“The concept of integrated design is key to a sustainable future and ultimately quality of life,”
Laura Lee
Just as Finith Jernigan’s Makers of the Environment envisioned the average American benefitting from building information modeling (BIM),
Professor Laura Lee’s vision for South Australia reads like an integrated design strategy for every man, woman and child throughout the world.
While her publication was prepared as a series of recommendations to the South Australia government, upon reading it, it soon becomes clear that she had more universal applications in mind.
With her report, “An Integrated Design Strategy for South Australia – Building the Future,” Lee envisions a framework for uniting sustainability, behavior, materials and the external environment into a whole that satisfies the needs of people, environment and place.
I’ve read the report from beginning to end a couple times now and am happy to share my, however haphazard, impressions.
The excellent introduction acknowledges the potential – and urgency – of the state of the world today: the perfect set-up for what’s to come.
It answers why anyone would want to read this report – and, as importantly, why now.
Instead of just writing about design, the booklet (as a product) itself is a perfect argument for the value of good design.
Little touches – such as the global quotes in blue and local quotes in orange – and larger ones: that it is so well written, edited, illustrated and like all great works of art, all-of-a-piece.
Like the integrated design process itself, the report contains myriad voices (a strategy and conclusion I also came to for my own book on Integrated Design.)
From now on, all Integrated Design books really ought to be crowdsourced.
In fact, Lee had 15 partners (represented by 24 people) in the residency, only 4 of whom were designers, which if it was a challenge, doesn’t show.
The report leaves you with the impression that it was created by a singular sensibility in that it has one, compelling voice throughout.
Stevie Summer’s diagrams are intelligent and truly mesmerizing: the perfect accompaniment for the text.
The natural imagery of many of these diagrams – conch shells, DNA – are intertwined & interrelated with the book’s theme and text. Stunning.
Professor Lee invested so much time in the diagrams because she is interested in raising visual literacy.
Interestingly, it soon becomes apparent that the process in conceiving the report served as a model for those she worked with along the way for the integrated design process itself. What an effective way for those she worked with to ‘get’ integrated design.
One of the most appealing attributes of the report is that the overall tone and word choice is strangely non-academic. This is a report anyone could love.
Lee, for example, quotes Dan Pink where she could have quoted Roger Martin. In fact, the report verges on being populist were it not for the fact that the whole thing is so smart.
Because this does not read like research, one can see how it will be implemented (and not – like so many reports – sit on the shelf.)
By the time the reader gets to the end, they’ll recognize that the very tenets of integrated design went into the making of this brilliant and beautiful document.
The tone throughout is optimistic, forward-looking: exactly what it needs to be. No need to threaten readers with impending apocalypse (it doesn’t.)
Most reports and books fizzle out near the end – having spent all their ammo in the first half (if not the first chapter.) Here, some of the best, freshest information and diagrams occur in the recommendations section of the report, near the end, what Professor Lee calls “the heart and the future of the work.”
Many, many more people need to read this report.
Professor Lee is in the process of making an Integrated Design Strategy guidebook with roadmaps for each recommendation along with best practices, weblinks, and case studies and a website with PDF downloads that hopefully will be available soon.
Read the final report of Professor Laura Lee, Adelaide Thinker in Residence in 2009.
Read about Martin Seligman and other thinkers in residence http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/ including Prof. Laura Lee http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/thinkers/lee/
Read more about Laura Lee, FAIA http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/thinkers/lee/who.aspx
Check out these videos featuring Laura Lee, and also this and this video
And look into the integrated design work of other thinkers and makers, including Renée Cheng, Daniel Friedman, Frances Bronet, Ann Dyson, Billie Faircloth, Kiel Moe and many more.
