 Consider myself. I'm an information designer, but I actually studied architecture history So they've always been my kind of friends and enemies at the same time architects with their amazing Idea that they can redesign the world that we live in which I've always find quite arrogant Which is the point which which one at all this one? I Consider myself. I I designed things that people read I designed maps and I designed like the Economist here the magazine And I think cities are also things that we read I mean the the project we did in London started six seven years ago. It's called legible London We start actually started in in Bristol 15 years ago So I'm talking about you know, how do we read our cities reading them meaning we acquire the knowledge that's inside a system Just like I read a magazine and I acquire at least some of the knowledge that that is in there and to an extent Some of that means we are you know getting back We've given our cities over to cars or trains or whatever Architects who think they can design us architects think they design cities by designing buildings Well, we live in the space between buildings and I'm very grateful haven't heard this morning The distinction between vertical and horizontal because we are horizontal I mean spider man is the only person I know who climbs buildings. We walked along the streets and for me cities are as in New York are very much horizontal and we try to encourage people to use them again and It's always nice to see that there is a German word is called a trumpet trumpet part Which is the little trampled path that people will make Architects designed these great corners four weeks later Somebody will have made a diagonal crossing and the other people will follow so we have a great sort of you know A German imperial building and always gonna go walk around the bloody corner They're gonna make that little trumpet part through the middle of it because that's how we work And we are the only people We we built you know, well, this is you know, this one sheep there goes makes that little curve Why and why do the others follow they want to trample in the snow? Whatever so we have a tendency to follow each other, which is good and bad coming from a German But let's not forget that this sort of trumpet fart was actually built by people. This was designed I mean somebody thought that we want to sit in a car for an hour and drive from Santa Monica to Pasadena or from downtown to New York to West Hollywood I mean, isn't that incredibly dumb idea to put people in these boxes Pollute the air and spend hours in a car. I mean who thunker that for Christ's sake planners designers architects engineers, I'm afraid to say So how do we get out of that rut our European cities and and the east coast it is in America However, we're pretty much designed around the railway This is Berlin the Gleister egg the the the railway triangle built around the the turn of the previous century the 1890s Snap back in the middle of Berlin now These have are still being used But the space that they occupy has pretty much fallen into disrepair that the one and on the right is actually Present Berlin so right in the middle of Berlin, which you know is right by the former border We have this incredible space which had lied dormant for 60 years You know trees had gone through walls trees had grown through odd railway cars. They were on the side There was vegetation there that didn't exist anywhere else in Europe because The the railway cars had brought seeds in from all all over Europe So suddenly we we we get in the space back to ourselves. We're building parks there luckily not car parks in America You probably say oh my god, we can pack a thousand cars there. How cool is that? No, we actually make it accessible for people Which I think is a lot more useful and the amazing success of the Highland in New York Which is a a ponsy little what is it a one mile or it's a half hour walk Which is a you know, it's it's it's a little joke if you if you look at Hyde Park or Central Park or whatever But my god, the world is all about them making high lines now in every other American city and village Because people you know what it's like going to to the to the work as soon as America I'm a little used to live next to one in San Francisco. So people would drive from their work after work Have a valet park their car then they go upstairs and go on one of those treadmills Watch Bloomberg for half a half an hour and work on a treadmill instead of walking there from their bloody offices and walking back home I Can never understand that why you have to spend half an hour walking when it's what I do every day anyway So the highlight is people get out the cars and then walking and go back to their cars I don't get it. I do get it. I'm glad it's happening, but it's the kind of weird concept for a European But once we're we're in the middle of our city Which is essentially the cities that we like are messy because they've grown over decades and centuries and you know If you look at the successful squares in the world, none of them is straight because the Italian cities even to Siena They're all at angles and they're all actually quite deceptive Have you ever walked across the the big square in Siena? It takes forever. It's massive But you look at it. You think it's small because it's all foreshortened. It's very very nothing is central The well is off-center none of the Italian squares are central only the fascist build central squares If you go to East Berlin, you see the vision of some Ponzi little Semi or cause I dictator he thought the world looks big so we have to make eight lanes They had about two cars in East Berlin, but I made eight lanes for them You see the same in book arrest and places. They had roads long before they had cars Little bit the different but anyway, so how do we how do we how do we find a way around? I mean science would he trust that stuff and you see this everywhere I know this is Ireland is the other extreme and now they should probably be in a museum because you couldn't design this if you tried But I mean then you stop there and you try to find your way You know, you have angry people probably shooting you while that would be in Texas But if you hesitate but there you have to hesitate because you have no idea what they're telling you because the one thing about about science is We and of course all of us designers have thousands of these slides. I have hard drives full of accidental Stuff that people design because everybody's a designer and that's asking for it You know putting mustaches on people and on the post in the tube and stuff or you know black in our teeth Is what we all do because it's our way of appropriating the system We don't know who makes these signs so we don't trust them and that's actually not a bad thing Let