Students Design Six Local Storefronts

Architecture students in Hansy Better’s Digital Constructs studio (shown here with Mayor Allan Fung of Cranston, RI) have collaborated with Rolfe Square business owners in Cranston to design six new storefront windows. Organized in part by the Artists’ Exchange, a nonprofit arts collaborative and one of the local businesses involved, the project is meant to combine “beautiful historic storefront windows” and “design that creates a ‘wow’ factor” to attract customers to the shopping district, according to Elaine McKenna-Yeaw, director of the Artists’ Exchange.

Students made great use of laser-cut paper in their window installations, thanks to support from Bud Saggal of Precision Laser in Pawtucket, RI, who has partnered with the Architecture Department for the past seven years. “Bud has bought materials for our students and allowed us to use his fabrication shop at a huge discount rate or at no charge,” Hansy reports.

The students’ installations will be up until the end of December at Artists’ Exchange, Betty’s Candies, Citizens’ Bank, the Cranston Chamber of Commerce, Park Senate Barber Salon and Ruth’s Lingerie – all in Cranston’s Rolfe Square.

(via our)

The Postcard from the Winter Session Advanced Studio: Infrastructural Reserves, taught during 2009 by Anthony Acciavatti, was introduced in Art On Paper 2009.VOL.14. NO1, by Rebecca Sears, Editor of the magazine.  The image shown was one of the postcard made by Robert Williams M.ARCH 2011.

Kyna Leski on Creativity

Kyna Leski, an architect and art professor at RISD, gave her students a painting by Paul Klee – asked them to build a third dimension to the painting. One student assigned height to rectangles based on color, and built a complex object. He’d somehow osmotically absorbed the work of Klee and created an object that refracted the morning light to recreate the Klee painting.

The creative process makes me think that I am an atheist, and that I am not.

We become mystified by words like creative ability, talent or genius. These are different intelligences. Artistic sensibility is a keen intelectual perception. It’s on the cusp between percept and concept. It comes from the latin root that means “to gather”. I reckon, I get it, I gather, I see…

Kyna Leski, photo by Kris Krüg

If we’re asked to hold a sheet of paper, we grasp it between a thumb and forefinger. There’s a lot of intelligence in this simple gesture – we’re creating a cantilever and introducing dimension to the paper.

A medium is something that goes between and connections. When we choose materials and processes, they go between the questions that we’re asking. The friction in a thread and a magnet might capture the tension between living and working in a single space. These material geometries do not need translation. But metrics are needed to translate these things up in scale.

Finding, forming materials can be thought of as “material reasoning”. The word material comes from the word for mother, mater; the word for pattern from pater or father. Matrix comes from the word from womb. The matrix is where pattern and material are married. It is a generative order that holds the whole.

The sketch of a design for a chapel, starting with a church’s need to grow and breathe also starts with a trapezoidal footprint. We kept putting on a spire, and it kept getting knocked off. The word “spire” comes from spirit – inspire, spiral. We found that if we squared the walls to the trapezoidal plan, the building took on a spiral shape, looking as if the building is exhaling.

Creativity is not in knowledge, like we might get from a search engine – it’s about discovery, finding yourself somewhere in the unknown. The first studio class at RISD is designed to remove foundations, not put students on firm footing. Students look at cellular strucutres, to build a set of joints – critical for architects, the articulated meetings. Students make matrices which have distinct behaviors, a product of the articulation of the joints. In the process, they create a ground, or perhaps a raft, of their own, without room for previous baggage.

A creative work coheres by recognizing connections – coherence gathered and meaning made. (via Ethan Zuckerman)

Blast from the past.

Collaborative Study between Mike Eng (BFA/ID 09), Nick Buehrens (MARCH 11), Marty Cline (MARCH 11) which explored designing a structure/home for the Recycle A Bike Program at the Steel Yard during Spring 2009.  Advisors were Erik Nelson and Yu Morishita.  More information can be found here.

Follow RISD ARCH on Twitter.

Window Unwrapping

Saturday, December 5th ~ 11am

Join us as the following businesses present their newly designed storefront windows,
conceptualized and installed by RISD students:

Ruth’s Lingerie
Park Senate Barber Salon
Betty’s Candies
Cranston Chamber of Commerce
Artists’ Exchange
Citizens’ Bank

Read the press release below for more information.

…

Rolfe Square Storefronts Receive the Gift of Redesign This Holiday Season

Cranston, RI – Rolfe Square needs some flair, and Artists’ Exchange aims to give it just that. Located in the center of the state, the city of Cranston unites innerstate travelers from surrounding towns on a daily basis. Several neighborhoods within the city have unique identities, from waterfront Pawtuxet Village with its quaint shops and eateries and the annual historic Gaspee Days celebration, Knightsville, home of the annual Saint Mary’s Feast, and Garden City, the local mecca of higher end suburban retail, with the developing Chapel View complex only adding interest. While Rolfe Square sits at the center of the city, flanked by one of the state’s largest high schools and Cranston City Hall, the city’s nucleus has long been neglected.

