles. AfriGagdet reported on how kids used old pieces of steal and plastic bottles to create toys.
3:34pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
It’s a blog, created and maintained by 6 people. It’s also about ideas. It’s about smart people working to solve problems in Africa.
It's about how people in Africa make a soccer ball from trash.
3:31pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
What in the world is an AfriGadget?
3:30pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
Over the last 2 years, Steve has been working to bring two different projects to market: Green Turbine, the only turbine currently available to effectively recover waste heat in micro-installations; and jibbio.com a different type of social network platform with a focus on connecting business with loyal customers and rewarding those who do business with them.
3:30pm
Currently speaking: Steve Mugiri
Steve Mugiri spent the first 25 years of his life in Kenya and has since lived in 4 other countries including Spain, Zimbabwe, the US and Canada. This experience, and the perspective it gave him, has helped him become writer and editor of AfriGadget, a platform on which the appropriate use of technology and African ingenuity can be showcased.
3:28pm
Next up: Steve Mugiri.
3:28pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
You can’t replace spending time with your clients, but that work becomes a lot easier and potentially, more successful if networks of non-profits were visible to more people.
3:28pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Partnerships that were once improbable become possible. Maybe even common.
3:27pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Melissa’s vision for Goods for Good and for non-profits in general: Instead of having to pick up and travel around the country to find out what other non-profits were operating in Malawi, what if there was a website, a digital location that enabled Melissa to find out which organizations were doing what kinds of work in specific places.
3:26pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Step 5: Share Knowledge - Leverage Resources
3:26pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Partnering with other organizations is, in a sense, another form of repurposing. Instead of trying to adopt new skill sets, Good for Goods uses an existing resource.
3:25pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
It was clear to Melissa that she needed help, too. She needed partnerships that would for example help create infrastructure.
Goods for Good partnered with Africare, an organization that helps alleviate hunger, building water wells, treating childhood diseases, and supporting social empowerment.
3:24pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Melissa looks at Goods for Good as one piece of the Int’l Development pie.
3:22pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Step 4: Partnership Is Paramount to Success.
3:22pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
In addition to supporting the students, Melissa also knows that the teachers and care-givers also need help.
3:21pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
By focusing on education, Goods for Good is seeing a 38% increase in attendance. Simply by getting supplies to schools.
3:20pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Teachers in Malawi have classes of 85-90 students, often in rooms without roofs and adequate teaching supplies.
3:19pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Literacy in Malawi is not a given. It became a measure of success for Melissa’s work.
3:19pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Step 3: Don't Measure Success With The Same Yardstick.
3:19pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
By understanding the needs, Goods for Good is supporting 54,000 orphans.
3:19pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
Kids were desperate for school uniforms. The availability of school uniforms helps kids stay in school. But instead of bringing uniforms to Malawi, Melissa’s idea was to bring fabric to community-based organizations.
3:17pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
So she spent time with her client by renting a truck and driving around Malawi.
The photographs Mellissa is using are driving home the very human element of repurposing.
Melissa learned where her goods belonged, but were the right, basic goods people needed?
3:15pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
2. Don't Assume Your Clients' Needs Are the Same As Your Own.
Basically, Melissa believes that spending time with your client will make all the difference.
Melissa learned that were tons of unused goods. And entirely too many orphaned children who lacked fundamental supplies for education, among other things.
The question: how to connect those two things.
3:15pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
In Liberia, she made a few phone calls and, after 2 months, was able to get thousands of pens and pads of paper slated to be destroyed. Instead, the kids of Liberia were able to use them.
But she also learned a lot from these successes, specifically how to do this kind of work better, more effectively. What works, what doesn't work, etc.
3:13pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
On her first UN trip for work, Melissa’s impulse was to bring needed goods with her. It’s a practice that she repeated again and again and again, no matter where she would go.
By making phone calls, she was later able to bring winter clothes to Pakistan.
3:12pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
The first step, according to Melissa, is if you don’t try, you don’t learn.
3:11pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
A 5 Step Guide to International Development.
3:10pm
Currently speaking: Melissa Kushner
We take usable goods and get them to people who need them. We repurpose.
3:10pm
Welcome, Melissa.
3:06pm
Melissa Kushner is up next.