me take you to this little example in Stockholm Now every psychologist would probably know that affirming is better than than forbidding So this we have one at least one day and who can read this It's a it's a no stopping sign, right? And but it doesn't apply to loading and offloading Between 5 and 11 no between 5 and 11 and certainly not between 5 and 11 Now I call that very redundant and and of course by the time I've read this I've got a parking ticket it is What I think One of them is week days the other was weak and the other one is probably Sundays If you if you're a Sweden you live there, you know this but I mean come on doesn't anybody think about this five You know don't fucking park there between 5 and 11. I mean that's basically what it says unless you're offloading So no wonder that people don't take those signs seriously and then in Berlin We have a so called pedestrian signage system and just look at the one on the right Reichstag Bundestag 1350 meters now. That's a really nice sum that as a tourist from Spain or China I oh that's gonna take me 32 and a half minutes to walk probably I mean that is rubbish Apart from in fact, it's a Microsoft system font Ariel which we all love to hate It has arrows on the wrong page you never put arrow before a word you put it in the direction You're walking in this case the right arrow has to go on the right-hand side I mean that's common knowledge for signage system not known by most designers But it's the common knowledge it should be so this this of course nobody takes seriously because it you don't know where it comes from Who made this some bureaucrat in some office? Who goes home at 430 obviously? So do we read maps now the you all know this if you if you travel to London the London tube is actually diagram It's not a map. It is a it is a symbolic representation of the city It does it bears very little relationship to the the ground above it has some but not exactly Obviously the you know from Green Park to Billy's to Piggy the circus you can walk You know you can't do that once you go to the to the outskirts But people use this because it's free. It's available. It's easy to understand when we did the legible London thing six seven years ago We looked at this and if you look at some of those Most of the stations in London is in central London you can walk to the next one You're at Leicester Square. You can walk to Covent Garden in three minutes You're at Bank you can walk to monument in one minute if you spend more time underground than you spend overground walking so the Look at all these and all this tube station There's a two or three dozen tube stations in London that are within five minutes walk of each other And now interestingly London different from other places Transport for London at the time was interested in getting people off the tube Most places would love people to use transport public transport in London the tube is overloaded There's too many people using the tube and other people are tourists who will use them between one of those stops where they could easily walk Walk in not only because they will take load of the system Also because them they expose themselves to the city is much more fun to walk Even from Leicester Square to Covent Garden than to take the tube and you know being lost tunnels forever So that was the first Revelation and then of course we all know and research again showed it that people don't understand maps Most you see them at the corners people don't know where north. I mean nobody knows where north is Where is north and now west is where the moss grows on trees, but I mean who you know where do you do check that in London? Which also is something funny I find that only the Anglo-Saxon Can't just ever use the directions if you go to Italy or France or Germany the axis will never be called north or west or Something we just call them after a place But in I think it's that great system that comes out out of New York, you know in Manhattan You know where north is it's pretty obvious We don't use it. Anyway, people don't understand maps that don't like maps, but they understand neighborhoods They know when the New York they're gonna go to Williamsburg. This is where it's happening They may not know where Williamsburg is, but you know, they need to be led there They don't care that it's part of this and part of that They just need to go there and people also understand that neighborhoods have meaning, you know, you go one to hang out You go one to buy I only got five minutes. I've only done five minutes Okay, well, I'm gonna be even quicker But so what we do with it with a system we connect neighborhoods Which is what people understand so this People if you don't like maps you make maps they're like the the map the right one is the first one we did in Bristol in the late 90s Which is easy because it's easy city in London. You have to put in buildings They have to be three-dimensional other people can't read buildings like architects can their need and elevation because I need to see The building is tall or low or whatever it's obvious and you put them in the middle and you put a circle on 15 minutes you got 15 minutes time to walk or your legs for 15 minutes go there very very simple And then they put them where they need it if you go outside now Now even they're all over London the first ones were on Bond Street and in the West End now they're all over the place They are pretty useful there will have electronics in them They will talk to your smartphone eventually But one thing that's better than maps is is map apps of course because you can carry them with you You may have the correspondent hardware in the street you can download you know whether it's Harry Becks or my map and Beyond that of course in within the same app you have in this case Deutsche Bahn telling you where you catch your train And they have a walk in there 200 meters in six minutes I walk 200 meters in three minutes, but this is for maybe for people who've got luggage So you buy into a system that tells you how to get there how to use it And of course what the train guys have understood there aren't just trains. There are also cars and there are also bicycles I won't go into the Boris bikes, which I think is a very big misnomer. He certainly inherited them. It didn't invent them, but the big guys understand and sort of the car companies that traffic is something that is Connected you can't just have one mode of transport Well, what did London do because it collapsed, you know They charge people which is one way of keeping people out of cities making it impossible to or to afford which of course is Unjust if you go to Porsche Cayenne, you don't care for you can pay eight eight eight pounds an hour. You don't care But who says we have to own a car in order to use it, you know, this you heard about