Design-Build

EPOP Shop: Student designed, sustainably built

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 19:16:21 +0000

EPOP Shop: Student designed, sustainably built Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/21/2023 - 12:16

Allyson Maturey

On Saturday, Nov. 11, at the corner of Pearl Street and 13th Street, the laser cut sign read: Student Designed. Sustainably Built. Nestled in the wooden structure was a half-moon-shaped display of 12 products that students from the third-year intermediate environmental product design studio designed and produced less than three months before. Each one ready to make the perfect gift.

At the end of day two of the Firefly Handmade Holiday Market, nine of the 12 products sold out and the EPOP Shop made $7,500 in sales. The funds will be reinvested into the next EPOP studio.

The EPOP Shop made its first pop-up debut during the Environmental Design Open House in December 2019. Teaching Professor Marcel de Lange and Teaching Associate Professor Jeremy Ehly introduced the pilot studio with funds secured through an ENVD-sponsored SEED grant. The environmental product design studio has since been embedded into the ENVD core curriculum for students majoring in environmental product design.

ENVD Teaching Assistant Professor Jared Arp took the lead for the EPOP studio in the fall of 2021 and integrated the first in-person market outcome at a Firefly Handmade market in Denver. “The Firefly seemed like a good fit because of the handmade aesthetic,” Arp said. “It fits the professional level that we perform at, and their market happened to fall towards the end of our semester.” This fall, Arp is co-teaching the studio with Teaching Assistant Professor Melissa Felderman.

The outcome is more than just setting up shop and selling products at a market. Students learn from and are challenged by the design process and key parameters of sustainability and teamwork. To kick off the fall assignment, students were sent to Pearl Street gift shops to pick out gifts for five different people in their life. The goal: understanding what motivates gift selection and how it differs from other kinds of shopping.

From there, individual product pitches were made. “We asked each student to pitch a product, concept or idea and then students vote on their top 10 or 12, depending on the class size,” Felderman said. Groups of three are formed around each concept, where they collaborate to identify and refine the final form of a sustainably designed product along with quantity. “We think a lot about how much effort goes into reproducing each product. So, we’re encouraging our students to figure out [some kind of a] production or assembly line since there’s three students, how do you take advantage of having three sets of hands to make [products] in the most efficient way possible without sacrificing quality?”

Group work is the foundation and one of the key parameters of this capstone studio. “Maybe it’s teamwork that makes this studio so unique, probably amongst all of ENVD, I would say,” Arp said. Students perform the entire semester in the same team. “So, it’s a long-term team commitment, which you’ve worked in teams, teams are tough, right? Everybody's got their own agenda. Sometimes communication is tough. One person on the team gets what you said, and the other person misinterprets. We’ve got to get there together, and we’ve got to do it quickly. They’re learning team dynamics.”

From the student perspective, teamwork is an experience they do not take for granted. “I feel like working in a group can be kind of a pain,” Owen Forsythe, a third year EPOD student from Crested Butte, Colorado said. “But at least our experience has been nice. Each one of us has a specialized skill set that maybe the other person doesn’t have. So, we’ve been able to teach each other what to do through the design process.” Forsythe's team, which includes Mia Colletto, a third year EPOD student from San Francisco and Chloe Lapierre, a third year EPOD student from Cape Cod, developed Round 2, glassware inspired by the 14er mountains of Colorado made from recycled wine bottles.

While Arp and Felderman lead the course, the duo expressed that the students deserve all the credit. “It’s the students. They’re incredible. They’re going to design the store, they’re going to merchandise it, they’re going to build it, they’re doing everything we’re advising,” Arp said. “It’s something really beautiful to watch them work like that,” Felderman said.

Earlier this month, students from the third-year intermediate environmental product design studio set up the EPOP shop at the Firefly Handmade Holiday Market in Downtown Boulder.

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Summer independent study redesigns central ENVD space

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 22:06:28 +0000

Summer independent study redesigns central ENVD space Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/28/2023 - 16:06

Sierra Brown

A central conference room in the Environmental Design building, typically referenced as ENVD 134A, has been reimagined, redesigned and repurposed. While it will still serve as a supplemental meeting space, its new main objective will be to safely and securely hold materials, not humans. “We have hundreds, maybe thousands of building samples, and they’re all spread out in offices, out in CINC, behind jammed doors,” Marcel de Lange, ENVD teaching professor explained. “We asked ourselves, what can we do with it?” For de Lange and Jared Arp, ENVD teaching assistant professor and co-lead on the project, the solution was simple: create a centralized and accessible materials library in an already centralized and accessible room.

The space will function less as a typical reference library and more as an experiential space. “It’s supposed to be exploratory,” Andrew Song, senior in product design commented. “It’s something we’ve been missing in this program. We don't often have access to physical examples of things we could use to build with.”

Such material examples include natural, metal and synthetic objects as well as building systems (such as small wall sections and joinery) so that students could visualize how these materials function in practice. The library will also contain a thorough reference section containing relevant design books and magazines, many of which were donated from local design firms. “All of our projects start with precedent research so this will be a nice area to do that,” Madison Svoboda, another senior in product design also working on the space said.

As part of an independent study course, the students working on the project have spent the summer retrofitting ENVD 134A: installing new carpet tiles to mitigate sound reflection, adding updated lighting systems and constructing floor-to-ceiling shelving units built to accommodate and showcase the variety of design materials. “We found a couple of ENVD students that wanted to take this on as an independent study because they felt like they were missing some of the hands-on design build type of experience,” de Lange explained. “Under our supervision, they conceived most of the things, got some critical feedback from us and now they’re putting it together.”

Much like the synergetic process behind the project itself, the finished library is meant to be a space for collaboration. With shelves set aside to highlight both student work and design displays, the hope is that the room will be fully accessible to faculty and students of all majors to share resources, access unique materials and find inspiration. “For the foreseeable future, it’s about going in and finding things that you didn’t even know existed,” Arp said.

Design Contributors

Faculty Leads: Marcel de Lange, Jared Arp

Independent Study Students: Colleen Lilley, Andrew Song, Madison Svoboda

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Studio redesigns take place in basement, third floor studios

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 19:51:14 +0000

Studio redesigns take place in basement, third floor studios Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/28/2023 - 13:51

Sierra Brown

The Environmental Design (ENVD) building is an eerily quiet place in the summer. With barren studios, empty hallways, and dormant 3D printers, the student and faculty spaces in the building often resemble a ghost town. Unlike a ghost town, however, the old worktables and rickety studio stools haven’t been left behind to gather dust and rust. Rather, this ghost town underwent a redesign.

Over the summer, a hard-working group of faculty, staff and students spent months updating studio spaces in both the basement and eastern wing of the third floor. After collaborating on studio update projects last summer, Marcel de Lange, teaching professor, and Jared Arp, teaching assistant professor, hoped to continue the momentum this year by tackling adjacent studio spaces in dire need of updates.

“Why in the 21st century are incoming students sitting on a barstool on some kind of drafting desk that doesn’t even hold your computer?” de Lange questioned. “Why not mimic a little bit more the way that most design agencies work?”

Updating student spaces to mimic professional offices, however, isn’t exactly the most affordable endeavor. According to de Lange, a new worktable alone would cost the program $2,000 each. And with fall 2023 marking the largest incoming class for ENVD, there is a demand to expand the number of students per studio, which means more tables. “There’s a budget available but it’s not enough to do that. We decided we could do it in-house,” de Lange said.

Staff and student workers at the Center for Innovation & Creativity (CINC) began the in-house project by collectively constructing 40 custom-made tables matched with repurposed and ergonomic office chairs. With a laser-cut steel frame, wooden tops and legs cut by a CNC machine and built-in power outlets (one for each student), the tables are designed to be sturdy, long-lasting, portable and ADA accessible. They’ll also encourage collaboration.

“The old space didn't really foster creativity or teamwork,” Arp noted. “You had your own desk, your own island. This way students will be working at tables with others.”

True to ENVD’s values, the team carried out the project with environmental sustainability in mind. Recycling and reusing pieces of the old furniture was key to the project. Old table legs were converted into light fixtures, wooden pieces from the old drafting desks were added to the new tables, shelving systems with added cubbies were constructed from outdated shelving materials and CINC scraps. “Those sorts of things have been worked into the project,” Jared noted. “One for budget purposes and two because it’s the right thing to do so we don’t waste this material. The types of materials that were chosen are low environmental impact, high longevity and strength.”

By updating the studio spaces to mimic design agencies while using a sustainable approach, incoming and current students will be better prepared to work in a professional setting after graduation. Apparently, even ghost towns need their building updates.

Over the summer, a hard-working group of faculty, staff and students spent months updating studio spaces in both the basement and eastern wing of the third floor.

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Environmental design students create pollinator garden on campus

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 16:27:49 +0000

Environmental design students create pollinator garden on campus Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/28/2019 - 10:27

Earlier this week, a group of CU environmental design students wrapped up their summer research, design-build studio led by Lecturer Danielle Bilot. Since mid-May, students learned about bees, plants and landscape planning to turn a campus parking lot into a native bee habitat.

This is the second “forgotten hive” design studio Bilot has instructed. In summer 2018, students transformed a Boulder city parking lot near the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse into a bee haven.

The new campus pollinator lot is located near the engineering building, on the corner of lot 436 and the parking garage.

Learn more about Bilot’s research, design-build studio today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the third floor of the environmental design building. Students will be showcasing a gallery of work and interactive exhibits about native bees in Colorado and their impact on the environment.

See Bilot and her students' work in the Daily Camera. View a gallery of photos on Facebook.

This summer, a design, research and build studio is redesigning a campus parking lot, near the engineering building, to include habitats that will support native bees while improving their visual and ecological function.

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Noodling Around

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 20:07:26 +0000

Noodling Around Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/01/2019 - 14:07

CU-Boulder environmental design students help the owners of a local artisanal pasta business grow their brand. Originally posted by Modern in Denver.

