The students were given a real building in lower Manhattan and asked to find a medical cause of which that they wanted to provide a designed space as a part of the solution.
The building shown on this blog post is the one that the students had to design within. It is located near Battery Park in the lower part of Manhattan (not too far from ground zero). Some put their creation on the 1st and 2nd floor, other's at the top floors so they could use the roof too.
Some chosen causes included autism, premature birth baby rehab, some sort of dental/skeleton alignment philosophy that has not been introduced into America yet (this one was one of my favorite presentations), cancer recovery, and many others.
During the semester, they visited at least one NYC art museum and came back with knowledge of one or two art pieces that gave them the feelings and/or experiential perception of the place they were about to design. They were learning my office’s design philosophy which is experiential design. (To learn more about how it can help your business increase profits, get a copy of my book at The Designed Office)
Then, they went to real case study sites to know technical data (room sizes and other basic functional requirements) that they used while writing a program for their project.
I was privileged to participate as a design jury member during the mid-term design presentations, so I was able to see the undeveloped designs months ago.
There were several more steps in-between…
Today, as a returning design jury member, I found it be a great treat to see how the student’s thoughts and concepts germinated from just a concept to an inspiration to various levels of design exploration to a well executed designed end result.
We have some great minds about to come out into the real world to help us create better lives!
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