this the other day It's very very much happening that I work for some car companies still and they're very worried that everybody between 18 and 35 Doesn't want to own a car anymore. It's not prestige anymore And in fact, you embarrass if you had a posh car in Berlin You get it scratched anyway if you park in some areas of it But what's important about the car hire stuff the same goes for bikes It's it is they have to be everywhere if you only have one they have to search them seek them out. It won't work So we did a project and just quickly to show how we do this This is user scented design services and whatever you look at how people would use it and these days with the media We have you can fake this so we made a little prototype a key that actually works That you made an app that isn't actually an episode is a fake PDF on a phone But you get a few dozen people to walk along and find their car You can see this is just just a little cardboard thing go inside the car There you can get a near frequency communication device You can you can hack that within in 10 minutes So you sit people in the car use an iPad instead of the the on car system just to find out How did they use this and we spent three months with a few hundred people and then they build the system after But so it's built by the people who use it not by some designer at some desk or other now one one issue that concerns me Where's all this power gonna come from? Yeah, we're all gonna be electric. Where's they're gonna come from? That's one idea. We are renovating those and some guy in Austria went along said hey We have all of those. I don't know if they said ever in America. There's certain loss here We certainly have in the Germany telephone booth. Let's make them into charge station They're wired up. They've got power there and thereby the curb often on street corners perfect place for charging cars Now you see the very lip in Paris. It doesn't mean they're free, but it means they liberate people That's how I understood the word because cycling is actually quite an amazing activity. It's healthy It's good for you if you make it easy if they're everywhere and they're easy to get you have a winner Yes, I am I'm done three more slides This is of course Copenhagen that the mecca for for bicycles I could show you one in winter that they also use the bikes, but you have to have an infrastructure You really can't just say bikes go you have to do like New York's you know take some parking space away And then people will use them. There's a few problems that need to be addressed Like parking cars is an issue. This is Amsterdam. You know, I have a bike park there I'm never gonna find it again unless I painted neo neo pink or something I know it's in there somewhere, but I'd be damned if I find it again. So that's an issue We have to address One issues but that's in America. Of course, you have to have a cup holder So that has been dealt with you can buy a cup holder for your for your bicycle So no more problems and this is my full disclosure. I am a bicycle freak So I am not totally unbiased about this whole issue Now car companies are making electric bikes, you know Audi and and smart and you can actually $3,500 euros pounds whatever so it's not cheap But they know that they have to be sexy and trendy and they jumped on the bandwagon And if the car companies then jump on a bandwagon, you have to start taking it seriously So that is very simple. Whatever you you provide you make it ubiquitous make it everywhere in other words make it easy Maybe even fun. I heard that word mentioned a couple times before and Then you have a winner You also should get some of us involved because we can make things easy to use and legible. Thank you You're hard act to follow and I have say I'm also I'm also so sorry that her spear did not come here after your speech I would have been very interesting to have heard a very different view of urban planning, but Yeah So so I Have to defend the highlight in New York a little bit because of course, no, it's fine. I love it I just I think it's a little over, you know, you guys think it's amazing. Also, New Yorkers. New Yorkers don't drive Yeah, I mean I get a question in quick. Yeah, I Suppose I will I mean I take your basic point that that that that good design makes cities function better and that we don't listen to designers we listen to architects too much But does that actually But does that actually make any sense, I mean It sounds to me like what you're suggesting is not actually any different what Alejandro was talking about that is to say a Listening to people how they want to use cities and responding them is what makes good maps good diagrams or anything else, right? Yeah, just making it bringing it down to earth again. That's all yeah horizontal. I Was trying to say something slightly different. Yeah, good, which is that architects can detect and formalize certain latent tendencies that Make these Processes explicit so it's not it's not just about listening to people about being able to Listen to people into and to be able to explain through architecture that That action of listening, which is what we do by design We listen to people and make things accessible by using our tools But also to expect to expect to explicit it to explicit aid the processes that are happening behind our designs Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that that's that's that's basically what you're suggesting happens when you pool information Let's say about smart cars and so forth. I mean The question I guess would be so what is so what is the What is the moral role of the designer then? I mean you you you slipped very easily from talking about The need for bike lanes and the use of cities to certainly talking about 3,500 pound You know electric bikes that are Mercedes way of trying to capitalize on on a bike culture, but it's an extremely different notion of What the value of biking is you say you're a bicyclist. It's not healthy. It seems to me that if you've equally facilitate the creation of a 3,500 pound bike and and and and also good signage for bicycles there I'm not saying you can't do it But surely those are different sorts of enterprises. No, not really Our role is we were translators We we get an issue a problem to solve whether it's housing in your case or whether it's it's it's moving about horizontally in my case if a car company comes to me and says, you know design me the process to to to rent our cars for five minutes or Cycle company comes and says, you know, how can we make this accessible to people? We design the interface the software the hardware to make people use them to make them legible That for me the word legible is the most important I think we need to move on and from interfaces. Let's go back to architecture and cities and spaces with Bianca angles