What do you consider to be your greatest professional achievement?
I am particularly proud to be part of the current generation of design professionals who have contributed to making design in the United States more global and multicultural in its perspective.

What is the most fulfilling part of your job?
For the last 23 years I have had the rare opportunity to be part of the transformation of one city—Boston. It is extremely gratifying and fascinating to see how design can have such a profound transformative effect on whole neighborhoods and the image of a city. In the last 20 years, design in Boston has moved from being mostly about its past, to being about balancing contemporary architecture with its responsibility to the city's historic fabric. City building today is like a four-dimensional game of chess. It requires long-range clarity of vision, sharp focus in the present, agility of thinking, flexibility in one's strategies, and strong nerves to be part of this complex, multidimensional process.

What are the biggest challenges facing designers today?
As the economy has become global, designers have become nomads, and contemporary design seems to have lost a sense of rootedness. Design is becoming more about ideas that do not have a clear sense of place. The design process also has become so compressed that there is very little time to refine an idea. There is a lot of pressure to get half-baked ideas to the market.
    The challenge for public sector urban design professionals, like myself, is to keep the feet of private developers and architects to the fire to make sure their design ideas are not generic and that the individual projects contribute to the evolution of the larger public context: the street, the neighborhood, the city, the ecology, and economy that they are part of.

What advice would you give to A&D students or those starting out in the design fields?
The future has become harder and harder to predict, so instead of getting too fixed on a set of career goals, be clear about the principles and values you stand for as a designer. Have a clear sense of "Brand You," as Tom Peters calls it, and then be ready to remain flexible, and learn to enjoy interacting with the unpredictable design opportunities as they unfold.

How would you define success?
Success for me is very personal. And especially being an urban designer in the public sector, yardsticks for success can be elusive and vary from day to day and project to project. Success can vary from: how I handle the resolution of wildly conflicting agendas at a design meeting, to moving a new urban design plan or initiative closer to completion; negotiating an urban design solution with a difficult development team, to motivating my staff of designers who are involved in the neverending, ephemeral task of "designing a city."
    My job provides me with the challenge and luxury of each moment being completely different from the last. Success for me is being able to relish each of these different moments, however frustrating or exhilarating each of them might be.

What would you like to leave as your legacy?
Legacy is way overrated. Designers are trained to believe that they have to leave a physical legacy.  Having seen how complex city building has become, I have no illusions about any one individual's impact on a city over time.  I would be glad to leave knowing I had a small hand in incubating a few good buildings, places, and people as part of the evolution of Boston. Knowing that city building is an ever-changing process in which you have a small part, for a short while, keeps me humble and focused.

What do you consider to be the worst invention of the last 100 years?
From a social point of view, the cellphone tops my personal list as the worst invention of the last 100 years. I should qualify it as the worst evolution of a brilliant invention. Sometimes the most innovative ideas can become the most damaging based on how they evolve over time.
    From the point of view of how it has impacted human interaction with each other and our surroundings, the transformation of the original telephone by Alexander Graham Bell into the now ubiquitous, all in one cell phone/camera/web browser/PDA is the one of the most destructive transformations of a very useful invention.
    While it may allow us instant global connectivity, the current evolution of the phone that puts us all on call 24/7 is destroying our ability to be present in the moment. As new technologies and inventions proliferate, design needs to play more of that role of mediator between technology and the user interface. It's not the technology that makes i-phones so cool, it's the design and the features that simplify seamless transition between applications.

How do you foresee the future of design changing?
There are two related but polarizing trends that I see affecting design. The first one is of design and designers becoming the product. Outside of the fashion industry, in recent years BMW and Nike started this trend, but Steve Jobs and Frank Gehry have perfected it. In this scenario, being associated with the particular design aesthetic or designer is what gives the product its value. Unfortunately, variations of this star designer trend are here to stay for a while longer. Hopefully the next trend will tone this phenomenon down a bit.
    The second and more lasting design trend I see is one of extreme customization. Whether it is building interiors, cars, or fashion, computer simulation and digitization of the manufacturing process are going to give a lot more of the power to design, over to the consumer. Individuals will have a greater ability to design their personal brand identity, way beyond ties, and shoes and accessories.
    Custom design—as in designing with the customer—is going to get built into the design processes. It potentially is an exciting new design model that will not only dilute the star designer phenomenon but also provide pioneering opportunities for creative collaborations.
    For more on this and other such Emerging Trends, visit my web site/blog at www.EmergingTrends.org.

What advice would you give clients on how to create a successful product?
Think Apple, think BMW, think Boston. They are very successful products. The brand values they stand for are easily understood and universally recognized. Interior/architectural designers need to learn more from product/industrial designers about working within a larger brand identity. Architects need to work with a greater awareness of the brand identity of the city in which they are building.
    Each development project either contributes to or dilutes the core values of the city it is intervening in. That may sound obvious, but I am not seeing much of that awareness.
    My advice to developers wanting to build in existing urban brands like Boston is to step back from the design of generic, non place specific, stand alone "objects/destinations." And instead take on the challenge of creating projects that contribute to the enhancement of the existing public realm, existing urban fabric and places in creative and contemporary ways.

What is the best thing you have learned in the last 10 years?
Remain humble about what you think you "know." Today the world is changing so fast around us that urban planners and designers need to remain very open to new ideas and opportunities. With each economic cycle, global influences are more sudden, and less predictable.
    And the current rate of change will be speeding up, not slowing down as we become a fully integrated, dynamic global economy. Events and trends in one part of the world ripple across the globe in no time at all these days.
    What do you find to be the most exhilarating interior space you have ever been in?
In the Boston area, I would say the interior of a little-known chapel at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge, MA by Ralph Adam Cram, and the interior courtyard of Isabella Gardner Museum by William T. Stern in Boston are my favorite interior spaces. And in the world? The inner prayer hall of a Buddhist monastery in Leh, Ladakh, India is my all time favorite space. All three are very spiritually uplifting spaces. And they all successfully use the transformative qualities of light to transport you to a different place internally.

What inspired your career choices?
Unlike many others who always knew they wanted to be a designer, I loved the dynamics between people and the creative process more than the unveiling of the final product itself. A series of timing and luck brought me to MIT and then to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, but once I Ianded here, I knew I had found my passion.
    Being in the thick of design, in a dynamic, innovative city like Boston, is both highly exhilarating and humbling. You feel the rush of being part of the transformation of the city, while also realizing how many varied factors contribute to the nurturing and execution of any one idea.

What would you consider to be your most exciting recent discovery?
A monastery I go to three to four times a year for three days of silence is the best thing I discovered for myself. These silent retreats revive me in a way that vacations no longer can. Claiming my personal space in today's 24/7 way of living is critical to maintaining my personal balance as well as my edge. Silence will become one of the most precious day to day commodities in the 21st century.

|c|