The School of Design offers projects that engage in both theory and practice, asking questions such as how can we use scent to talk about climate change? How can we solve challenges in the wearability of hardware for NASA? And even, how can branding ethically reflect the large percentage of products that a handful of corporations own?
Vi Vo, BFA Fashion Design ’21
School of Design, Fashion Design
Inspired by my father’s immigrant journey to America after escaping the Vietnam War at 14 years old, A Vietnam Bias is a five-look pre-spring collection. This semester-long design collection was made utilizing my own old denim jeans from high school, which were repurposed by redyeing and rebleaching to create a new, abstract wash. My collection also showcases the use of NoSo technology to create a new fabric with reused denim that results in a contemporary silhouette, minimizing seams and machine stitching.
Kats Tamanaha, MFA Interior Design ’21 and Jordan Rekeweg, MFA Interior Design ’22
School of Design
An in-depth case study of the Antiguo Palacio as a pioneering example of a historic government building being renovated for the future.
Yi Luo, MFA Communications Design ’20
School of Design
Big Dumb Objects: Deconstructed and Reconstructed seeks to understand why some human constructs strike viewers as sci-fi-esque objects and what commonalities they share with big dumb objects (BDO).
Jessica Smith, MID ’20
School of Design, Industrial Design
Biomaterials for Design explores the characteristics of various bioplastics and their potential application within design. A collaboration between science and design, we created a spectrum of bioplastics with varying qualities of strength, flexibility, and durability and used them to create products ranging from bioplastic bags to light fixtures. The goal is to create new materials for manufacturing products that are non-petroleum based and completely biodegradable at the end of their intended use.
Tetsu Ohara, Visiting Associate Professor and Director of Sustainability of Interior Design, School of Design
School of Design, Interior Design
Biomimicry is a collection of visual presentations and student design proposals containing biomimicry design theory and strategies. Students submitted work to the 2019 Global Design Challenge, sponsored by the Biomimicry Institute. The students pictured submitted “Tomato’s Home,” which focused on design strategies to reduce waste in the post-harvest stage of tomatoes, particularly in Nigeria.
Danielle Begnaud, MID ’20
School of Design, Industrial Design
An examination into whether today’s children are losing an ability to generate their own antidotes to boredom, and instead are growing more dependent on external sources of increasingly digital and ubiquitous forms of entertainment.
Swati Balasubramanian, MFA Communications Design ’20
School of Design
Cohort of the “Smart” is an attempt to investigate the promises of the techno-evolution and how deep the cohort of the ‘smart’ has infiltrated human systems.
Shireen Soliman
School of Design, Fashion Design
K-12 Seed Grantee 2019-2020
Fashion and Identity: Representation, Self- Esteem and the Muslim-American Narrative is a workshop series designed to explore the direct correlation between awareness, agency, and perception of dress and self-esteem established with ownership of one’s authentic narrative.
Yuting Wang, BFA Industrial Design ’20
School of Design
Flex VR is a virtual reality application to help aging patients reach their rehab goals by making repetitive movements more pleasurable, entertaining, and creative.
Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, Adjunct Professor and Advisor
School of Design, Industrial Design
Yi Luo, MFA Communications Design ’20
School of Design, Graduate Communications Design
NYC Fairy: Cruise in Conflict is a campaign to raise awareness of public transit equity and provide a clearer picture of the government’s unreasonable subsidization of the NYC Ferry.
Jean Brennan
School of Design, Graduate Communications Design
Forests pre-logging smelled different from today’s forests, and that smell is ever-changing as forest succession and climate change march on. This research uses essential oils from fragrant plant species to map forest succession in Prospect Park, Brooklyn—from old-growth to current and future scenarios.
Alex Schweder
School of Design, Industrial/Interior Design
Performance Architecture represents over fifteen years of investigating connections between performance art and architecture. By occupying these built works, we discover the roles built space plays in constructing subjectivity and social relationships.
Amanda Huynh
School of Design, Industrial Design
Seed Grantee 2019-2020
Social Practice Kitchen is a mobile kitchen, designed to be a site of interdisciplinary investigation across the School of Design.
Tak Ying Chan, BFA Interior Design ’20
School of Design, Interior Design
The system of the contemporary society is heavily based on the consummative style of living, especially in highly developed cities like New York. Symbiosis seeks to address how urban consumerism, which has almost always been in the direction of exploitation of the environment, be replaced with a better system of living through accomplishing the opposite: to live and work in symbiosis with nature, adapting a mutualistic relationship between us and the environment.
Clara Martin, BFA Communications Design ’20
School of Design
Currently, 10 multinational corporations own 90 percent of all brands we find in supermarkets. What if this was reflected in the consumer’s shopping experience?
Matthew Hoey
School of Design, Industrial Design
Coming into direct contact with the human body, chairs are one step away from fashion — arms, legs, back, seat — as we enter the era of mass individualization our bodies will be scanned and component parts printed on demand!
Elira Duro, MID ’22
School of Design, Industrial Design
We Are Both, We Are All: The Influence of Cultural Fusion on Design probes the intricate nature of cultural tension and the complex exchanges when cultures fuse.
