makeshift process

After seeing the disaster in Haiti, our second year studio reacted by doing a makeshift shelter project which was presented on Friday along with a donation booth to raise money to support Haiti. The parameters of the project were that we could only use five materials and two binding agents and all of the materials had to be found. We could not spend any money on the project. After doing some searching around, finding materials and trying a bunch of ideas, we ended up with our five materials being wood, magazines, pvc pipes, plastic bags and twine and our binding agents were glue and nails. We were given an activity to be done in our space that activity being sketching. In thinking about all of these different things we came up with our design, which included a colorful open shelter that is light and airy with lots of inspiration for sketching.
I was extremely pleased with the outcome of the project. Going into this project I was worried that it was going to just look like a whole lot of trash sitting in the lobby. However the final product was clean and looked professional and it served its purpose perfectly. Looking back on this project, I will remember it by the fact that it was very rewarding. In the majority of the projects that we do or have done in the past when we are finished with the project all we have to show for it are drawings and presentation boards. However in this project when we were finished we had a full scale working model of our design. That was a much more rewarding experience than the other final projects.
This project has changed the way that I think about design because I am always saying that I want a job that is more gratifying than design but I realized through this process that design can be very gratifying. The process of going through the steps of this project helped me to find my strengths and weaknesses in the design field. My strengths were in helping to accomplish goals such as completing necessary steps on time, to keep the team on track, and to be realistic of time constraints. My weaknesses were in actual sketch book and journal keeping. I have trouble with keeping all my ideas in a certain space. They are all in my head but I have trouble getting them onto paper. In looking at the process, I found with the writing exercises I was able to overcome these weaknesses and explain some of my ideas. Also being made to sketch my ideas to help show the rest of the team what I wanted to accomplish. I felt like we made some really great design decisions in this project. One of the most important things I learned was to simplify design and to take things away and that if there is something that can be taken away then you are not finished yet. The other thing that we came up with was the paper mache. After Hope suggested using magazines, I put forth the idea of using paper mache to help bring in the magazines throughout the space. I thought that it really helped to bring in color and more elements to sketch into the space.
Over all I felt that I learned a lot from this project. I really enjoyed working in groups and building a full scale model. I was very pleased with the way that it turned out. I would, in the future, like to see more projects where we actually build the designs because it really helps you understand the way things work and you are able to really have a sense of accomplishment when you are through. I am excited to see what the future holds for new projects the rest of this semester.