Melissa Kushner is the founder of Goods for Good, an organization that provides material support to 183 community-based organizations, orphan care centers and public schools, helping approximately 54,000 orphans and vulnerable children across Malawi and Haiti.
Melissa has spent her entire career in international development, and will talk about the excess of goods&emdash;pencils, paper, books, etc.&emdash;can have a dramatic impact on improving school attendance and the future of thousands upon thousands of children.
2:50pm
Ok. Now we break. Back in 15 or so for Melissa Kushner.
2:49pm
Dunham-Jones: Gentrification happens very fast. It’s hard to get ahead of it when it happens at great speed. We don’t have a great plan for dealing with that right now.
2:48pm
Dunham-Jones: Giving people the chance to experience these environments, it creates possibility. If we build more of these new spaces, or repurpose existing ones to behave in a new urbanist way, demand will grow.
2:47pm
Dunham-Jones: When people get a chance to experience new urbanism, people’s minds change.
2:46pm
Dunham-Jones: The simple answer is build more of it.
2:46pm
Q: A couple of concerns: We’re all addicted to space. We want more space than we need. Redevelopment of urban centers often pushes out lower-income families. How do we overcome these issues?
2:44pm
Please, everyone visit the MEtreePOLIS website and take a closer look at the work Matthias and his company are doing. Don’t miss the link in the lower right hand corner.
2:42pm
Matthias: Good architecture can make people imagine new things and then demand them.
2:42pm
Matthias: Fascinate the public in a way that makes them want change.
2:42pm
Dunham-Jones: Right now it’s illegal in Atlanta to build mix-use, to build narrow streets that are pedestrian friendly. Changing this requires public and private sectors working together.
2:41pm
Dunham-Jones: The conversation about what we want for the future has to be one that includes everyone.
2:40pm
Dunham-Jones: City building is about private and public sectors coming together.
2:40pm
Kalkin: Evolution works in ways that are mysterious and random, and our societal systems are designed to destroy that.
2:39pm
Kalkin: We need to harness our capitalist tendencies, even if it’s for creative destruction. It’s not about idealistic systems. It’s about supporting very smart, but very underutilized people.
2:38pm
Kalkin: There’s almost no money in R&D right now. The low-hanging fruit is being ignored, and there's no support for the people who are banging around in their garages coming up with new ideas.
2:38pm
Q: As we sit and digest the visionary possibilities, in some cases very concrete environments to revisionary environments, how can we balance vision and possibility so that we, as audience members, can contribute to change.
2:37pm
Kalkin: Cutting and pasting, not unlike the cello performance early today.
2:35pm
Kalkin: it traces way back to my days as a sculpture. One of the first things I did was use the container as a mobile museum. Using the shipping container basically migrated in use until I started using it for entire buildlings.
Kalkin: Architecture is a commodity. It's the enclosure business. The practice of architecture is about making boxes you go inside of. My approach is to see how far I can push that idea.
2:35pm
Q: Tell us about your shipping container creative process?
2:34pm
Dunham-Jones: Policy; Matthias: Vision; Kalkin: Actualization.
2:32pm
Kalkin: A lot depends on finishes. Do you need the viking stove? We can make it affordable, practically nothing, to multi-million dollar homes.
Kalkin: The original idea was to create a nuclear home. Levitt Town is, in a sense, a successful demonstration of affordable home. That's close to what we had in mind in many ways.
2:32pm
How much does an average shipping container house cost?
2:30pm
Dunham-Jones: The mindset of suburbs has to be changed first before we can start demanding a specific aesthetic. Urbanism isn't only about a certain look, it's first about how communities are designed and work.
The generational shift, though, is on our side on this.
2:29pm
Dunham-Jones: I’m a modern architect, but a traditional urbanist. I’d rather get the infrastructure right, knowing that the aesthetics will change often. I say that with some hesitation as I’m a designer at heart.
2:27pm
Matthias: So far, we’ve been well received. We also try to do is to bring in traditional heritage with modernist influences.
2:26pm
First question is about the village in the Ivory Coat. What kind of response do you expect from the people? Resentment? Celebration?
2:26pm
Thanks Adam. Now for an audience Q&A.
