NYC DESIGN SEASON

A/D/O at Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

URBAN-X Smart Cities

I decided to start this year's design month by attending Urban-X at A/D/O. Let me start by talking about A/D/O, the new design hub in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As they put it: the center is a "creative space dedicating to exploring the boundaries of design". The building is an industrial shed with a very urban Brooklyn style. Graffiti in the outer walls, concrete floors, brick walls and bright fluorescent lights. It gives an air of manufacture, or a feeling of production that's very inspiring. It's the home for startups and a place that stimulates innovation without any doubt.

I went there with the idea of learning about how innovation in technology and transportation is already shaping the way cities are lived and how they will be designed or redesigned in - hopefully - a near future. I left the event with my heart pounding for realizing how much us as a society need to invest in the companies that made their pitches. We need to invest not revenue (although I suppose it is never un-welcomed) but energy, time, consciousness, interest and every kind of support we can think of.

The agenda for the evening started with a short pitch from Via's CEO and was followed by short pitches from the eight companies that were participating at the second program of this venture accelerator: 0202 Facewear, Citiesense, Envairo, Revmax, Sencity, Contextere, Upcycles and Wearworks. All had in their core the cities and humans that inhabit them.

I strongly recommend for you to visit the URBAN-X website and watch the entire video of the pitches, if you don't have the time just read their summary of each start-up, go check their websites. And if you really don't have that much time I leave you a few thoughts of my favorites.

0202 showed their air mask for polluted cities that let people see each other smiles.

Wearworks brought sensitiveness for the visually impaired to run marathons.

Upcycles gave the middle finger to robots and highlighted how we underestimate ourselves as a specie.

This was an inspirational evening, and even though technology is not my comfort zone I was able to relate to every one of these people, who have other people as their focus for developing their business. I hope someday I can have a project of my own that make people in an audience feel like I did yesterday.