In early 2014 I got a chance to join Tony Hsieh's $350 million dollar city revitalization project in downtown Las Vegas called The Downtown Project. I led an internal team called City Science, our purpose was to improve innovation by measuring, analyzing and improving collisions.
A highly collisionable city is a city that works like a community where the simple process of living your life means you run into friends, share ideas and develop trust in each other. From these interactions strong social bonds are formed which lead to increased innovation, productivity and entrepreneurial success.
To achieve this kind of a city we used a guiding philosophy, "prioritize collisions over convenience". (Check out this interview with Tony Hsieh for an expanded explanation) One interesting project we worked on was imagining what a building might look like that forces maximum collisions.
We wanted a design where there was only one way to enter and exit the building. We also wanted it to force you to pass everyone else in the building to maximize possible collisions. That lead us to the thought of a spiral building design but the idea stalled there, until I had a fittingly random collision on a street corner with Matthew Rosenberg the founder of M-Rad Architecture. With his help we were able to turn these concepts into beautiful renderings.
At the time the Downtown Project was underway with the now currently open Downtown Container Park. A small business incubator that gives many first time entrepreneurs a chance to experiment with their entrepreneurial ideas. Some unique characteristics about that design was the potential interchangeability, low in environmental impact and cost savings of using repurposed shipping containers.
With the goal of building on the Container Park's design and achieving maximum collisions we started designing this corkscrew structure. An elevator can initially takes you to the top of the tower then a spiraling walkway can take you the rest of the way down forcing you to pass the front of each open glass container.
Ultimately the idea stayed in the concept phase but there was certainly a lot learned from the experience. It was great to start a serious conversation about updating the status quo when it comes to the environments we spend most of our lives in.
References
- Huge thank you to Matthew Rosenberg and his team at M-Rad architecture for the design rendering.