Envisioning the X-Prize: How Lessons from the Space Industry May Help Architects Transform the Built Environment

Registration began in the outdoor entrance courtyard which was graced with tables and umbrellas and beautiful Spanish tiles and a fountain.  Jonathan Bahe, Managing Director at DFC and past President/Chairman of the Board at AIAS (the American Institute of Architects- Students), was there, preparing the name tags atop a skirted table stacked full with shiny new white books, one of which each of us would later own (as all delegates were given a copy): "Making the Invisible Visible- Essays by the Fellows of the International Leadership Forum" (edited by Richard Farson), c. 2009, Western Behavioral Sciences Institute and individual authors ; it is truly a compendium of thoughtful writings by uniquely endowed people. I highly recommend it.



Upon approaching the registration table, I was warmly greeted by various Senior Fellows of the DFC management team, who invited us all to grab our seminar packages, name badges, books, etc. and find our assigned seats. 

I recognized that participating in this event was the opportunity of a lifetime to learn from the best men and women in architecture and interior design-- those who represented a citadel of knowledge and power in the world of architecture.

Jim Cramer is the leader of this event and is also Chairman & CEO of the Greenway Group in Norcross, Georgia; Jim founded the Design Futures Council in 1994.  He is also founding editor and publisher of DesignIntelligence and has authored many articles on leadership, creativity, change, and organizational design. You may have read some of his books and articles, many of which can be found on www.di.net. 

Other Keynote speakers were to include: Michael Schrage, Research Fellow, MIT Sloan School's Center for Digital Business; Frank Gehry, Founder & Partner, Gehry Partners; Arol Wolford, President, SmartBIM; Denis Weil, VP, Concept & Design, McDonald's;  and Jim Cramer himself, Senior Fellow and foresight advisor of the Design Futures Council and also a former executive vice president and CEO of the American Institute of Architects....along with several other notable speakers and attendees (referred to as Delegates) and other Senior Fellows of The Design Futures Council (DFC).

As a new blogger on AIA KnowledgeNet and sole practitioner working from home, primarily focused on raising my family, I wondered what contribution I could share with those in such high-powered positions? I admit, it was a bit intimidating.  Yet, I looked upon it as an opportunity to learn a great deal and possibly spark or engage some interesting conversation; not the least of which, I would return to report here on this venue, starting with this initial blog- my perspective of the Leadership Summit. 


Being instructed that our assigned table numbers were cleverly written on the backs of our name badges, I made my way to the table in the far back corner of the room, nearest the window overlooking the Pacific ocean and the dining balcony of the restaurant a split level below. Per the place cards arranged on the round table top, Jane Poynter would be seated at our table. She had not yet taken her seat.

To my left, were Daipayan Bhattacharya, Vice President, Business Development & Technology of Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope (I was intrigued to learn that he is an electrical engineer) and Andrew Arnold, Vice President Product Management of SmartBIM; sharing stories about our kids and our arrival experiences and our expectations of the event, I found both Mr. Bhattacharya and Mr. Arnold very genuine and easy to talk with. We were later joined by another friendly and talented delegate, Michael Lubbers, Senior Designer, Wight & Company. 

When Jane arrived, the conversation became infused with star power. Yet, Jane was very down-to-earth and made great small-talk with the two gentlemen sitting next to me.  I awaited my turn to be introduced.

Prior to her arrival, I had been learning how to use my digital camera and still in dismay over the abrupt news that someone had just casually yet discreetly shared with me out by the skirted table: "I understand that Frank won't be here." "What? Why not?," I questioned audibly.  I was disappointed.

But, I reminded myself, that attending this seminar was not all about getting to be in the presence of Frank Gehry, a starchitect extraordinaire, although that would have been nice.

No, actually, it was about learning something profound from the speakers as well as the attendees- a group of highly successful architects and business owners who'd chosen to gather together to learn more about innovation. I was looking for a "sermon on the mount" type of experience. And I expected Jim and company to deliver. (More on that in a later blogpost).

