Last week Cornish’s Interior Architecture Experience Studio student adventured to the San Juan Islands for a multiple night stay. The seniors and juniors stayed in cozy log cabins on the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs campus, which is their site for this semester’s studio. During their intellectually stimulating visit they used hands-on learning to study how to assess and evaluate a site. “Researching a space online and actually experiencing it with all five senses is completely different. Getting to know the energy of the site and talk with the people is something you just can’t pick up on through the internet.” – Valerie Ross ’18.
Many school project sites are located across the country or even on other continents. The students generally can’t experience and participate with the culture of the site to understand it as a whole. Julie Myers, the chair of the department, truly believes that experience is the truest form of learning. Sunday morning students and teachers boarded the ferry in Anacortes, WA and sailed for an 1.5 hours to Friday Harbor to University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) where they were welcomed to stay on campus and eat with the students. During the day the IA students toured FHL campus, sketching, collecting organic matter (where permitted), and taking notes from impromptu lectures. They even got to attend a fish lighting, which entailed the biology students submerging lights into the water to attract fish for their class. The trip was integrated with the Experience Studio. Seniors are designing a welcome center and student hub complete with a lecture hall, lounge and café. Working together the class is creating a base plan in AutoCAD and Revit, as well as sharing demographics of the users, photos and design ideas. Working collaboratively in the beginning stages of the design process will help the students produce more powerful individual concepts. The Juniors are immersed in the Design Development (DD) stage of architectural planning, where they are learning how to begin the process of ideation. Visiting the project site provided a tangibility to the project which would not have been possible otherwise. Interior Architecture can be taken in many directions for it is not simply decorations or surface finishes. Some students are interested in textile design, finding inspiration through nature; some are interested in product design and function, others want to program and synthesize data. Students are not limited by Interior Architecture, but supported in reaching each personal goals. The Experience Studio through the IA department links traditional studio work with experience enhancing the development of creative thinking.
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AuthorAs a student at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle WA I entertain a variety of factors while designing space. Archives
August 2017
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