DESIGN
A variety of design projects, from site interventions to proposals on the future of the book.
Body + Movement​
2012
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This first project of First Year Experience studio prompted freshmen design students to explore gravity, light, and movement through the body. The assignment was to create a worn paper structure that emphasizes a specific part or parts of the body while walking. My final product was a winged mesh mechanism that snaps open and closed when the user walks.
Modular Construction​
2012
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This project of FYE prompted design students to translate patterns and composition through various design terms: value, mass/void, density, line continuation, and texture. Students worked in teams to address one specific value through the use of wooden and metal cubes in order to create a modular composition that captured their assigned term. The term addressed in my project is 'Value.' Value was created by interspersing metal cubes with wooden, and positioned strategically under stage lights to create patterns of shadows on the surface of the stage.
Book on Books
2013
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Students were challenged to create a hand-made book that explores the enduring roles and essential attributes of the book. Exploration of how the object's scale, mass, structure, material, interactivity, and form affect the overall user experience and understanding, while also answering the question, 'What will the future book be?' My final product was a book of memory, speaking to how books can trigger childhood memories of those stories and parents involved in the reading; print books will soon become treasured artifacts to be preserved, as the electronic book takes over daily functions of transmitting information.
Design Systems
2013
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​Students were asked to propose a site solution for an empty parking lot on Hillsborough Street, while addressing several systems of the area (environmental system, food system, social system, transportation system...) The final artifacts would include a competition board for the final proposal, and a site model. The system I chose to intervene in was the environmental system, transforming the empty lot into a social area with a vertical garden and cistern system that would clean stormwater, reduce runoff, and act as noise and wind buffers, while also serving as a public space to walk through and linger in.
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Design Thought Model
2013
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In the Design Thinking course taught by the Dean of the college, Marvin Malecha, students were challenged to write an aspirational, intensely personal manifesto as a story of themselves, and create a 3-dimensional, interactive artifact that reflects both the manifesto and their own creative design thought process to be presented in a salon style critique. I chose to represent my process as a gyroscopic gimbal. When the metal center is spun at high speeds, the two middle rings fight one another, spinning, trying to keep in balance with the middle ring, and the entire artifact can be rotated by the outer ring.