Recent years have seen many Rolfe Square businesses shut their doors for good, and the constantly-under-construction Park Theatre only added to the depressed look of the neighborhood. However, things are starting to look up. The recent reopening of the Park Theatre, now known as RICPA, Rhode Island Center for the Performing Arts, marks the first major step in the turnaround of Rolfe Square. And Artists’ Exchange has big plans to keep the momentum going. On Saturday, December 5^th, during the 5^th annual Gingerbread House Decorating Contest and Artisan Fair, Artists’ Exchange will unveil six redesigned storefronts of Rolfe Square businesses. This is one of many stages in a long-term revitalization plan for the neighborhood, developed and led by Elaine McKenna-Yeaw, Director of Artists’ Exchange.

With ethnic food spots growing in numbers, staples such as Ruth’s Lingerie, Betty’s Candies, Durfee’s Hardware and King’s Garden, and Artists’ Exchange steadily gaining a reputation as a community arts hub, Rolfe Square has clear potential to offer its own unique draw, and to restore a sense of pride and identity to the neighborhood. Yeaw has big plans for revitalizing the area, with the ultimate goal of Rolfe Square being known as an arts district. With RICPA acting as the anchor, Yeaw is confident that this dream can become a reality.

To begin the feat of revitalization, Yeaw sought out the help of an expert. Architect and RISD Assistant Professor Hansy Better Barraza, who specializes in Main Street design, has been leading her fabrication students in a semester-long redesign effort of Rolfe Square storefronts. Cooperating businesses include Ruth’s Lingerie, Park Senate Barber Salon, Betty’s Candies, Cranston Chamber of Commerce, Artists’ Exchange and Citizens’ Bank.

Yeaw says “the idea is to utilize beautiful, existing historic storefront windows to promote these businesses, using design that creates a ‘wow’ factor. The goal is for the window displays to change each semester, giving Rolfe Square the ‘something to see’ reputation.” Yeaw is confident that interesting art pieces and displays will help to revitalize historic Rolfe Square, while giving RISD students practical experience with project development from concept to installation.

Other recent revitalization efforts include an Artists’ Exchange window installation by a RISD illustration student volunteer this past summer and the now annual Fall Out of Summer Arts Festival in September. Next year’s festival will kick off with an arts parade to involve even more of the community in reclaiming a sense of pride in their neighborhood. Future street revitalization plans will potentially involve sculptural installation on sign poles, lighting design and street art such as furniture, trash bins and tree guards.

The unveiling of the six storefronts will take place Saturday, December 5^th at 11am during the 5th annual Gingerbread House Decorating Contest and Artisan Fair.

via (tweet) HansyBetter via Artists’ Exchange

Show-N-Tell: Collapsible Wire Structures, with Dmitri Kozlov, Ph.D.

When: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 11:30a-12:30p

What: See and touch multiple working synergetic models; learn about the
iterative design process; and think about and discuss real world
applications, including shelters, architecture, fashion, and products.
(This will be an expanded presentation based on Dr. Kozlov’s recent talk
at the Synergetics Collaborative 2009 Symposium, “Design Science:
Nature’s Problem Solving Method.”  For more information, see
http://SynergeticsCollaborative.org

Where: RISD, Department of Industrial Design, ID Gallery, 2nd Floor, 161
S. Main St., Providence, RI

Who: Dmitri Kozlov, Ph.D., architect, designer and scientist, Moscow,
Russia.  Dr. Kozlov graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute in
1985. From 1986-1999, he worked for the Laboratory of Architectural
Bionics in Moscow.  He currently works for the Research Institute of the
Theory of Architecture and Town Planning, which is a part of the Russian
Academy of the Architecture and Building Sciences.  He is interested in
the application of natural design principals of form generation,
including Synergetics, in architecture and design.  He is an author of
inventions in the field of architectural bionics.

Kyna Leski at Pop!Tech

RISD Professor of Architecture Kyna Leski spoke this past weekend at Pop!Tech. Here is Ethan Zuckerman’s summary of Kyna’s talk on creativity. (via our.)

SWEET DESIGN

An article via Rhode Island Monthly about Kevin Cunningham (BArch 05):

Honeycomb is the secret to the next great surfboard.

It’s never made sense that surfboards, used in a sport all about connecting with the environment, are built with earth-unfriendly materials. Which is why Providence architect and surfer Kevin Cunningham wanted to create his own version of the hollow wood surfboard, a board that’s become increasingly popular for its green construction and superior performance. For inspiration, he turned to nature. “Honeycomb is an incredible natural structure — its strength to weight ratio is amazing,” Cunningham says. “I am able to use very thin wood veneers so the boards are lightweight — finished, they’re under ten pounds.” In addition to being long-enduring and biodegradable, wood also makes for a better ride. “Foam doesn’t flex the same way wood does,” he says. “Wood springs back.”

Cunningham shapes his balsa and paulownia wood boards entirely by hand, a process that takes up to thirty hours. His finished boards, often inlaid with abalone shell, are so beautiful (he’s a RISD grad, after all) that they’ve been displayed in local galleries and earned him a design fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts last year. Still, any good surfer keeps his humility. “Whenever I finish shaping a board, I take it down to Dave Levy at LSD Surfboards in Narragansett,” he says. “He tells me how I can make it better and if it looks okay.”

We know nothing about making surfboards, but the clean lines, sleek wood inlays and artful abalone designs? Yeah, it looks okay. See Cunningham’s work and find more info at spiraresurfboards.com