Creative Class

“As far as airlines are concerned, you are no longer just a passenger. You are an opportunity to raise “ancillary revenue.” And when it comes to charging for things that were once free, the sky’s the limit. In just a few short months, the airlines have discovered to their glee that their customers are willing to pay for most everything from checked bags to soft drinks to pillows and blankets — and are doing so without much fuss. With that knowledge in hand, the airlines aren’t about to stop.”‘

Chris Bowers, who is one of the most insightful political commentators around, has a must-read essay, “The End of Bubba Dominance,” on the tectonic shifts that are reshaping American politics over at The Nation (non-gated version here).

Major realignments are, in my view, largely class-based. It was the rise of the working class as a coherent Democratic force under FDR which consolidated the period of Democratic dominance in 1932. Since the late 60s, political scientists say we’ve seen realignment – which makes sense actually in light of the ongoing underlying shift in the economy and class structure – the decline of the working class and the rise of the creative and service classes.

The real key to long-lasting realignment turns on which party can organize, or at least aggregate, the creative class. The Democrats have advantage with their posture on social freedoms and self-expression as well as the environment and health care. But the GOP has advantage too, with its inclination toward economic freedom, market forces, entrepreneurship, and free trade. Obama is a unique candidate in that he appeals to younger voters and African-Americans as well as the creative class, so he has an almost peculiar ability to mobilize new voters in ways other candidates might not.

Bowers argues we may not be at the point of realigmnet yet, but the GOP can no longer count on members of the anxiety of declining class groups to swing elections.

For my money, I believe Obama can make a cross-class appeal by emphasizing one simple message: every single American worker is creative, and the task of economic policy is to enhance, encourage, and reward that creative effort – in everything from manufacturing and services to arts and high tech.

Do you think Obama can realign the American electorate by organizing the creative class and building a stable cross-class coalition? Can McCain appeal to enough independents as well as key GOP constituencies to prevail? Or is a realignment still a ways off?

In the past, if managers noticed someone not at their desk, they probably assumed the employee was slacking off. Today the slacker may be the person sitting alone at their desk.

Increasingly, workplaces today are designed to foster collaboration. Bright people working together typically solve problems faster and innovate better than individuals working alone. Some people work in assigned teams. Others more fluidly connect with whomever they need to accomplish a task at a given time.

One result is that productive people are often absent from their desks.

Consider these stats from well-known companies who undertook surveys of office utilization:

• Bank of America found that office usage rates in some departments were 14% (86% were empty at any given time!)
• Cisco Systems discovered an average office occupancy rate of 35%
• Capital One found assigned desk and office utilization rates as low as 5%.
• Accenture discovered its offices were empty 75% of the time.

While offices were poorly utilized, employees often complained about the lack of meeting rooms or could be found huddled in hallways or crammed into one person’s office.

There are numerous conclusions to draw from this, one key lesson is that traditional workplaces are not meeting the needs of the 21st century knowledge economy.

These companies noted above (along with many more including most of their competitors) have implemented (or been working toward implementing) a more mobile and flexible approach to designing their workplaces.

At Capital One and Bank of America, for example, workers were given a choice of either having their own desk and/or office (depending upon what they did) or being a mobile worker. A desk worker was expected to keep regular hours and use their desk. Mobile workers could work wherever they wanted and needed to do their job — home, client office, coffee shop, branch office, or a touch-down space at corporate headquarters.

Apparently, the majority, offered the opportunity, choose to be mobile. Mobile workers for Capital One are typically issued lap tops, video iPods, and cell phones.

The well-documented Capital One workplace offers employees a wide range of seating options when at “the office.” Quiet rooms exist for head-down work that requires concentration. Bookable small medium and large meeting rooms are there for small groups or conference calls. Open areas with moveable desks and furniture are offered so employees can create the space they need and interact spontaneously, sharing ideas.

Although they have a choice to work from home when it makes sense, it should be noted that most employees of companies creating mobile workforces are not telecommuting on a daily basis. Many will work from home occasionally when they need to work independently, but not all the time.

Few companies that require creative thought and collaborative work can afford to have their talent working in silos the majority of the time – whether in private offices with doors closed or at their homes. Thousands of wheels will be continually reinvented, and no one would get around to creating an automobile.

