Japanese Art to Offer Relief <3
On Saturday, April 9, students from the RISD studio Architectonics will join their instructor, New York-based architect Aki Ishida, at the Japan Society in New York City for a benefit concert and workshop to raise funds for the Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund. They will install Luminous Washi Lantern, a project they designed collaboratively during Wintersession, and run a full-day workshop to teach visitors how to fold paper pieces that will be added to the installation. A longtime member of RISD’s adjunct faculty, Ishida has taught Architectonics every Wintersession since 2007, attracting some of the best students to a class that has become a perennial favorite in Architecture. “This year’s project evolved from assignments I have given in previous years focused on temporary paper-enclosed spaces,” Ishida explains. In the past, students have designed hypothetical projects for such sites as the Providence Art Club parking lot and a “Japanese village” Ishida is designing for Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota. However, after attending a festival at the Japan Society last spring, she determined that it “would be a perfect venue for an installation with RISD students.” The Society agreed – and then chose to incorporate the installation as part of this weekend’s fundraiser for relief efforts. Inspired by traditional Japanese lantern festivals, the Luminous Washi Lantern project explores the use of light and shadow in Japanese architecture and celebrates the ephemeral, fleeting nature of materials traditionally used in Japanese rituals and events. As part of the class, a dozen sophomore and Foundation students worked closely with five teaching assistants who had participated in previous Architectonics studios – Jason Keyes BArch 12, Alex McCargar BArch 11, E. Tristan Mead BArch 14, Evita Yumul BArch 08 and Henry Zimmerman BArch 13. Each student explored various designs for cutting and folding the mulberry paper traditionally used for lanterns. The group then collectively chose and synthesized designs by Adria Boynton BArch 15, Fernando Diaz Smith 13 ID and Timothy Dobday BArch 15to develop for the site-specific piece in NYC. Installed in the the Japan Society’s skylit lobby, Luminous Washi Lantern will actually grow over the course of the day as visitors write messages to survivors of the earthquake and fold the paper (donated in part by the risd:store and C2F) before adding it to the installation. Doors open at 11 am and the piece will remain illuminated until 11 pm, when the event ends. The benefit on Saturday is built around the CONCERT FOR JAPAN, which features performers such as Laurie Anderson (who holds an honorary degree from RISD), Philip Glass, Lou Reed and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Although tickets for the gala are already sold out, the concert will be projected on screens both inside and outside the building and will stream live on UStream. “Being a Sakamoto fan since junior high school, I am especially excited about his participation,” Ishida notes. Most importantly, she is pleased that she and her current and former Architectonics students can help with Japanese relief efforts as they “share this special convergence of our interests in Japan, work with light and ephemeral materials, and interest in teaching the public about design.” The Luminous Washi Lantern project was made possible by the Japan Society, a grant from the Center for Global Partnership and the RISD Architecture Department. links:
Aki Ishida Architect
Japan Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund
CONCERT FOR JAPAN on UStream
Tree Planting in Bucklin Park
Last Saturday, a number of students from Brian Goldberg’s Commonwealth studio gathered at Bucklin Park, in Providence’s West End, to help plant trees with the neighborhood’s Friends of Bucklin Park Board.
Bucklin Park is the site for the Commonwealth students’ studio work, making this an special opportunity to get involved.
FRIEND OF FUTURE POSTCARDS IN I-95 WELCOME CENTERS.
T-SHER: DIGITAL PLATFORM FOR THE MASSES
(Click link above to watch video). “This project was done at RISD sometime during March 2007, for a design studio based around Detroit City. The prompt for this two week project was to make a movie based upon our preconceived notions of the D. Cezar Nicolescu, Brian Hildebrand, and [Thomas Sheridan] set out to expose the fallacy of downtown revitalization via casino development. Ironically, the film ends up portraying gambling as a rewarding and lucrative investment. Thomas Gardner and Matthew Miller were our critics for this project.”
106/UPSTAIRS? by Anastasia Laurenzi
RESPONSE::PROPOSITION
As a response to the BROWN BAG LUNCH LECTURE SERIES: by ANDRE SCHMIDT on TVCC, Anastasia Laurenzi has some thoughts on our technical courses in 106 and its relation to the “upstairs” studio works.
I thought that the lecture today was pretty amazing on many levels.
First, someone that can talk to others about what the topic is and to have such a succinct presentation that explains thoroughly throughout the process.
Second, a project that defines the connection we are supposed to understand in our education - that of design and construction.
I thought it so perfect when andre looked up and said see “these are your blue foam boxes that stack on top of each other, this is what they mean”.
I would like to say that this lunch lecture should pave the way for the new premise of technical course teaching at this school.
—-to present a real project (how wonderful even that the lecturer knows it intimately by working on it) with photos, like this that bridges the (huge) gap between studio upstairs and technical downstairs.
Using the techniques of understanding scale, then design, and then construction… this is where the technical course then steps in and zooms into the connections.
The welds, the steel, the concrete, the cladding of skin, the heaviness of glass, what a cantilever imposes/exposes… the equations then make sense because the physical realm steps in to show what these “logical” moment diagrams mean.
I am speaking from the standpoint of someone that does not quickly understand mathematics and equations and needs the physical example to make sense of it all.
I guarantee that the students would then be more interested in the technical learning, and would then take it back upstairs to have more intelligent designs.
The paper and chipboard would then start to be a medium for understanding thickness and not just implying it.
The presentation would give an example to us as students on how to thoroughly present our thoughts for understanding in those that do not know the project intimately.
These are my two cents of thought, but seeing that i have been here for three years and have found some things to be inconsistent in the learning process, i would highly recommend a [re]thinking of how to teach and to look at the method of power point presentation that we are all trained to present as a new method of understanding in the classroom and as a teaching method not only to put bold colored letters up on the wall to write down on paper, but to show how the “world” uses these blue foam boxes and numbers and algorithms to create something that stands up, withstands earthquakes, encloses a space, creates inhabitation, and connects the rendering of an idea to the realization of the space designed.
Anastasia Laurenzi: April 14th, 2009.
