During the month of October, CDR faculty and students moved beyond boundaries to create experiential learning opportunities. In Washington DC with the National Building Museum (NBM) the Center kicked off a collaboration that seeks to leverage subject matter expertise and global networks to co-develop a framework to understand, elevate, and communicate the process of building buildings and infrastructure and the substantial impact of people that build them. Simultaneously in Boston, the Center joined students and practitioners for the midterm review of the CDR/Payette OpenLAB-Boston studio projects. Now in its 5th year this collaboration is hosted in the offices of lauded architecture firm Payette with this year’s focus a complex urban design prompt engaging Boston’s Greenway that weaves along the downtown waterfront. During the program, 12 students from Virginia Tech and one from Hampton University are developing programs and proposals for seven new buildings along the mile long Greenway site. “While both incredible student opportunities (the CDR/Payette OpenLAB-Boston and the center’s collaboration with the NBM), these activities also create a chance for faculty development and the integration of new ideas and impact as we continue to grow the center. “ says Nathan King, CDR Director. The CDR looks forward to continued collaboration with Payette, NBM, and many others internal and external as it expands programs including new engagements with The National Museums of Tanzania and Kenya.
For more information about the CDR and its initiatives please contact [email protected]
Center for Design Research (CDR) Collaborates with Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (@haystack_school )on Experiential FabLab Winter Residency Program
School of Architecture’s (@vtarchschool )Center for Design Research faculty Nathan King and Ramtin Haghnazar @ramtinhaghnazar , along with PhD students Yasaman Ashjazadeh @yasaman_ash , Ghazaleh Shams @spring._.lilacs and Seyedali Derazgisou @seyedali.derazgisoo , collaborated with the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts as part of the experiential FabLab Winter Residency Program in Deer Isle Maine.
During the weeklong residency the group, along with Haystack’s James Rutter and Phoebe Zildjian, hosted multiple community-engaged robotics workshops. As part of their continued efforts to democratize design technology, the team worked with local students from Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School during hands-on workshops that allowed the students to collaborate with industrial robots to create unique paintings and linoleum block prints without the use of complicated code. Here the young students were able to inform robot motion through the placement of paint on a canvas and as a demonstration of experiential learning, each student was able to complete an entire design-to-responsive robotics workflow to create a painting or print.
