The objective of this workshop is to make more beautiful things. Industrial Designer professionals give shape to new technology, creating mass-produced things like trains, cars, appliances, furniture, medical equipment, toys, packaging, corporate identity -- any user interface. The methodology based on scientific problem analysis with a user-centered perspective applies to any media. This integration of problem solving and creative inspiration in the hands of talented people is a very powerful tool, so powerful that Victor Papanek, author of Design for the Real World, says Industrial Design is “the most dangerous profession.” By building a set of projects that explore materials, processes and aesthetics, you will apply a three phases of design process: 1. explore, 2. sketch, and 3.make. Class critiques will focus on improving the product communication and looks, so we can be as good as we can! ( Production Technique )

One of the First projects for this class was to design a VASE: I am interested in organics and the beauty of nature. Initially I wanted to have a vase constructed from a piece oof living bamboo in which I could plant an orchid, wherby there would be a complete cycle. As you can see from the image below I utilized insteadthe trunk of a Maple tree. Into the hole I interted a capped copper shaft, that served as the resevior.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Second project was to use the LASER Cutting services here at NYU. I decided upon a project along the same lines as the commonly known Refridgerator Magnets. I printed words onto 12' of 1/2" dowel. . . . . the result is this:

 

 

The concept was to create a more tactile and appealing interface for creating sentences. The result is as you see here. The difficulty and arguably the limitation of the interface is the words I was forced to choose. Another variable was that the words were created at two different times by the laser cutter, who didn't use the same default font.

The words found in REVOLUTIONS are by no means an accurate generalized language, but they do in fact create thoughts and a method to express them interactively.

 

 

The third Project was to Design and build a chair from cardboard. Because I was concerned early in the semester with the logisitics of collecting, and more importantly recycling a large mount of cardboard, I began doing research. What I was really interested in was creating a chair from carboard tubes. I started with: AIANY and soon was lucky enough to find Joanne Fernando with GRUZEN SAMTON architects. She gracefully supplied enough tubes for not only my own chair, but a few additional projects as well.

 

This is an image of the tubes before they were assembled: