Hasta La Ideas

This is the fourth post in a 6-part series from Ziba’s Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More here.

Despite the rise of digital tools and rapid prototyping, it has never been more important for designers to make things with their hands. Comfort with three dimensions as a sketch and development tool enhances a designer’s sensitivity to form tremendously, and helps them understand how products are made in the real world. If you can build it, you’re halfway to knowing how it could be manufactured. Instead, schools often allow students to jump into 3D CAD before they have a solid understanding of form and construction.

Over the past decade I’ve reviewed hundreds of portfolios, more often than not full of glossy 3D renderings based on weak underlying designs. Rendering technology has gotten so good and so easy to use that students quickly become reliant on it. Iterative exploration and refinement using your hands is essential, and in fact makes CAD modeling more effective and efficient in the long run.

More than that, building models by hand is fundamental to Industrial Design—it’s what makes our profession a craft. Spending time with CAD makes you a better modeler, but spending time with a physical model makes you a better designer. It allows you to see your design in the real world, in a way that simply superimposing a rendering into an environment cannot replicate (and please, if you’re going to do that, make sure to get the perspective is right).

During my first week as a professional designer at Seymourpowell in London, UK, I was handed an orthographic drawing of a handle for a roll-on suitcase, and sent down to the model shop. My task was to build the handle by hand using foam. Thankfully, a large part of my time in design school was spent in the shop, being commanded by our tutors to refine and refine physical models to the point that it felt tedious. The very task I was asked to complete in my first week made me realize why they had been so insistent. I’m not sure many courses push their students this way anymore.

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Here are some photographs of the Moscow School of Management by architect David Adjaye, where four buildings precariously cantilever over a large circular base.

Adjaye, who was today announced as this year’s Design Miami Designer of the Year, completed the teaching and research institute in the city outskirts at the end of 2010.

Classrooms and lecture halls circle a restaurant at the centre of the 150 metre-wide school-on-legs and a car park can be found below.

The four blocks above individually house administration, a wellbeing centre, a hotel and student accommodation.

The walls of the wellbeing centre display a herringbone patchwork of glass and coloured panels, while the other three blocks show the same patterns in monochrome.

A private terrace is located on the roof of the school, surrounded by skylights into the rooms below.

Other projects on Dezeen by Adjaye Associates include headquarters for design brand Moroso and a visual arts space in London – see all the stories here.

Photography is by Ed Reeve.

Here is some text about the project from the architects:

Moscow School of Management Skolkovo

This teaching and research institution was founded in 2005 to educate a new type of executive capable of leading Russian business through the 21st century. The founders were of the view that a campus-type development would best represent their aspirations and, with this in mind, acquired an open site in an area that is scheduled to become an advanced technology park, just beyond Moscow’s outer motorway ring. Situated in a wooded valley, the site has the idyllic qualities associated with those of a traditional campus but the severe demands of a six-month winter were a barrier to pursuing an arrangement of this kind. Rather than being in separate buildings, the main elements of the brief are therefore housed in clearly identifiable volumes that nevertheless form part of a single development.

As a result of this strategy, the external appearance of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo changes dramatically depending on the direction from which it is seen, but practical and visual continuity is provided by the 150metre-wide disc that floats above the site. Despite its size, the disc minimises the footprint of the development on the site, and softens the visual impact of the lower stories of the development, as only a small part of it can be seen at any one time. The disc itself is two stories high and the main teaching departments are distributed around its outer edge, with the larger spaces on the lower floor. Between departments, a series of wedge-shaped spaces connection the centre of the disc, where the restaurant area is located, and the perimeter. With directional rooflights above, these informal gathering spaces bring light and views deep into the interior. The disc also includes a conference centre with its own auditorium, and the roof of the disc is a landscaped open space. This replaces the area of the site occupied by the building, where a protected car park and service area are located at ground level.

The group of buildings that stand above the disc give the development its characteristic profile when seen from different directions. Of these, the Wellbeing Centre occupies a pivotal position in anchoring the disc to the sloping ground on this side of the Setun River. Standing close to the edge of the site, its stacked recreational spaces still enjoy views of the river due to the splayed positions of the two residential buildings: student accommodation in the longer one to the north, and a five-star hotel that is linked to the conference centre below. The Wellbeing Centre is supported by the same structural grid as that of the disc, whilst the residential buildings are designed as bridge structures. Each of them is supported on two towers that cause minimum disruption as they pass through the disc to the ground; the consequences of this arrangement are visible in the long cantilevers at the ends of both buildings. A similar principle is employed in the structure of the administration tower, although the design of its facade is similar to that of the Wellbeing Centre. The gold colouring of the Wellbeing Centre reflects its importance in this powerful composition, an effect that is given further emphasis by a blue tinge to the facades of the residential buildings.

See also:

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Edison House by Adjaye Associates	The Periscope by VW+BS	GMS Grande Palladium by Malik Architecture

If you read one lengthy piece today, make it David Walker‘s report at Photo District News on the US Department of Justice‘s suit against the Education Management Corporation, the for-profit company behind the nationwide Art Institute chain of schools. Though there have been lots of stories written about the government deciding to start investigating and punishing for-profit schools for their often less-than-honest methods, this PDN story looks at the photography programs specifically, highlighting practices like preying on low-income students, using psychological tricks to recruit them, and making absurd promises of lucrative employment in creative fields and then not delivering once a student had graduated with $100,000 of student loan bills in tow. It’s a fascinating, troubling read and well worth the time. Here’s a great quote from a former student:

He says, “I hate to get down on folks who get swept in because I was one of them. I spent five years in high school, smoking pot, looking for the easy way out, not willing to take things seriously or work hard.