2:25pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
The curator drives the car. Visitors can ride in the car. They can sit on top of it. They can watch films projected on the glass. Clearly Kalkin is not only repurposing materials for new uses, he's also got a sense of humor.
2:24pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
25 more seconds and a slew of amazing structures.
He used a car as a traveling museum for Mercedes.
2:23pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Kalkin also works with recycled scaffolding. He covered in shrink-wrap. He insists that none of this is new technology. It’s just about using existing materials in new ways.
He’s doing the same for Matthew Modine’s non-profit Bicycle for A Day project.
2:20pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Kalkin has also done work for a sustainable village in Afghanistan. A basic, low-tech version of his Brick House design. When combined with three other of the same structures, it creates a common space or courtyard and accessibility to much needed commerce and agriculture.
2:17pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Kalkin clearly moves back and forth between art installation and architect.
The contrast between shipping container and natural materials like wood bring to life the greater qualities of each material.
It’s nice to know you can get a garage with your shipping container home.
2:15pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Shipping containers have a simple feel about them. When they come together in numbers, the structure takes on a new kind of sophistication.
Shipping containers end up where there is no economic activity. Essentially, if you see a shipping container still, you know there’s very little economic life to that area.
2:14pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Check out the Illy shipping container.
2:14pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Illy bought a shipping container that Kalkin used as an art piece. He borrowed 1M dollars, day traded it, came out with 60k, which he then used to make the piece. He sold the piece for more than 1M.
Push button houses open up like flowers or, depending on your taste, a Transformer.
Kalkin is letting his work speak for itself. A nice change of pace here at TEDxAtlanta.
2:11pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Kalkin is showing us images of push-button houses. He uses shipping containers, along with a sophisticated hydraulic system to create a seven room apartment all contained in one shipping container.
2:10pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Why can’t more homes be like this.
2:08pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
Adam introduces us to an aircraft hanger he placed over a 100 year old cottage. People thought he didn't like doing roofwork.
It's really quite beautiful.
2:08pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
I live in a loft right next to the train tracks here in Atlanta. Cargo, cargo, cargo. I'm familiar with the form, and at times feel like I already live in a shipping container.
Love the intersection between housing and transportation that's emerging from these talks.
2:07pm
Currently speaking: Adam Kalkin
So what exactly does Kalkin do?
He repurposes shipping containers to create scalable, flexible and affordable housing for use in just about everything from disaster relief shelter to luxury home design. The original source for this inspiration, the docks outside his commute to New York City.
2:05pm
According to Fast Company, Kalkin is “one of architecture’s more unorthodox practitioners.” He’s also an original thinker, who takes a multi-disciplinary approach to his work. If you asked him what his job is, he wouldn’t say architect. Yet, he’s arguably one of the most important voices the field today.
2:05pm
Thanks, Ellen! Adam Kalkin is next.
2:04pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Our final challenge: Demand more sustainable suburban places. Culturally, we expect downtowns to be dynamic. We should have the same expectations for the suburbs.
2:03pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Instant urbanism and faux downtowns are not the answer. How we repurpose is really important. People will see through anything if it’s not authentic. People have to connect to what they see, not only what they’re offered.
2:03pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
But she also wants to improve architectural quality.
2:02pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
We need to plan retrofitting carefully. In a hundred years, Dunham-Jones and her students see a city with transit on all major rail and road corridors. 1000' buffers on all stream corridors.
2:01pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Re-greening also makes a lot of sense.
1:58pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
The opportunity in retrofitting is for public and private interests to create pockets of walkability, and corridors between places as well. Boulevards can become destinations instead of spaces only used for transition.
1:58pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Cape Cod and Lakewood Colorado have both repurposed their suburbs into community spaces.
Building up, not out, gives communities more options.
1:56pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
A packed house, a few laptops, one bow tie and a lot of great ideas.
1:55pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Or a restaurant. The power of food can regenerate neighborhoods. I feel that every day here in Atlanta in Inman Park.
There’s a need for third places. Places where people can go and congregate, create community.
1:53pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
What’s better, an empty mall, or a mall that used to be a mall that’s now an artist’s space, a nursing home, a public library?
We have the space and we have the buildings, but we’re not using them for what we really need.
I personally do not need another American Eagle Outfitter.