What about you? Does your work involve sharing ideas and collaborating to solve problems? Does your workplace foster collaboration as well as it could?

Live from YouTube come these incredible satellite videos of the world at night (h/t: Felix Salmon). Members of Expedition 6 to the International Space Station attempted to record these images and the results were merely blurs. Since then, they have managed to assemble a tracking system and manually cancel orbital motion and obtain, for the first time, sharp images of cities from space.

Take an orbital tour around the world and see cities at night.

Paul Goldberger’s article in the September Vanity Fair about the runaway success of 15 Central Park West, the new building designed by Robert A. M. Stern, made me wonder if Robber Barons (domestic or otherwise) are the only ones buying anything here these days.

Reports from my circle of designers/architects and store owners are a little surprising – sure there are slow and even flat sales, and some busts, but more than a few are up from last year even without the big windfalls that the uber-wealthy generate – this from people selling carpet, lighting, furniture, toys, etc.

Calm before the storm? Maybe, but let’s be somewhat hopeful. Stacations may belie that new sofa purchase, but who’s complaining?

David Galenson, the University of Chicago economist who has written on the difference between conceptual (read: young) and pragmatic (that is, older) creatives, has a new paper on architects at the National Bureau of Economic Research (via Freakonomics):

A survey of textbooks reveals that Le Corbusier was the greatest architect of the twentieth century, followed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The same evidence shows that the greatest architects alive today are Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano. Scholars have long been aware of the differing approaches of architects who have embraced geometry and those who have been inspired by nature, but they have never compared the life cycles of these two groups. The present study demonstrates that, as in other arts, conceptual architects have made their greatest innovations early in their careers, whereas experimental architects have done their most important work late in their lives. Remarkably, the experimentalists Le Corbusier and Frank Gehry designed their greatest buildings after the age of 60, and Frank Lloyd Wright designed his after 70.

I recently had dinner with Gehry who is designing our new building for the Art Galley of Ontario and someone asked him who were his favorite younger architects. He hesitated. I remember thinking at the time: architects only become successful after fairly long careers. He then hesitatingly responded: “Rem Koolhaus and Zaha Hadid.” They still have plenty of time to join the rank of star-chitects

Writing in the New York Sun, Harvard’s Ed Glaeser reviews Harm de Blij’s new book,“The Power of Place (h/t: Mark Thoma):

But the flat world experienced by the globe-trotting management consultant is only the wealthiest and most air-conditioned sliver of the globe … Place is powerful indeed. People born in America or Europe are much more likely to end up wealthy and healthy than people born in the developing world. Life expectancy in Sweden and Japan is over 80, while life expectancy in Zimbabwe is under 45. The success of New York reflects the power of place to foment creativity and productivity by speeding the flow of ideas.

In his book, Mr. de Blij addresses some of the most fundamental questions in geography: Are differences across space man-made or nature’s handiwork? Is globalization homogenizing the world, and is that a good thing? Should political power be held by large nation states or devolved to smaller geographic units?

The Department of Transportation is making way for thousands of new bike racks around the city. Mr. Byrne’s will be the most visible, a fact that may position him as the symbol of the civic virtues of cycling. But soft-spoken, curious and culturally omnivorous, he’s never quite been the celebrity spokes-model type. Besides, he said, “I don’t think people are going to switch over to bikes because it’s good for them or because it’s politically correct. They’re going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster.”

He has a similarly plain-spoken explanation for his own riding. “It’s a little faster than walking,” he said. “It feels good if the weather’s O.K., and if you see something that interests you, you just stop.”

Mr. Byrne isn’t anticipating a revolution, but he does sense a shift in the wind. Riding a bicycle, “used to be completely uncool,” he said. “Now it’s cool in different ways: for some people it’s cool if you have an old junker. For other people it’s cool if you have a racing bike.

Anyway, it doesn’t immediately relegate you to nerd status anymore.”

