Real life project... Joy.

We just handed in our first project and like clock work another one greets us the next day on our desk. This on however, is different than any project before. This is a real project with a real client. Our first day we met with the client to hear about what his plans were for this building. After seeing the pictures and ideas I have come to the conclusion that it is going to be one heck of a project. The client wants to renovate this old rundown building... and I am talking a complete makeover. We went on our first job site. It was a little intimidating. When they first got the building there was so much rundown stuff in there. They said when we got there it would be about 80% cleaned... if that was 80% then there was a lot, and I mean a lot, of stuff in there. I was assigned to take pictures during the job site so that allowed me to look at the details in the building. It was not entirely bad. For example, this building had some beautiful tin ceiling panels still intact.

We are breaking this project into two parts. There are two different sides of this building. One a fast food restaurant and the other a bistro/bar. One of the hardest things in this project is interpreting what the client actually wants. He threw out a couple of inspirational words but then he would talk about something completely opposite from what he just said. This just leaves you frustrated and clueless. For this first part of the project we are all working as individuals to provide the client with and many ideas as possible. Our presentation will be to the client and from there he will pick a couple of designs that he like and would like to see continued. From there we will break up into teams and design the rest of the building.

Just explaining this makes me realize what a daunting task this truly is. In the end one of our designs or bits and pieces of our designs will actually be used in a real life project.

first project

I have my first project due on Monday. This project has been completely different than anyone we have received prior. First of all, this project is a real client which is a little intimidating and exciting at the same time. One thing that is really cool about this project is that the client only wants "conceptual ideas" so we do not have to get very technical about our design. It is basically only the fun part of designing that we are doing for this project. Seriously, how cool is that? It gets even better because we could win and our design actually could be used. How nice would that be to be able to use in our portfolio. We had the option of working with partners so my friend and I worked together and our design is really something. They came to us wanting a more professional design modeled off of our COLAB space. Our COLAB space is basically a place were we can go and relax but it entices creativity because of the design. There are so many cool things in that space. For example, there is furniture made out of cardboard. There are refurbished old dentist chairs for seating. There are chairs made out of flip-flop shavings. I mean, the stuff in there is endless. So when you go in that space you see how people create things out of materials that you would never imagine possible. I was researching materials the other day and I found this person who made a leather floor out of old belts. Seriously, who thinks of stuff like that?! So we are just putting our finishing touches on our design I am nervous but I am also really proud of what we came up with.

charrette

So we started off the semester again with a charrette. Last year we had a week to come up with an idea for the charrette however, this year we had only 3 days! In addition, this year Ad Design and Fashion Design also joined us (Interior and Industrial Design). The charrette was "a fix for the future" ...how do you fix the future first of all and in just 3 days? So like usual we were assigned groups which at the end only 7 of us remained. We did not have a lot of time to brainstorm ideas because of the limited amount of time so it was extremely hard to formulate an idea that we all strongly agreed upon. My group decided that we wanted to tackle a social issue ... obesity. There are so many things that are contributed to obesity... ignorance, poverty and so on. Then we decided that we wanted to educate and we believed that it should start in the elementary schools. We wanted to educate children about the importance of energy and about being sustainable in addition we also wanted to give them the feeling of empowerment. Our final product that we came up with was a playground. This playground was incorporated with pieoelectric equipment which would allow the children to create their own energy. There would be many visual aids to show the children how much energy was being created to show them that they are making a difference. This energy that they created would be used to "fuel" their school. If we give children the feeling of empowerment and show them that they can make a difference they will take that with them throughout their entire life.

I can not believe it is the last week of school. Wow this year has flow by. Last week of school is usually the toughest. This year our teachers gave us this time to hand in make up work to improve our grade if we want to. But we also have a project due on Monday so it is all about time management. I will be completely done with everything on the last day of school. All my finals will be over with and my projects due. It is nice because I can just relax after Monday but it would be nice to have a little more time to dedicate to some of my projects. I guess this just preps us for reality in the business world.