But I’ll take an independent record store. If those still exist.
1:52pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Demographers predict that by 2025, 75% of households will not have kids at home. Essentially, we want an urban lifestyle, but we’re living it in the suburbs. Why not design those places accordingly?
1:49pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Underperforming asphalt...open, flat spaces that do almost nothing.
2.8 million acres of greyfields to be available for repurposing by 2015.
1:48pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Drive till you qualify affordability is a canard. The commute alone takes back that gain. In 2005, suburban households spent 20% on housing, and 30% on gas.
But we can’t abandon the suburbs. We have to retrofit.
1:47pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Average urban dweller has about 1/3 the carbon footprint of the suburban dweller. One downside to urban living are uninsulated loft spaces.
I'm finding a new place, asap. Then again, I don't drive that much.
Public health is a big reason for retrofitting suburbia. Reinforcing sedentary life styles leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease.
The correlation...we don't walk anymore.
Apparently, the new cost of gas per gallon is an arm, leg or your first born.
1:45pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
I don't live in the suburbs. And now I know why.
But how do we reconstruct and re:purpose suburbia, which are now empty and underperforming in so many ways, and convert them into sustainable places.
This will allow us to redirect growth back into existing communitiies.
Why build more, when we already have places
1:45pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Retrofitting suburbia is the big project of the next 50 years.
1:43pm
Currently speaking: Ellen Dunham-Jones
Ellen Dunham Jones teaches architecture just down the street from Unboundary at Georgia Tech.
An award-winning architect, Dunham is also a board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Widely recognized as a leader in finding solutions for aging suburbs, Dunham-Jones co-authored Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesign Suburbs.
Before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Dunham-Jones worked in New York City as an architect, taught at UVA, MIT and at Lund University in Sweden.
1:43pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Amazing presentation. Up next: Ellen Dunham-Jones.
1:42pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
18 minutes almost over. Dense with information, I’m doing my best to narrate.
1:41pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Magic Mountain. No not the one in Orlando, but a project that’s designed to keep aging immigrants in Germany. Apparently, many Germans like to move away to Spain. The problem is that for every 3 Germans that leave, the country loses 1 job.
1:41pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Repurposing suburbia so that it provides a visionary image of what’s possible. Matthias understands, it seems to me, that in order for people to understand where they need to go, what they need to become, that they need to see it and be inspired by that vision.
1:40pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Moving on to Germany and a project called Geropolis.
1:38pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Put another way, it’s about Rural Urbanism.
1:37pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
It’s a bridging of local traditions and modern design. The result is that they are re:purposing the village to reconnect with nature, but not to the exclusion of the necessary urban environment.
1:37pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Architecturally, the redesign project created a hybrid between a typical village in the Ivory Coast and the typical use of vegetation.
1:36pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Project in Ivory Coast is the setting for a new project to redesign and re:purpose the role of the elderly within a small village.
1:34pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Re:aging...one-third of all Americans will live in a nursing home. It’s a storing device for the elderly. We have to rethink and re:purpose it.
1:33pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
We don’t have to go back to nature to get back in tune with it. Let’s fast-forward it so nature is in tune with us.
Atlanta, the city of trees, has now been renamed: MEtreepolis.
1:32pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Mangroves are a natural protector/barrier against Hurricanes. Why not incorporate that into buildings.
1:30pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Building for the future means anticipating our ecological future. Buildings that exist in a changing environment. The Netherlands is a prime example of how a country manages and adjusts to its environmental surroundings.
1:28pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
We live unsustainable lives because we're not in touch with nature: Architecture, meet nature; Nature, meet architecture.
1:26pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
The missing element in sustainability is POP. Take a green roof and communicate more than pure nature.
The Hearts Building in NYC. A great example of biomimicry, but it doesn't communicate that to the eye.
1:25pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Matthias tells his students that the business of building is actually more responsible for global warming than the Hummer.
Two big issues: Re:nature and Re:aging.
1:23pm
Currently speaking: Matthias Hollwich
Matthias is on stage.
Re:purpose...it's what architects do...but why?
