I was driving around over the weekend, exploring my new neighborhood in LA when something bright and futuristic caught my eye. It was the BP gas station on the corner of Robertson and Olympic. The station was covered by an oddly shaped canopy made out of shiny triangles of stainless steel. Lights that changed colors were projected onto the stainless steel panels filling the station with beautiful ambient lights. Gasoline was priced the same as other stations nearby, but the cutting edge design made it stand out from its competitors. Turns out, this is the nation’s first LEED certified green gas station.

Dubbed the Helios House, it is part of BP’s retail innovation initiative designed to increase customer loyalty and drive up sales. Here are some highlights of the LEED certified station:

- The stainless steel canopy is completely recyclable
- 90 solar panels on the canopy produce the amount of annual energy needed to power two to three average American homes
- LED lighting is used throughout the site, focusing light where it’s needed and using less energy to get the same brightness
- A green roof above the restrooms is covered in local plants and grasses that reduce the need for heating and cooling inside the restrooms
- Rainwater from the canopy is collected, filtered and reused for onsite irrigation
- The bathroom tile is made of 100 percent recycled glass
- Motion sensors reduce energy waste by switching off lights when not in use
- Material from the old site was reused during construction

BP calls Helios House a “living laboratory” that uses green, eco-friendly innovations to give consumers a little better station experience.

I have just finished a book that has provoked the most unusual vision: The Temple of Apollo. Intoxicating vapors rise from the earth’s deep chasms. The Oracle of Delphi unleashes an unbridled stream of murmurings. The holy priests wait below, open-mouthed, to reshape these cryptic invocations into enigmatic prophecies. Fire and brimstone kind of stuff.

No William Gibson book is this. No manga of ancient Greek mythology, but rather Michael Kinsley’s new book-birthed-by-blog, “Creative Capitalism, A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and other Economic Leaders.” So why the Delphic vision? Perhaps because this book is less a conversation (between the third richest man in the world and the richest man in the world) than a scramble by the modern day priests and priestesses of our economic system to make sense of the oracle-like proclamation by Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January of 2008.

It is in this 2,774 worded speech or that Gates, a self-proclaimed impatient optimist, launched his provocative, compelling and, to some, cryptic call for a world where “creative capitalism” takes its turn at addressing some of our most intractable and pressing global inequities.

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What is going on in terms of the first family and their fashion choices today is nothing short of fascinating from a brand (and socioeconomic and cultural) perspective. Michelle Obama is doing an amazing job of communicating her style, class and taste while portraying an accessibility and normalcy that people can relate to–and crave right now. The choice to dress the girls in J Crew (and J Crew’s wise support of it) is truly interesting.

Did J Crew just become America’s brand?

Change. It’s something we’ve heard a lot about recently. With the start of a new Presidency and the anticipated release of federal funds, some very important decisions concerning infrastructure planning and budgeting will be made in the near future. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has been very vocal about his involvement in the planning of state fund allocation. As he told a reporter from the Boston Globe, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

The proposed economic stimulus bill offers an excellent opportunity to put Massachusetts’ great wealth of design talent to work on building cost effective, high quality, and technologically innovative public infrastructure. Be it affordable housing, schools, water treatment plants, solar harvesting materials, green roofs, landscape design, renovations, you name it – designers and architects can make a contribution. Let’s not waste this opportunity to create a lasting legacy of excellence in public design in Massachusetts.

To ensure the inclusion of design in the federal economic stimulus funding process a grassroots letter writing campaign has been started. Please let the Governor know how you feel with a letter or email. Together, we can make a change.  Contact info after the jump…
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The Design Management Review‘s current issue features a piece by our sustainability experts Grant Kristofek and Mark Bates. Colorblind, our extensive in-house research project on consumers and their perception and digestion of all things green, is the focus of the piece.

Download it here.

On a recent shopping trip to Mitsuwa, a chain Japanese grocery market in California, Christy found an interesting group of products that occupied a good portion of the local Japanese retail shelf. Promising to deliver an ‘authentic’ drip cup of coffee right to your desktop was a small, thin package no larger than one and a half inches wide and six inches tall. We thought it just might be brilliant idea!

We bought a box of five packets for eight dollars to try it out (click above for the step-by-step process). The most transformative part of the whole experience occurred when we bent the filter horizontally and ‘bam!’ the ground coffee, previously hidden, was revealed. The manufacturer tastefully glued the filter seam so it stays closed during transportation and ‘pops’ open when you bend it. The rest of the process was actually very intuitive as we added hot water and watched coffee come straight through the filter. It was a very good cup of coffee that may have been a bit expensive, but the experience rocked!

Are you on Facebook? Do you like hamburgers? You’re in luck.

Burger King has put forth its latest viral marketing experiment – The Whopper Sacrifice. The challenge asks you to ditch ten friends, and in turn, you receive a free Whopper. With the quick installation of the application on your Facebook profile, the Sacrifice is on.

In typical Facebook style, when you defriend someone, your friendship merely dissolves into cyberspace – no one is notified. Here’s the kicker with the Whopper Sacrifice: the name and likeness of the friend you ditch shows up in your feed, noting, for example, “John sacrificed Joel Kaplan for a free Whopper”.

While it’s a noteworthy concept, it’s also an ethical dilemma, reminiscent of high school days when, as Heidi Klum would say, “One day you are in, and the next, you’re out.” The campaigns tagline reads, “You like your friends, but you love the Whopper.” Over 230,000 have been sacrificed thus far.

While this creates a buzz around Burger King, the real question remains: is inflicting public humiliation really worth saving a couple bucks on a burger?

On December 30th we were visited by Bruce Biewald, a Continuum client and the President of Synapse Energy Economics of Cambridge. For the past thirty years Biewald has advised state agencies, consumer and environmental advocates, utilities and others on the production and consumption of energy. As the co-author of more than one hundred reports for several different state and environmental agencies, he is a highly-respected voice in the on-going discussion of energy consumption, sustainability and the future of power. Bruce presented his perspectives on the technical, economic and regulatory challenges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the thirty or so who gathered in our great room.

What I took away from Biewald’s visit was the idea that consumers can and should modify their behavior to consume less energy, but that sound policy and government regulation is needed to truly minimize the environmental impact of power generation. Current regulation models fail to provide adequate incentives for innovation within the power industry. For example, since carbon emissions are not currently regulated, proposed power plant plans rarely include future costs of carbon in their financial models, despite the existence of cost estimation models.

Surely, no one can predict the future of carbon costs with any more certainty than the price of oil. But, omitting carbon costs in financial plans can lead to misguided technology and poorly made capacity decisions. We need to provide better incentives, improve policy, upgrade older facilities, and accurately represent the financial and environmental impact of new facilities when assessing power generation technology.

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Here’s something we’re really excited about:

From Gary Hustwit, the man who brought you Helvetica, comes Objectified, an independent feature-length documentary about industrial design. Featuring some of the best and brightest, Objectified is poised to give us an in-depth look at the objects that surround us and the people who made them. Composed of interviews and vérité footage, the film examines issues of consumerism, personal expression, sustainability and how our world is made better by smart design.

Objectified is due in theatres in the spring of the 2009. In the meantime, PBS will be playing Helvetica as part of its Independent Lens series this month. Check your local listings.

While reading the Ask Umbra column on the Grist website I came across a cool graph that shows the rate of CO2 emissions per passenger mile for most of the common commuting options. Produced by Sightline, a think tank based in Seattle, the graph provides a visual representation of something that’s on a lot of people’s minds as they make their way to work every morning.It’s an uncomplicated way to look at an often overcomplicated issue: What is the most climate-friendly way for me to get to work?