Looking for ways to beat the heat?

On our minds

Many Americans skipped summer travel this year due to economic concernsor because we’d rather take our vacation in a more temperate season. As traditional vacation spots heat up, we’re also opting for cooler locales. Southern European beaches and cities such as Barcelona, Verona, and Seville are being passed over in favor of Scandinavia and Alaska.

In addition to the well-known health challenges that accompany excessive heat, high temps have been linked with mood disorders, aggression, anxiety, reduced cognitive ability, insomnia, and reduced appetite. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is conventionally associated with winter — a time when days are short and we avoid the frigid outdoors, therefore not getting the sunlight we need to capitalize on our bodies’ Vitamin D production. But SAD is increasing in summer, and one theory is that folks are staying in air conditioning, rather than spending time in the sun.

Last newsletter, we suggested skipping work during the hottest part of the day and instead, napping — both for our own health and that of the planet. If you’ve opted out of travel altogether this summer, you may want to revisit our 2023 suggestions for how to make the most of a “staycation.” Meanwhile, this list from Real Simple offers indoor boredom busters for kids and adults.

If you want to adventure vicariously through folks who are notshying away from the heat (although they are doing a lot of swimming), sign up for The Lower Mississippi River Dispatch, a Substack that follows canoe guides as they navigate over 600 miles of the United States' most iconic river.

Big heat in the Big Apple

Late last month, the metro New York area experienced the second heat wave of the summer, with temperatures in the high 90s. Not sure how to spend your day off when being outside seems excruciating? Check out this list of free museums and pay-what-you-wish days.

Maybe enjoy plush seats and air-conditioning, as you take in live theater? A PLASTARC writer recommends "John Proctor is the Villain" by Kimberly Belflower, currently showing on Broadway – in their words, “an astonishing, nuanced feminist update (in the loosest sense) of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.”

One PLASTARC team member loved Making Home: Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt. The exhibit exemplifies how our lives and values are shaped by domestic spaces, looking at everything from decor, to nontraditional and culturally-specific ways of creating home, to cooperative living, de-colonial approaches, and historic preservation. Making Homeended a few weeks ago, but Cooper Hewitt will offer hands-on art-making events in the garden every week until November.

Need more ideas about cool things to do on the hottest days, in the US’s biggest city?

Life is but a game…

One PLASTARC intern spent a lot of this summer playing chess with her grandfather, visiting from Venezuela. Another has enjoyed bouncing around the ever-expanding empire of Catan. If you’re missing your beach vacay, Board Game Geek put together a list of beach-themed games. In July, NPR hosted entertainment journalists chatting about their favorite recently-released indie-video games. A few that made the short list? Blue Prince (for escape room fans), Date Everything! (in which magic glasses give you the emotional backstory on every object in your house), and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (a villain called the Paintress takes out everyone of a particular age, until the current crop of 33-year-olds try to stop her).

Want an indie game list created to specifically evoke summer? Jesse Guarascia, a reporter with NoClip_2, has their own shortlist. And this summer, a remake of an old favorite dropped: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4. Gosu Gamers calls it “nostalgia with new wheels.”

For roadtrips & lounging…

Check out this episode of the podcast Death, Sex and Money about N.D. Austin, a “designer of experiences” — memorials, coming-of-age rituals, and ceremonies (some legal, some not) that seek to challenge the experiencer and even change the course of lives.

And speaking of Tony Hawk, N.D. was hired by the skating legend to plan a team-building experience. Hawk’s team was taken to an undisclosed location in the Southern California desert, where N.D. had built a five-car train from junk parts that ran on abandoned tracks. While on the train, which included a piano player and bar car, Hawk’s team participated in a ritual designed to remedy tensions among the group. Hawk and N.D. are both interviewed in this episode, where N.D. discusses the philosophy behind the experiences he designs and his own formative experience, of growing up in a doomsday cult in Alaska.

An episode of Hidden Brain explores unexpected data indicating that older adults are actually happier than adults in their “prime” (hint: it comes down to how we value time), while a recent episode of New Dimensions Radio parses the concept of synchronicity (defined as “a meaningful coincidence that’s personal”) and how to invite it into our lives.

Another podcast rec from a PLASTARC team member is How to Fail. Host Elizabeth Day invites prominent guests, such as Jane Goodall, Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Williams and others, to discuss what they’ve learned from failure.

Per a PLASTARC intern, check out a recorded lecture from Yasmeen Lari, humanitarian and Pakistan’s first female architect. Now 80, Lari’s focus has changed over the years from commercial feats to spatial justice.

Finally, if you like your summer content dark and moody, a PLASTARC design analyst suggests the Netflix series Ozark, for its twists and suspense.

However and wherever you’re spending these days beyond the dog days of summer (yes, that’s a thing, and here we are!), we hope you’re beating both the heat and the SAD. Cheers to beaches, rivers, and living rooms!

From the archives

In slightly cooler summers, PLASTARC thought about what we can learn from coworking and took it even further, predicting the next generation of coworking. We were also interested in a multi-sensory approach to workplace design, people analytics (what it is and how it should inform workplace design), and data-powered change management. In a slightly hotter summer, we wrote about how less can be more (in terms of stuff, product offerings, marketing strategies, etc.), how reluctant Americans are to take vacations, how to adapt work to outdoor settingsand supporting mental health through design.

We’ve talked a lot about the media we’ve consumed, but one thing we haven’t mentioned yet is that “song of the summer.” You know the one (or five or a dozen); the soundtrack to long drives or evenings in the backyard under twinkly lights, the song that gets you pumped to make it to that pool party or night out with friends, the song that dances through your earbuds when you’re stretched on a dock, lake-side. What’s coming to mind for you? The journalists at The Guardian have made their picks!