1:21pm
Matthias Hollwich has two jobs. One is principle of HOLLWICHKUSHNER, LLC, a NYC-based architecture and concept design firm, where he and Marc Kushner create innovative and responsible man-made environments. One such project is called MEtreePOLIS the city of Atlanta re-imagined for the year 2106, in which plants produce electricity for the entire city, and green mega-structures climb up between buildings to supply them with energy. This work was on display this past year at the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy.
The other job is as co-founder of Architizer.
Launched this past year, Architizer, is an open platform social network that provides a place for architects, curators, clients, critics and fans to interact.
1:17pm
Tod is also thanking a few of our other partners, specifically, Artistic Image, Sheryl Jessing Productions, New London Communications and Portfolio Center.
1:16pm
Another big partner in putting on this event is the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
1:15pm
The talks are about to begin.
12:58pm
We’re taking a break for lunch and will be back with our first speaker at 1:15.
12:51pm
In addition to A Capella and Turner Broadcasting, we’ve also got our friends from Me to We Style in Canada. They’re a new social enterprise committed to providing ethically manufactured, quality apparel for the socially-conscious consumer.
12:46pm
Guests will now eat lunch. After, Matthais Hollwich will give us our first talk.
12:46pm
Zoë Keating just finished up her first set for TEDxAtlanta. She'll be back at the end of the day to send us off, again, with optimism.
12:46pm
Optimism: Beautiful.
12:40pm
The third piece is entitled, Optimist.
12:38pm
Zoë Keating laying down a percussive track for her second piece.
12:34pm
For those that are interested, videos of Zoë’s performance, as well as the talks that will follow, will be available for viewing online at some point in the near future.
12:34pm
The percussion has now moved to recorded layer. She’s building as much as she's playing.
12:34pm
A moving piece by Zoë Keating. Her second piece is taking on a much different, more percussive tone.
12:31pm
Beginning to hear the layers already. Software is helping one cellist become many.
12:30pm
Starting with a piece that is a mix of old and new.
12:27pm
Zoë takes the stage!
Zoë Keating isn’t your average cellist. With just her cello and a small box of electronics, Zoë records multiple layers of music, using a number of foot pedals to create new sounds that transform her solo performances into full, multipart compositions.
Zoë studied at Sarah Lawrence in New York City, as well as Scuola di Musica die Fiesole in Italy.
Zoë’s records include One Cello x16: Natoma, which rose to #1 on iTunes Classical and #2 on the iTunes Electronica charts. She?s performed her music live on NPR, and toured across the United States and Europe.
12:25pm
A big part of TEDxAtlanta is to gather and collaborate with local talents, resources, thinkers and companies. A Capella Books is one. Turner Broadcasting is another.
12:20pm
Tod Martin, CEO of Unboundary, kicks it off with a few opening words. Mute your cell phones.
12:18pm
A little context for you all. This is the Thunderdome, our event space at Unboundary.
The music is chiming. Seats are filling up. TEDxAtlanta is about to start.
12:12pm
Frank and his assistant from A Capella books (in Little 5 Points) are here to share some of the good words our speakers have put into print.
12:06pm
Molly and Sherry greeting guests.
12:00pm
Hello everyone. This is Peter Short, official live-blogger for TEDxAtlanta today. I work for Unboundary, an Atlanta-based design firm that helps companies act on what matters so that they can stay relevant, competitive and meaningful. We also happen to host TEDxAtlanta.
Today is our second TEDx, and the organizing theme for today is “Re:purpose?” six talks that address the things around us that hold potential beyond our expectations. Today’s speakers will talk about how they’ve repurposed things in a way that gives them new, often greater, value.
Today’s speakers include Melissa Kushner, found of Goods for Good; Kevin and Hannah Salwen, the father-daughter team who co-authored The Power of Half; Ellen Dunham-Jones, GaTech architecture professor and board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism; Matthias Hollwich, co-founder of the architecture and design social network, Architizer; Steve Mugiri, writer and editor of AfriGadget; and Adam Kalkin, who best known for his work in repurposing shipping containers for scalable, affordable housing.
Opening and closing today’s event will be cellist and composer, Zoë Keating.
One last note. Originally scheduled to speak, Jeff Seabright, VP of Environment and Water Resources for The Coca-Cola Company, will not be speaking today. There’s a good chance, though, that he’ll be appearing at future TEDxAtlanta event.