A communal, creative and inquisitive lifestyle
TRANSLATED TO THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
Transform a mundane point of passage into a destination.
The most commonplace objects are a designer's strongest allies of genuine expression in my opinion. It doesn't get much more commonplace than sitting.
BRAND
Indiana University College of Arts & Sciences
MY ROLE
I am usually the most bench-obsessed person in the room, so naturally, I was responsible for leading the ideation, design development and documentation to create a bench outlining a redrawn plaza in front of the building. This was an entirely student-led project. View the rest of the team in our process book here.
I had the super special opportunity to participate in a multidisciplinary studio course as an undergraduate at Indiana University. The university's College of Arts and Sciences moved in the spring of 2013 to Owen Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the Bloomington Campus. Our cohort of undergraduate and graduate students redesigned the surrounding area to better reflect the identity of the College.
Fresh from an architecture course in Rome, Italy, I was stoked to employ all kinds of ~worldly knowledge~. I had become obsessed with decoding design of the built environment — what were designers and architects saying with their drawings, with their hands? I was especially intrigued in looking at the conventions of everyday objects and how they differ from culture to culture. It's no surprise to me that I gravitated toward branding projects as the foundations I learned in Urban Design were really about branding a place's bones. This is a hefty passion point of mine, and I could write pages and pages on it (again). Email me, and I'll gladly keep rambling, but for now take a seat and look at this bench.
I'M A BENCH, I'M A LOVER, I'M A...
The winning idea for this bench had to speak to who the College of Arts & Sciences is. Its five core values are to question critically, think logically, communicate clearly, act creatively and live ethically.
This piece of furniture asks students to take a seat and question critically whether they're facing one another and communicating or sitting on a shorter segment of the bench alone for some solitary thinking. The various ways to use the bench encourage creative interactions and living ethically by looking out for one another.
IT'S REAL!
To be totally honest, none of us in the class expected our work to be carried out. BUT, I found myself visiting campus a year after graduation, and there was my bench. Yeah, I had to wipe my eyes a little bit.
Today, it's the starting point for campus tours — likely thousands of students first memory of their soon-to-be home.