Design for Social Change

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This fall semester grad project looked at examining food culture in North America and how it affects young adults. The food industry has become a large part of modern culture, primarily concerned with profit over consumer health. Advertising plays a large role in most peoples’ relationship with food without them even realizing it and government does little to regulate the influence of the industry on consumers. It is especially important for young adults to be aware of these issues, as they are at a very important transitional stage in their life as they strike out on their own and are learning how to take care of themselves and develop eating habits that they will take with them through most of their adult lives.

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This team project with Tenna Jacobsen, Mette Nielsen, Vaibhav Pawar, Steph Steele, and Timo de Winter was done for the International DesignCamp 2011 hosted by the Kolding School of Design in Denmark. The camp invites students from a broad range of international backgrounds and design disciplines to work together on design problems. This years theme was “From intangible to tangible. From tangible to wonderful.” focused on the problem of electricity consumption.

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While the city regularly assesses the demand for public amenities within municipal jurisdiction and monitors the success of new amenities, or ones that have become “problem amenities” (misused), rarely is a thorough review completed from a designer’s perspective.  The complexities behind the process, beginning with public demand and communication to the municipality and ending with the proposed design fully integrated within a community, requires an independent third party who can bridge both interests.

The idea? PublicWorks: A Designer's Union.