Hasta La Ideas

Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

• Channel of Mindfulness
• Designer: Second Story Design Team; Kyle Fiano, Joshua Gallagher, Erica MacKenzie, Courtney Larsen, & Anna Christy
• Location: Tempe, Arizona
• Category: Interiors & Exhibitions
• Award: Student Runner up

This project is a freestanding organic shade and seating structure constructed to turn a campus location into an attractive destination for others.

How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
I found out that we had been recognized by the jury via Twitter. The Core77 Awards account tweeted at me when I was at the studio and I was completely thrilled and surprised. I thought it was very smart that I was contacted through Twitter because it was very easy for me to instantly broadcast the news out to the rest of the team as well my other Twitter followers.

What’s the latest news or development with your project?
Peritoneum has actually gone through a lot of changes in recent weeks. We moved the entire structure off of the site at the Arizona State University Tempe campus and transported it to a lot on the corner of Roosevelt Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown Phoenix Arizona. We decided to move because it was necessary for Peritoneum to continue to have an impact on the Arizona aesthetic, and by transporting it to Phoenix the structure is opened up to a wider audience base. Since we consider the structure to not only be a great design work but also a beneficial public art piece, we are working on programming to change the aesthetic of the material by collaborating with artists as well as the general public as a whole.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
When we presented this structure to the faculty after being awarded by the jury, many within the school administration doubted our ability to pull off the construction of a project with this big of a scope. We were advised to add an architect to the team for additional guidance, but refused and ended up proving a lot of people wrong with our success.

What was an “a-ha” moment from this project?
I think the amount of work that we had to do in order to pull this off did not really hit the team until we were on the site for day one of construction. We were all pretty nervous given the limited timeframe we had to actually build the structure, but after we finally figured out the proper guideline to place to wooden slats on, things went off without any big problems.

(more…)