Last week I attended the Academy of Management Meetings in Anaheim, California. I was struck by two worlds of fantasy: Disneyland and the Creative Class. One from the past, one from the future. While a few years ago the world of management was full of old white men, today I came face-to-face with the creative class from around the world. When you meet young people from the four corners of the world, they all have had the same vision of the future from different pasts. How do I know this?

My good friend Bernard Yeung (BY) was named the new dean of the NUS Business School in Singapore. I went to the reception in his honor. The room was an experience from another world- a fantasy: white chocolate covered appetizers, cool mood music, even cooler lighting, and long drinks. From around the world the creative class mingled and contemplated the future of the world. While Disney created a make-believe future for us to experience for $75, the creative class is creating a real future for us to live in.

This future is being created in many places and Singapore is just one of them. See the post by Bob Wuebker the other day. But how are the youth creating the future, this new “Disney”? (see the post by David Miller). The answer to that was found in a set of interesting sessions at the Academy: It is in the mind. Neuro-economics is the frontier. Decision-making through the lens of neuro-economics. Is home economics a myth? Should organizations care? How do entrepreneurs think? How does the creative class think?

What we have is the intersection of a set of disciplines: neuroscience, biology, economics, cognition, game theory, entrepreneurship, and experimental economics that is shaping a new world. This transdisciplinary way of thinking is influenced by emotions, preferences, utility, rationality, behavior, and rewards. All of this can help us figure out how the creative class makes decisions about their future. Go figure. Thank you BY.

What makes the contemporary city successful, livable, humane, yet also inspirational?

With this Creative Class Exchange, my intent is to offer snapshots of the exemplars of 21^st century architecture and urbanism and how existing paradigms are being challenged by new modes of urban life.

How can architecture support and inspire creativity and life?

Week 2: New Opera House Oslo

The New Opera House Oslo is a spectacular fusion of landscape and architecture, urbanism and the art of opera located on the Bjørvika peninsula. Both an iconic abstraction of Norway’s geography and an engaging yet monumental public gathering place, the design demonstrates how architecture can add exponential value to what ultimately might have been a simple yet highly functional container for performance. Designed by Snohetta, an innovative architectural and design practice based in Oslo, the concept breaks from the paradigm of the opera ‘house’ to create a hybridized form that effectively acquires the audience and the city as actors in the drama of urban dwelling.

The design transforms what was formerly a flat, industrial waterfront site into a public terrain that relates to the landscape of fjords and hills surrounding Oslo. The architecture has three major elements: a white stone ‘carpet’ of tilted and flat planes that creates a public promenade around, above, and behind the House; a timber ‘wave’ wall that wraps the auditorium and defines the perimeter of the site between land and water; and a metal clad ‘factory’ which houses the functional components of the opera house. Viewed from the water, the timber wave wall is visible as a central figure in this new urban hill: the simultaneous expression of cultural sustainability and city building, both icon and memorable public landscape.

The concept of encompassing terraced stairs and landscapes around a building has precursors in early modernism (i.e. the Villa Malaparte at Capri) as well as later modernism (i.e. Tadeo Ando’s Chikatsu-Asuka Historical Museum). The New Opera House extends the trope of landscape as urban architecture and situates itself within a trajectory of projects of early 21^st century projects – from the Yokohama Pier and Terminal designed by Foreign Office Architects to Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park designed by Weiss Manfredi – demonstrating how the fusion of creative thinking and collaborative design can produce immediate and long-term value for broader acts of waterfront development and urban revitalization.

From left: 1) Yokohoma International Port Terminal (Foreign Office Architects); 2) Chikatsu-Asuka Historical Museum (Tadao Ando); 3) Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park (Weiss/Manfredi); 4) Villa Malaparte (Adalberto Libera)

Photographic credit for New Opera House Oslo: Images taken from the Snohetta AS website: www.snoarc.no – Copyright: Snohetta

Photographic credit for banner above:

1) Image taken from arcspace: www.arcspace.com/architects/foreign_office/yokohama/yokohama_index.htm

2) Image taken from: Jodidio, Philip. “Ando – Complete Works”. Taschen (2004), pg. 211

3) Image taken from: Weiss/Manfredi website: www.weissmanfredi.com/projects/index.php

4) Image taken from: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia user “Arnaud 25″: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Malaparte