Personal Development Spring 2013

 

 

 

 

This semester was a semester in which I felt as though I grew more in my abilities to deal with people than in design. There were many design/teaching challenges that I felt like I had to face, and while I may not have always done it gracefully, I definitely grew from them.

 

From a design standpoint, my final project best shows my growth. For the final project my group designed ribbon furniture for the IPC. The pieces changed greatly from our initial ideas and I feel that the way those pieces engaged both the floor and the ceiling best represents my personal growth as a designer. The pieces are interesting and practical and deserve to be explored further. I think this is the first project that I thought about how to integrate the floor and ceiling without being directed by an instructor, to do so.

Global Engagement Center + a class project

 

 

 

 

The final project of designing a Global Engagement Center for UNCG was the most professional project we have worked on thus far. As group projects are frequently difficult, this one had some unique difficulties as our group was the entire class. In making it a class group project I think breaking the class into subgroups was a good way to help us work more efficiently but waiting on other groups to get initial planning done to be able to proceed with our planning became frustrating, although these challenges were not unexpected.

 

 

As group projects go this was one of my more positive experiences. I was made a task manager and was able to delegate tasks based on the strengths of my group members. I was fortunate to have the majority of my team eager and enthusiastic about the project. We worked well together and were able to design specifically for our group (International Programs Center). They are an energetic, lively group so I felt that we had freedom in our designs to express those qualities.

 

 

 

Overall I think our design was a success and we received kudos from IPC, in the form of an email, after the presentation. They seemed thrilled with our initial ideas. The things that need improvement are many, fortunately my clients were not aware of them. Firstly, I would like to further develop our "ribbon" design and maybe carry it throughout the building and generally have more time to fine tune everything. I feel like our design is good for the short amount of time in which we had to do it but I feel as though it is very rough. The other things I would like to fix are: the AutoCad file of our floorplan, the sections on Auto Cad,the orientation of the floorplan in relation to the orientation of the key plan, and the renderings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Space Planning for the IPC

 

Using the information that we gathered from our initial research and interviews, we made an adjacency matrix and bubble diagram (as shown in the previous post). Based on those items we started playing around with a floorplan. We always had the idea to put Dr Pynes in the middle and have various faculty radiate from her space. We started working with floorplans and space planning before we actually knew what the second floor of the building looked like which was very difficult. We double checked with IPC about their needs and were informed that we needed to include about 15 people more than we had initially planned. These additional people increased our square footage from an estimated 6500 square feet to 10,000 square feet.

 

In planning the space we took all of the storage needs into consideration, made sure there was a lot of natural light and began to think of ways to design a space that was an outward display of the energy and personality of the IPC.

 

 

The following are our floorplans:

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Initial Programming for International Programs Center

 

 

 

Ana, Annelise, and I visited Dr Penelope Pynes and Nor Othman in the IPC. We were fortunate to have been given a great deal of time from Dr Pynes. We talked to her for two and one half hours about her program, how she would like for it to grow, and the physical items that are needed in the office space of the IPC. After discussing these things with us she took us on a tour of the department and introduced us to all of the faculty of the IPC. In talking to each of the faculty members, we determined their needs and wants in office space and equipment. We compiled that information into boards that we presented to our class.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Deep Dive or Dive Deep

"Fail often in order to succeed sooner..."

 

 

The video called Deep Dive about the design firm IDEO from ABC's Nightline television news broadcast was an inspirational video. I have briefly researched the philosophies of IDEO before watching this video and believe them to have unique and creative ways to solve design problems. I based the concept of my living/learning community on their problem-solving philosophies.

The things and structures that we design tell very specific stories about us, in the language of design, about the history of our time. Based on that understanding and IDEO's multidisciplinary approach to design problem-solving, they have grown beyond product design and space design into a firm that designs and implements ideas to solve global concerns.