Design Week: Recap

Well...Design Week 2010 is over.  It was a very long week but a fun one.  I got to meet a bunch of new people and learn some great stuff.  The theme for the week was about LSU tailgating.  This was a pretty unique concept to use for a design week and turned out to be very interesting and eventually fun.  Each day a different designer came and led us for the day with a lecture and then we were given a different design brief each day.  Each morning we presented the projects we worked on the day before.  We were split up into groups of 4-6 each composed of any combination of undergrads (2nd-5th years) and grads(1st-3rd).  Naturally my group was supposed to have six but only three of us showed up for the week.  Very typical.  It turned out to be me, a second year undergrad (Hunter) and a third year undergrad (Alex).  Here is a day by day 'summary' of each day:

Day 1:  Scott Pobiner - [Designing the Problem]
Scott is an architect from Parsons School of Design in NY, NY.  The focus for Monday was on the planning and management that happens before a project is to be given to a designer to be designed.  This was clearly a little different for someone in design school but a very important process to know and understand.  My group was given an alumni member of the Tiger band to interview as a 'stakeholder'.  The goal of the interview was to gain info on how a band members game day happens.  The goal was to gather information from the 'stakeholder' to identify any problems that the band has on game days.  Some things we identified included: their schedule, game day process, logistics of movement throughout the day, and their route from the band hall to Tiger field (very similar to the Vol Walk).  The poster that we produced for the day is below.

Day 2:  Ivan Valin - [On Course]
Ivan is a landscape designer from Tom Leader Studio in Berkeley, CA.  Tuesday switched gears and focused on an actual tailgating site.  The goal was to identify and document latent structures embedded in the site.  We did this through collages and montages.  We identified two problems on our site:  lack of shade and the presence of standing water.  The goal was not to make a new design for the site but to identify the issues and propose possible solutions.  This day was my least favorite due to an enormous amount of work for one day.  Here are some montages/collages.

Day 3:  Liz Burow - [Body/Territory:  Extensions]

Liz is an artist and designer also from Parsons School of Design in NY.  This day was a little different and very strange.  We were asked to design a wearable artifact that responds to a social issue that is involved with tailgating.  We looked at conditions of excess and deficiency involved in tailgating (aka:  food, drink, shelter, seating, etc.).  My group decided to design a backpack cooler that can transform into a stadium chair.  I don't have any pictures but it actually turned out pretty sweet.  The following morning we had a runway fashion show to show off some of our creations and how they would be used.  A couple of the goofy 'outfits' can be seen in the linked video at the bottom of the post.  It was pretty odd thing for landscape architects to be 'designing', but thats what happens when an artist gets involved in the process.  

Day 4:  Beau Trincia - [Deployable Infrastructure]
Beau is an environments designer from IDEO in San Francisco.  Thursday, our final day of designing, was personally my favorite day.  The design challenge of the day was to develop a twofold tailgating infrastructure that includes both static and deployable elements that work to support tailgaters.  We decided to design a 'collapsible dumpster' that tailgaters could use as a more efficient way to dispose of trash and recycling.  We had to create a video to 'sell' our product.  Here is what we came up with, pretty funny:


Day 5:  Awards and actual tailgate.
We finished up the week on Friday with presentations of our videos from Thursday.  This was followed by an awards ceremony.  We did not win any awards but our video was voted third best out of the 18 groups.  Pretty good for only having three people IMO.  After the awards ceremony, of course we ended the week with a tailgate; a legit tailgate.  We had three kegs, two beer pong tables, flipcup, cornhole, a pig roast, BBQ, and all kinds of other food.  Pretty good party for 3PM on campus during a school day.  Only in Louisiana.

In the news:
WAFB Morning News Video (click on LSU Design Week vid)
LSU Reveille Article

Overall it was a very informative and enjoyable week.