Jane wowed us with her fast-moving slide presentation of the biosphere years, including photos of her and her husband riding at 85 degree angles on huge motorcycles. "Be careful! Watch out or you might fall...." were heralded as things you simply DON'T say...or you may just wind up in the sand with dirt in your teeth, she said. Pictures of fellow emaciated biosphere residents (...and, no, she later informed us, no pizza(s) were ever delivered- too hard to fit through the pinky-sized hole in the curtain wall somewhere) engaged in mud-wrestling drew very few laughs. (Didn't that sport peak in 1980?). I personally wanted to roar with laughter...but then again, sometimes we architects prefer to maintain more decorum at important functions and tend to laugh at things in the same way that audiences politely clap at golf tournaments.

The most memorable moment in Jane's speech was when she spoke about her best friend, Gabby- Arizona Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords- who had dominated the news even as she spoke. She asked us if we could have a moment of silence to think of her, send her positive thoughts, and, if inclined, to pray. Later that night, I was thrilled to hear CNN announce Gabrielle Giffords made a remarkable response, with her husband by her side, shortly after a visit from President Obama and The First Lady.  I couldn't help but think our brief time of silence contributed to her initial signs of recovery.

Much of what Jane Poynter said was understood viscerally, not really able to be put into an easy 1,2,3, a, b,c outline. My notes echo her talk, which emphasized big concepts like: Solar energy, the X-1, the 1947 test flight that broke the sound barrier; or how Spaceship 1 took 40 years to get...my notes trail off.

She spoke of the "X-prize " and asked not rhetorically, but expectantly, "Why don't we have an X-prize for the built environment?" She explained how Lindbergh's flight was an effort to win the X-prize, suggesting that people will pay a ton of money to win an award and in the process, discover the next big thing humanity needs. Paul Allen funded Spaceship One, she reminded us. And Sir Richard Branson is now taking it on: "$200,000.00 to travel to space/the moon and back. "Tourism in Space!" she exclaimed.

She described the Biosphere project as "trying to reconstruct the world's biosphere and jam it into a mayonnaise bottle."

Her piece of the project was the organic growing agriculture piece- grown like using ancient Chinese "thinking"..."oh, and to grow it without technology or fertilizer!"

Biosphere was Nasa-funded--- in terms of information (not money). It was mostly privately funded, she emphasized.  And doctors had refused to sign off on it due to germs, etc. She said it really was totally sealed (only a pinky-sized leakage); huge expansion and contraction was enabled by the space frame and the external "lung-type" buildings that tied into the main structure, from what I could see of the slides.

She said the biggest challenge was sealing the glass curtain wall.

Jane's main point in her pep-talk to us beleaguered, if not still thought-leaders in architecture- was "Where you look is where you go." That's when she showed us her amazing, "Evel Knievel" style daredevil motorcycle photos- apparently, she and her husband as well as the very feminine Gabrielle Giffords all like to ride motorcycles!

"Target fixation" was another term Jane threw at us. "If you're not careful, you might run into something." In other words, "you get what you expect." So, expect the best. 

Jane's vision of Paragon is: 'We are going to be the company that designs the support systems for life on Mars.'

Jane's presentation quickly ran through the course of history of flight and how aeronautical spacecraft engineers successfully launched, essentially, a 6-story building off the ground, beating gravity and maneuvering it through the sound barrier, sailing it into orbit, landing it on the moon, and gently bringing it back by engineering it to fall at carefully calculated degrees until landing it safely back on earth. 

"Break it often and early"- was another work model Jane suggested we follow- one that must strike most of us as odd.  She said, "In aerospace, we fail big.  We blow stuff up.  We have to.  We have to break stuff."

Then, she asked us, "What is the X-Plane in this industry? What is the experimental failure?  Are there any?"

