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.