“Art Institute sees those students, and latches onto them. They say, ‘You’ll be a photographer, or a graphic designer, or a chef.” Orkoskey says he was receptive because he was hearing from everyone–his mother, his teachers, and politicians–that he’d be a failure without education.

For further reading, we also recommend reading Design Info‘s response to the piece, with advice to students considering one of these programs.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Narrow skylights create bands of light across the red bright ceiling of a sheltered school courtyard in Porto, Portugal.

The covered terrace separates two new buildings designed by Portuguese architect Ricardo Bak Gordon at the Garcia D’Orta Secondary School.

The first two-storey building houses a library and auditorium, while the second has a cafe-bar on the ground floor and study rooms above.

The chunky canopy is suspended between the two buildings at first floor level and is the height of an entire storey.

Another school building by Bak Gordon also features the colour red, except it is on the floors rather than the ceilings – see the story here and see all our stories about Bak Gordon here.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

Here are some more details from Bak Gordon:

Garcia D’Orta Secondary School

The modernization project of the School Garcia de Orta, based on the construction of a new building, whose location, program and relationship with the existing built and empty spaces, can set a new centrality in the plot, providing the school new program areas essential to the new times.

This building, placed longitudinally in relation to school grounds, and an intermediate elevation view of the morphology of the terrain, allows the creation of a covered outdoor plaza that will serve as the epicenter of the whole school life, and supports two built spaces where we find the library, auditorium, bar / cafeteria, laboratories as well as other support equipment.

Location: Boavista, Porto
Design phase: 04.2008
Constrution phase: 2010-2011

Client: Parque Escolar EPE
Architect: Ricardo Bak Gordon

Collaborators: Luís Pedro Pinto, Nuno Velhinho, Pedro Serrazina, Sonia Silva, Vera Higino, Walter Perdigão
Engineering consultants: Estruturas BETAR, Infraestruturas RGA / BETAR, Paisagismo FCAP
General contractor: Cantinhos / ACF

Site area: 26.250 m2
Built area: 3280 m2
Cost: 11 M.€

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See also:

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Youth Centre by Mi5 Arquitectos	University Library by Studio Roelof Mulder	Les Cabanyes by Arqtel Barcelona

German studio Winkens Architekten have completed a kindergarten in Berlin that has sheltered terraces at each end.

The symmetrical building accommodates a kindergarten on one side and a crèche on the other, both of which are accessed from a central foyer.

The exterior walls of the single-storey building are brickwork, while walls and ceilings surrounding the decked terraces are clad in timber.

A square hole in the canopy of one terrace will allow a newly planted tree to grow through.

Door and window frames are painted in bright shades of red and orange.

Winken Architekten previously designed a copper-clad extension that loops around an existing house – see the story on Dezeen here.

Photography is by Marcel Klebs and Jirka Arndt.

Here are some more details from Winkens Architekten:

For a replacement building of a Kindergarden in the Waltersdorfer Street 94, 12526 Berlin.

The evangelistic Churchcomunity Berlin Bohnsdorf-Grünau provided a plot at the corner of Neptun Street to Schulzendorfer Street in Berlin, Germany.

The plots level is even and partly settled with big trees. The border to the Neptun Street is marked by a small hill which is surrounded by trees.

The architectonic concept relies on the base of the educational concept of the Kindergarden “Apfelbäumchen”.

By considering the Spacial conditions of the small hill and the trees the linear one floor building was set orthogonal to the Neptun Street along the east border of the plot.

The linear building is central opened over a row of secondary rooms. The Entry is followed by a Foyer and a multipurpose room which opens to the garden.

The Kindergarden and the creche work like apartments and each have a entry from the foyer. This strengthens the individuality of the two functions.

The arrangement of the homerooms and the multi purpose room underlines the linearity of the building.

The direct connection to the garden is one of the main focus. The multi purpose room in the center functions as a pedagogical connection of the Kindergarden.

The kindergarden and the creche have both a terrace at the end of the building which opens to the garden and helps to connect the rooms to the outside.

The facade is made in brick, and the terraces are made of wood. Natural materials are characterizing the appearance. The roof is extensively greened and partially used for solar energy gain. The building is heated with gas.

Project: New building Kindergarden
Name: Forscherkindergarten Apfelbäumchen
Location: Neptunstraße 10, 12526 Berlin, Germany
Client: Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Bohnsdorf-Grünau
Architect: WINKENS Architekten, Berlin, Germany
Team: Karl-Heinz Winkens, Marcel Klebs

Places:
Under 3 years: 22 childrens
Over 3 years: 23 childrens

See also:

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Fagerborg Kindergarten by RRA	Kindergarten Terenten by Feld72	Leimondo Nursery by Archivision Hirotani

GFA: 550 sqm
Plot Area: 6500 sqm
Building time: October 2010 – July 2011