In the past few years, my job title has evolved from “Founder of the nonprofit Project H Design” to “high school shop teacher.” Some of you may be familiar with the work of Project H, and our high school design/build program Studio H. More than anything, we believe that youth have a raw brilliance that, coupled with some creative and construction skills, can change the face of the towns and cities we live in. We’ve built a 2,000-sq.ft. farmers market in rural North Carolina, and now our students in Berkeley, California, are building a solution for their school community: a free-standing classroom space using renovated / redesigned shipping containers, sculptural roof trusses, and a lot of sweat equity. In order to get there, we’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund our material costs. Please consider backing the project as our students prepare to hit the ground running in the next few weeks!

Here’s what you’ll find on our Kickstarter campaign page:

We are Studio H at REALM Charter School in Berkeley, California: One hands-on class, two teachers who know how to design and build, and twenty eager 10th-grade students who want to make our school and community a better place.

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This past Sunday evening Emily Pilloton delivered the commencement address at the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, her alma mater. Here is a lightly edited version of her inspirational talk that can apply to everyone in the design field today, not just to new grads, as well as to anyone seeking to put meaning in what they do all day.—SSS

I feel fairly unqualified to be your graduation speaker: I was not a great student during my time here. I am not really a good “adult,” either, as I have no savings account or long-term health insurance. Also, I am not primarily interested in addressing you as architects and designers this evening, but first and foremost as citizens, and only then, as members of a professional community.

So with those disclaimers in mind, I want to share two stories with you. They are not stories of success so much as adventure. Take them as cautionary tales or advice or just stories of a girl who, like you, graduated from this institution and is still trying to find the best modes of operation in design and in life.

First story: Almost five years ago, I quit a corporate retail design job, selecting paint colors and doorknobs, moved in with my parents, and started a nonprofit design agency with no business plan and $1,000 in my bank account. Many people called this impulsive.

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In 2009, Project H founder/executive director Emily Pilloton and her partner Matthew Miller relocated from the West Coast to rural North Carolina to begin Studio H, an innovative design/build curriculum for high school students. Recognizing the need for a fresh approach to public education in economically challenged, rural geographies such as Bertie County, Pilloton and Miller embrace a radically local, hands-on approach, working from within the community to empower the next generation of residents with design skills that can help create lasting change. I recently caught up with Pilloton in Portland, Oregon, where an exhibition chronicling the studio’s first year, Studio H: Design. Build. Transform, is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.

Concepting chicken coop designs at Studio H. Photo courtesy Project H Design.

Katherine Bovee: What is the difference between “designing for” and “designing with,” and why is this distinction important?

Emily Pilloton: I don’t think it’s necessarily an either/or. “Design for” tends to be a much more top-down dynamic between designer and client, whereas “design with” is more fluid and democratic. Our clients are not corporations or wealthy individuals. They haven’t worked in a creative capacity—schoolteachers, a foster care home, 17-year-old students from a very impoverished part of North Carolina. “Design with” is not driven by just being more democratic for the sake of being more democratic, but by the nature of who we’re working with. We want to give them not just a say, but a stake in whatever is being produced, so that by the time we come up with something, it’s not a handover, it has already been embraced by the people that are going to use it and they feel like it’s their own. That’s what will make a project successful in the long run.

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How can introducing a design curriculum to a high school, in one of America’s poorest rural counties, create new opportunities? Emily Pilloton, author of Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, published in 2009 by Metropolis Books, shows us, in her TED Talk about her recent project Studio H.

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The recent exchange between Bruce Nussbaum and Emily Pilloton on humanitarian design frustrates me to no end. It reminds me of the age-old duel between the generations, the older one (Nussbaum) with preconceived notions of humanitarian design and cultural imperialism versus the new generation (Pilloton), which is bravely venturing forth to right the world their elders have wronged for so long. While Nussbaum plays into the design community’s (and their followers’) paralyzing cynicism, Pilloton opens up new doors, finds friendships, makes things happen, and uses design as a conversation about place, object, life, usefulness, and human worth. Read more…

For this year’s Metropolis booth, we’re hosting the last stop of Emily Pilloton’s Design Revolution Road Show, which has been traversing the country since February, bringing a selection of products that empower people to high school and university students (and Stephen Colbert). Earlier today we caught up with Emily in the vintage Airstream trailer that has served as her traveling exhibition space—and living quarters!—for the past three months. Click the play button to watch her final Road Show appearance.

Video shot and edited by Eve Dilworth; text by Mason Currey.

In her monthly “Letter from Baltimore,” Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about architecture, culture, and urbanism in a city more often associated with violent crime than with good design. Click here to read her previous posts. For more by Dickinson, visit her blog, Urban Palimpsest.

Photo: Emily Pilloton

Nothing—not even well-intentioned design—is above reproach. The confluence of organizations and individuals working to bring design practice to those who might not normally get it seems to have hit a critical mass, and with it comes the inevitable backlash. In an entry written last fall on his Design Altruism Project Web site, David Stairs lit a firestorm of debate when he argued that “social networking has struck the design world with the force of the Indonesian tsunami bringing changes of sorts, but no guarantees of lasting change.”

So what do we mean by humanitarian design and is it really making an impact? Read more…

Photo: the Design Revolution Road Show on Flickr

Last night, in San Francisco, Emily Pilloton and her merry band of  humanitarian-design crusaders hosted the official send-off for their Design Revolution Road Show, which will be touring the country in a vintage Airstream trailer between now and April. I am very sorry I wasn’t able to attend—the invite to the “parking lot party” touted a tantalizing trifecta of mobile food vendors: one taco truck, one pizza truck, and one cupcake truck. Fortunately, even if you can’t make it to any of the tour stops, Pilloton and company are posting copious photos and videos on their blog. In fact, the Road Show has already made three pre-kickoff stops, including one at Pilloton’s alma mater, Redwood High School.

One other piece of related news: Pilloton’s nonprofit, Project H Design, is in the running for a $50,000 grant from Pepsi to help launch Studio H, a design-build program in the poorest county in North Carolina. It’s a terrific idea, so be sure to take a moment to vote for Studio H here.

You can also watch a video about Studio H, “the country’s first design, vocation, and community-service program in a public high school,” after the jump. Read more…

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Last night, Project H Design founder and Design Revolution author Emily Pilloton appeared on the Colbert Report to talk about humanitarian design, the Spider Boot, Adaptive Eyecare, the “triple bottom line,” and more. Watch the complete interview above (or click here to see a larger-sized video).

Related: At the 2008 Metropolis conference at the ICFF, Pilloton spoke about social-minded product design. Click here to watch a video of her presentation.

“In order to be really secure, we’re going to need to be secure in change.” With that mobilizing statement, a quote from his grandfather, Charles Eames, keynote speaker Eames Demetrios set the tone for Compostmodern ‘09, last weekend’s day-long conference on sustainable design at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. And the day’s speakers did, indeed, advocate for change at all levels: changes in the way designers work, the way they think, what they design, and for whom (“Your client is the planet” became another reigning mantra), even how we conceive of sustainability itself.

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