And, knowing our types, she addressed our collective unspoken concerns, saying: "I'm not talking about a bridge failure."  She continued to say, "I'm asking: Is there enough government funding in your industry to even support such a colossal research effort?"

At Jane's company, they understand that "screw-ups happen."  But, "it's the recovery that counts."   This is how they innovate; innovation is infused through her company like her strange example of "bacon-infused Vodka."

She encourages her staff to push through, break it, and try again.  In doing so, they will indeed create the ABS (Autonomous Biological System) to support plant growth on Mars.  This project (I think it's called "Lunar Oasis"- growing a plant on the moon" is for the ISS Research Market and is patented.  It is Japanese-funded and NASA has agreed to fly it, though it's mostly privately-funded. She noted the funding was a consortium of private, government, and university funding.

Jane brought up the example of the "Cargo Lifter" project in East Germany- "a huge hangar that you can literally fly," she said.  She continued to explain that it was a fantastic idea, one that would use the technology of blimps to move huge cargo around.  "Their problem was," she explained, "they fell in love with ONE particular way of designing a Blimp.  So, the whole thing/project collapsed."

"Systems engineering." she said, pausing for a moment.  "Set the top level requirements"...and then she added, jokingly, tauntingly, "i.e., like: it's got to be an incredibly UGLY box!" She stood there smiling wryly with a slide of a non-descript big box store up on the screen.

Continuing on to make her point, she said, "...suppose it's got to be CHEAP (inexpensive), house a lot of stuff, etc."

More slides were shown- maybe I was daydreaming or looking out the window for a moment- not sure.  But, the next thing I have written in my notes is Jane talking about how, in her space project, "they were going to drive the cost down by 2 orders of magnitude."

"Excellent design meets or exceeds all requirements." she said.  [my thoughts: So, does this mean that it meets budgetary constraints?  But, you get what you pay for...don't you?]

She concluded by noting that "today, we have incredible pressure to reduce C02 and watch the water consumption/efficiency."

Last slide shown was of Superman flying through the air with a caption that read: "Flying like Superman is awfully fun, it's the ground that hurts!"  And she concluded by saying: "The key is to crash safely.  Don't design buildings that fall down.  Instead, test them in the laboratory."

Through her talk, Jane made the giant leap from the example of men heeding the call of President Kennedy to put a man on the moon to asking us what kinds of feats must we attempt in the built environment?  She is concerned about the atmosphere, pollution, the health of our oceans.  She spoke of Americans' seemingly careless attitude as evidenced by our insistence on driving huge SUV's (yes, I own one) and our dependence on oil.  Back at our table, in small talk with just us 5 folks, she asked in earnest in her fast-paced British accent, "Don't they realize that this lifestyle cannot be sustained?"

After her presentation, Jane did not stick around for too long.   She sat at the table for a little while, very fidgety, and next thing I knew, she had disappeared.  True to form for an entrepreneur who is out to save the planet by sending small plants to survive on the moon and eventually on Mars. 

If her company can attempt to do that,...well, it begs the question: why can't we attempt to do whatever it is that we think we need to do?  Or have we already done it, whatever it is?  Was LEED the equivalent of our first X-Plane/X-Prize?  If so, what's next?  What else is it that we need to be doing?  Whatever it is, Jane's point is simple: make our case and get private funding-- or a trio of private/government/academic-- funding to support it.

I love Jane Poynter's challenge to create an X-Prize for the built environment.  I see it as a call to thoughtful action for all architects- no matter your background and experience.

What will be the X-Prize for the built environment?  And, who is going to fund it?

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As the Summit lasted a day and a half, there's much more to share; this is the first in a series of blogs on topics discussed and wisdom shared at the Design Futures Council- Seventh Annual Leadership Summit: Design Innovation and Technology at the La Valencia Hotel, La Jolla, CA on January 12-13, 2011.


Next Topic: "Good Ideas are BAD..."- per Michael Schrage in his talk titled: "Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate: Redefining not just how innovation is done but what innovation means"