[Boston's Big Dig, 1999 / photo: martin.jessica]

In a rather serendipitous occurrence yesterday, just as Bryan Boyer was outlining some exciting intersections of governance and design thinking in Finland here at Postopolis!, I received an email from Wayne Congar of labRAD. Congar and his GSAPP peer Troy Conrad Therrien are the organizers of the IMAGINING RECOVERY ideas competition, a venture dedicated to foregrounding the contributions that designers could make by being present throughout the policy making and legislative processes associated with the America economic recovery. An overview of the competition:

IMAGINING RECOVERY is an open international design ideas competition coinciding with the first 100 days of the Obama presidency. The competition calls on designers to act as mediators between policy and the public by producing an image of the lived experience of recovery, increasing the transparency and intelligibility of the charts, maps and graphics of Recovery.gov. This image is to be supported by a design strategy offering a means to get from the present to recovery. The competition brief is a living document, collectively written by the design participants and a select panel of public policy students from prestigious policy schools around the world. Submissions are due on the 100th day of the presidency, April 29, 2009, and will then be judged by a world-class panel of design and image experts, who will select prize winners and address the public in an open discussion at Studio X in New York on May 13. The competition will be distributed to the public through a print publication, a placement in Volume Magazine, and traveling video exhibition, all available for free online download.

In scanning the brief for IMAGINING RECOVERY it appears the competition is looking for lucid examples of design methodology and cultural analysis that addresses issues of scale and sustainability. Some key provocations from the document:

• How can and should design operate in the areas that have led us to the current crisis, such as housing and banking, amongst others?
• How can design act to re-imagine American ideals and the American Dream — such as the coupling of independence with the car, and the dream of owning a single-family detached home — that have led us to design our way of life, and our environments around such cultures?
• How can design address a divide in the philosophy of spending, in terms of scale, methodology and implementation — can design mitigate these differences?

IMAGINING RECOVERY submissions are due in about 3 weeks, so get hustling if you think you can add to the discourse surrounding these timely design questions.