What's in the Name

Monday, October 20, 2008



The Boston headquarters of the institute, at 200 Portland St. in the Bulfinch Triangle near North Station, is one of the more interesting storefronts you'll wander into.

It's got gadgets galore that make life easier -- in some cases possible -- for people who are less able. And it's about saving the Earth too.

On Thursday. 5-8 p.m., the institute celebrates both its 30th anniversary and its new name.

The Institute for Human Centered Design has been doing business in modern, highly accessible quarters since spring of 2007, but parent Adaptive Environments had kept its separate name. Till now.

The bright location is good for creative shopping, but it's also a good place to go for ideas.

Regular informal lectures are held there, often at noon, on, well, making the world a better place.

Last week the topic was "Healing Colors," and Jarrott Heath, commercial territory manager for Parksite, Inc. of Hopkinton, represented Dupont, makers of Corian. Parksite provides all kinds of materials for the building industry. And you thought Corian was just for kitchen countertops. So did we.

In fact, it can be shaped and molded and adapted for many uses. The Grand Central Chair, a red and green chair that looks like an overstuffed piece but is in fact hard, slick, contoured, and comfortable, has been in that train station for more than a decade.

A set of the chairs was made for Grand Central Station, fabricated by Sterling Surfaces of Sterling, Mass., said Grant Garcia managing director of Sterling.

It's kind of refreshing to have an idealistic organization like the institute that isn't shy about bringing in manufacturers and business people to explain how they can offer solutions to problems.

Heath said Dupont ("a science company") hired a consultant with a background in health care to look at research that had been done and advise it on the effects of colors on people and their health.

The early evidence, Heath said, is that the colors of nature reduce stress, improve performance, and can reduce pain.

Just having your family around you while you recover from illness or surgery helps a lot -- so health-care facilities are adapting to allow that presence, sometimes even during an operation or treatment.

In 2004, Heath said $16 billion was spent on health-care design. We don't know how he calculated that, but he said it will be $20 billion by the end of the decade.

The consultant worked with something called the Center for Health Design, looking at 600-plus studies on the subject.

To reduce stress, they concluded, hospitals should have more private rooms and privacy, and noise should be reduced, including overhead paging.

Positive distractions include views of nature, a chapel or place for meditation, outdoor access and gardens, including walking space, soothing music, and an area for pets.

Increased social support is provided by zones for family, access of family members to exam and treatment areas, family resources such as cafes and libraries, and health retail and other stores.

Establishing a sense of control is accomplished through patient-activated lighting, acoustics, and audio-visual equipment, clear way-finding and signage -- and menu selections and room service.

A fifth area, overlapping in some of the other areas of improvement, was moving patients closer to the outdoors. Using daylight instead of artificial, creating healing gardens, and using materials that evoke nature all effect that.

So that's where the product, Corian, comes in.

Corian comes in six major color categories, with 12 variations in each of the six, and many of those of course evoke nature and an atmosphere that says: heal.

The color groups are water, flame, earth, wood, alloy, and oxygen.

Blues have a tranquilizing effect on the brain, reds cause excitement through creation of adrenaline, flames warm the spirit and inspire optimism.

That's what the research showed.

The earth tones are for comfort, wood for relaxation, alloys used mostly as accents to other materials, and oxygen shades for sterile areas, or also as accents to more potent colors.


Garcia's Parksite company is a certified fabricator of Corian products. "We want you to think about Corian as Play-Doh," he said.

A catalogue of products shows Corian plates, tables, chairs, lamp shades, sinks, counters, booths, mannequins, and walls.

The company is doing a $2.6 million job in Las Vegas next week at La Palazzo in Las Vegas -- an elaborate, one-of-a-kind ceiling.

"Corian is not a flat material, Garcia said. It is used in "solid-surface, cutting-edge design. Whatever you can dream up."

A playground in Cambridge is made of Corian.

But what is it? we asked.

"It's 60 percent mineral and 40 percent acrylic resin with a little pigment."






Liz Levin and cousin Quentin Kopp



High-Speed Rail

Liz Levin holds her salons, where friends are educated about transportation, design, and the environment. The kinds of things her consulting company deals in.

But it was a more informal gathering that Liz, former national chair of Women's Transportation Seminar, invited us to the other night. She had her cousin there.

He's Quentin Kopp, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority in Sacramento. (Slogan: "Fly California Without Ever Leaving the Ground.")

Kopp is a Syracuse kid who went west and became a politician, who then got term- limited out (he used to believe in term limits, he said, but doesn't anymore).

He went to Dartmouth and Harvard Law School before getting into politics in San Francisco.

Now Kopp is a trial-court judge. "I like being a judge. I don't have to rely on 119 other people to make a decision."

In the '90s, he was instrumental in raising support for an increase in the gasoline tax in California after two decades without one. He successfully advocated extending BART to the airport.

Now he's pushing for a high-speed train from Sacramento to San Diego.

He wants California to join all the other countries that have high-speed rail -- not just Japan with its Shinkansen (1964) and France with its TGV (1981), but also Germany, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland.

Even China built one, for the Olympics.

Californians will decide on this one. It's on the ballot in November.

High-speed rail thinking began in 1982, when Gov. Moonbeam (Jerry Brown, who Kopp noted could make a return) was in office.

The idea had its ups and downs with laws to determine feasibility, and then later bonding.

What Californians will vote on is a $9.95 billion bond measure.

The first phase of construction, if passed, would be San Francisco to Anaheim.

It would know the way from San Francisco to San Jose in 30 minutes. Then it would go to Merced, site of the newest of the University of California campuses.

Then to Fresno, Bakersfield, Palmdale, and Union Station in Los Angeles.

From there it would go on to Ontario and Riverside County, where more than two million people live, and to Anaheim in Orange County.

Total cost of phase one would be $33 billion, it's estimated -- part state, part federal, and part private money. Phase two: $9 to $12 billion.

Kopp, an engaging straight-talker who seems about 60, not almost 80, said there are "37 identifiable funds" from which private money would be available.

Congress is talking about providing some $14 billion over five years.

If all goes well, Kopp said, final engineering could be done in 2009 or '10, with ground-breaking soon after.

He'd like to open the whole thing at once, in 2018, though it might open in segments. It would include up to 24 stations.

Of course, it won't open at all if the public doesn't vote for it, and polls have shown 52 to 60 percent in favor. The big Field poll showed 56 for, 36 against in August.

Lately it's slipped some, down to 47 percent in favor.
"So it's in doubt," Kopp said. "You're in this economic time."

At this time in the economy, Kopp points to 150,000 construction jobs as a big plus. "You're priming the pump with public projects. This is the quintessential public project," he said. He estimates it would generate 450,000 new permanent jobs. High-tech companies could locate in Fresno and other population hubs where they aren't now.

The most striking thing we heard in this fascinating glimpse of politics and transportation visioning from the Coast is that riders will pay the operating costs -- or that's the plan. "It's fail safe -- it will operate without subsidy," he said.

Even with fare increases, riders don't come close to paying the operating costs of our T.

He said systems in 10 nations operate without subsidies. The fare is expected to be $55 one-way, San Francisco to L.A. and 100 million riders a year are anticipated.

"We expect to have surplus revenue of $1 billion."