We asked our MFA students to dream big, and then build their design for a literacy center for a juvenile detention center—in 10 days! We decided to pair unlimited imagination with pragmatic requirements to see if we could help the students realize the fantastic, while making the everyday something to aspire to. Our strategy for this dual directive was that one (the fantastic) would be a safeguard against the potential limitation or weakness of the other (pragmatism). Keep in mind that these were students with a wide range of backgrounds in art, craft, and design as well as various levels of skills. We were looking for a synthesis across disciplines.

Read more…

Design educators and practitioners routinely assert, with remarkable assurance, that design thinking strategies can deliver the “game-changing” ideas needed to address the critical problems of our times. Frequently, it seems, we fall in love with the promise(s) of these ideas – and the god-like power their creation conveys – and are less committed to following through with the same degree of passion.

In an effort to provide a ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’ model of design education and practice, first year students in Oregon College of Art and Craft and Pacific Northwest College of Art’s joint MFA in Applied Craft and Design begin the program with a pre-semester, intense 10 days to learn about collaboration and design-build. This helps them to get to know each other and it teaches them to work together, on designing and building a project for an actual client. With an emphasis on civic engagement, the projects for the program are selected for their potential to benefit an organization or group of people who do not have access to designers or cannot afford to pay for their services.

While there is a growing interest among designers in humanitarian work, many current projects tend to be located in distant countries whose cultures and contexts are often unfamiliar to them. In some case designers are drawn to foreign projects for their exotic appeal and for the opportunity to jump on the global networking bandwagon.

But complex issues like disaster relief, rapid urbanization, and healthcare are critical and demand big ideas, and need design-build approaches that stay close to home and work with the human and material resources at hand. These projects may help us understand and effectively address extraordinarily difficult problems.

Read more…