Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1177

I am all booked for my annual retreat to the mountains, which means I now have snowboarding on the brain. This year we are headed back to Whistler (/Powder Mountain) so that we can all check heli boarding (and heli skiing) off the bucket list. That’s one goal – among a few others – that I plan to accomplish in 2017.

If you don’t snowboard (or ski), this probably means nothing to you. It can be hard to explain the feeling. Thankfully,  Christian Haller (Swiss snowboarder), Kris Lüdi, and Stephan Maurer have just released a short film that may very well be the closest approximation to the real thing. It’s called GLUE .

The whole point of the movie is to portray, in an authentic and visual way, what it’s like to snowboard. To do that, a lot of the footage was shot using a “follow cam.” There are also a lot of close-up shots. I just love the perspectives when it kicks in at 1:50.

If you can’t see the video below, click here . And if snow and snowboarding aren’t your thing, check back tomorrow for regular scheduled programming.

[vimeo 190544188 w=640 h=360]

GLUE from Christian Haller on Vimeo .

On Friday, November 25th, NXT City will be hosting a one-day symposium here in Toronto (re:Public) that brings together some of the top people, projects, and ideas in the world of public spaces. Following that will be an after party (called NXT City Night) that runs from 8pm to very late. :)

Here are some of the organizations that will be represented at the symposium: City of Toronto, Uber, CivicAction, Monocle, Arup, STEPS Initiative, Breather, The Laneway Project, Oxford Properties, as well as many others. It will be a great event.

For the full speaker list, the agenda, and to buy tickets, click here . There’s an under 35 / student offering for both the symposium during the day and the after party at night. If you attend during the day though, you automatically get a pass to the after-party. I hope to see you there.

Here’s a time lapse video from NXT City Night (edition 2015). If you can’t see it below, click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i6R687sdk0?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

The world-renowned design firm IDEO is known for hiring people described as being “t-shaped.” Here’s a quote from an interview with CEO Tim Brown explaining what that means:

“T-shaped people have two kinds of characteristics, hence the use of the letter “T” to describe them. The vertical stroke of the “T” is a depth of skill that allows them to contribute to the creative process. That can be from any number of different fields: an industrial designer, an architect, a social scientist, a business specialist or a mechanical engineer. The horizontal stroke of the “T” is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It is composed of two things. First, empathy. It’s important because it allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective - to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Second, they tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. T-shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills.”

For an interdisciplinary design firm like IDEO, I’m sure you can see why the above would be important. But I also think it’s hugely important for those of us who work in the arena of the built environment.

City building projects don’t get accomplished by individuals, alone, or “I-shaped people” who don’t play well with others. They get accomplished by people with breadth in their skills and by large cohesive teams with vastly different core competencies. The notion of the individual genius is overplayed.

New buildings, for instance, typically involve a coming together of the project team (hugely diverse in and of itself), the city, the community, and other stakeholders. You can try and bully your way through that process or you can try and navigate through with empathy.

Based on the tremendous success of firms like IDEO, one could certainly argue that creativity and innovation seem to thrive more on empathy.