Hasta La Ideas

Back in 2004, I wrote an article called 1000 Words of Advice for Design Students. Flattered that several departments were using the document in their curricula, I followed it up with 1000 Words of Advice for Design Teachers, in 2006 (not used very much in curricula, that one!). For the past year I’ve been putting together the bones of a new MFA program in Products of Design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, welcoming its first students in the fall of 2012. (Applications for the inaugural class open this month.) So now it’s a year in and a year away, and I thought it might be a nice idea to revisit the 1000-word format, document some of the thoughts and strategies and arguments for the new program, and lay the groundwork for the certain learning ahead. It turns out that 1000 words is woefully insufficient for discussing the most important aspects of the program, but it’s a taste, and if you’d like to learn more, please do head over to productsofdesign.sva.edu where you’ll find mission statements, Q&As, and more curriculum information than you’ll be able to save to Instapaper. In the meantime, here we go, again: Exactly 1000 words below.

You Are What You Eat
The first decision made for the MFA Products of Design department had nothing to do with philosophy or pedagogy or accreditation; it had to do with food. We’ve devoted a significant amount of the architecture and planning to what we eat—with generous prep space, two full-size fridges and sinks, rice cookers, steamers, slow-cookers and other industrial-grade implements that will help students do better, think better and feel better by supporting their food energy needs. Butcher-block classroom tables gang up into short and long dining tables; drawing demo mirrors double as cooking demo counters. One of the preeminent greenmarkets is five minutes away from the school, open Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays of every week. Several of our faculty are passionate about, and plan to do coursework around, food and food systems. Students will be encouraged to form dinner co-ops (you cook a meal to feed 6 people once a week; the other days you eat someone else’s).

I’ve gotten two major criticisms on this one: The first is “But the studio will smell!” Yes, it will. It will smell like food. (Most smell like plastic.) The second is “Students are out of control! I mean, who will clean the coffee maker?” Oh hell, I will.

Build a Place, Not a Space
It’s been a big challenge finding the sweet spot of what to provide students in terms of individual workspace, collaborative space, leisure, model making, presentation and celebration space. But space has been the wrong word all along of course; the goal is to create place, not space. And that’s where architect Andrea Steele and her team have landed, taking a holistic approach to how the philosophy and the pragmatics of the program get instantiated in its built environment.

We’ve used several principles here: Build as little as possible, keeping elements versatile, resilient, and nimble; Give everything more than one purpose, leveraging vertical elements for both display and domain; Recognize that the biggest waste of space in a school is the classroom. Ours are sundrenched, tech-equipped, and furnished as students’ project rooms. And once every day, from 5 to 8pm, they turn into classrooms. Provide welcome for bicycles, accommodate personal phone calls. You get the idea.

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