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New student organization to design site for Habitat for Humanity

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:12:57 +0000

New student organization to design site for Habitat for Humanity Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 17:12

The Rural Project, a new organization in Environmental Design, seeks to engage and empower communities in rural Colorado through design-based activism. Recently, the student-run organization took a trip to Berthoud, Colorado for a project site visit. ⁣⁣Currently, the group is working with the Berthoud Habitat for Humanity to design a site for a future Habitat for Humanity community, which will have 9-11 homes.

Design goals include creating a sustainable community that is environmentally conscious and pays homage to the rural character of the site. ⁣

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Praxis studio takes on CU Boulder Decathlon team as client

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:00:40 +0000

Praxis studio takes on CU Boulder Decathlon team as client Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 17:00

On March 1, 2019, the Environmental Design Solar Decathlon and Habitat for Humanity Metro Denver praxis studio, and the Historic Site Engagement: Reimagining Interpretive Education praxis studio showcased final work from students to its first client, the 2020 CU Boulder Decathlon team.

The showcase included digital presentations as well as an open poster session.

The Solar Decathlon is an international collegiate competition for which university teams design, build, showcase and operate a fully solar-powered home on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. ⁣

View the full photo gallery on Facebook!

The Environmental Design Solar Decathlon and Habitat for Humanity Metro Denver praxis studio showcased final work from students to its first client, the 2020 CU Boulder Decathlon team.

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Mayor Hancock Announces 2018 Mayor’s Design Awards Winners

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 16:23:07 +0000

Mayor Hancock Announces 2018 Mayor’s Design Awards Winners Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/08/2018 - 09:23

City and County of Denver Community Planning & Development

NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, November 8, 2018

Seventeen projects honored for excellence in architecture, exterior design, placemaking

DENVER – Mayor Michael B. Hancock will honor 17 projects for excellence in architecture, design and place-making during the 2018 Mayor’s Design Awards ceremony tonight at 6 p.m. at the Chambers Grant Salon of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

View a slide show and download images and descriptions of the winning projects. >>
(Photos may be credited: “Courtesy of Denver Community Planning and Development.”)

“The field of winners this year is the most diverse ever selected,” Mayor Hancock said. “The list is the perfect showcase of what we can do as a city when we design with the intent of lifting up our community.”

Since 2005, the awards have been presented to Denver homeowners, business owners, nonprofits, artists and others for their creative contributions to the public realm through innovative design. Winners can range from community placemaking projects to adaptive reuse of historic structures to single-family residences to major mixed-use downtown buildings. Each brings something special to Denver’s unique visual fabric and speaks to our collective commitment to building healthy, sustainable communities.

The awards ceremony will be held at 6 p.m. tonight at the Chambers Grant Salon of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex (1400 Curtis Street). The event is free and open to the public; a reception will follow. For more information on the event and the awards, visit DenverGov.org/MDA.

The 2018 Mayor’s Design Award winners are:

Backyard on Blake, 3070 Blake Street
Reimagining Learning Landscapes: Garden Place Academy Research Station and Community Garden, 4425 Lincoln St.
The Art Alley at Dairy Block, 1800 Wazee Street
Thomas Jefferson High School Bus Shelter, RTD Bus Shelter at Hampden Ave and S. Ivanhoe St.
2200 California
Steam on the Platte, 1401 Zuni Street
Colorado Health Foundation Building, 1780 Pennsylvania Street
The Wheatley, 530 East 25^th Avenue, 2490 Welton Street
Botanic Gardens Ticket Centers, 1007 York Street
Molly Brown House Renovation, 1340 Pennsylvania Street
The Ramble Hotel, 2450 Larimer Street
River North Stormwater Outfall, Arkins Ct., between 31st and 35th streets
Punch Bowl Social – Stapleton, 3120 N. Uinta Street
The Rainbow Crosswalk, Broadway and Irvington
The Circa Building, 1615 Platte Street
The Bosler House, 3209 W. Fairview Place
Black and White House @ Sloan's Lake, 4200 W. 23rd Ave.

Mayor Michael B. Hancock will honor 17 projects for excellence in architecture, design and place-making during the 2018 Mayor’s Design Awards ceremony tonight at 6 p.m. at the Chambers Grant Salon of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

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Senior Studio Designs Pasta Mobile for Local Client

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 20:02:07 +0000

Senior Studio Designs Pasta Mobile for Local Client Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/01/2018 - 14:02

This fall, Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi's senior architecture studio will be constructing a mobile pasta cart for Pastificio. Students designed the mobile pasta cart to be used for pasta classes, pasta education and small events. Construction will begin the week of October 1 and the project finish date is October 15.

This fall, Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi's senior architecture studio will be constructing a mobile pasta cart for Pastificio.

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Lama Foundation Praxis and Design Partnership Featured in New Publication

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 17:24:52 +0000

Lama Foundation Praxis and Design Partnership Featured in New Publication Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/17/2018 - 11:24

Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi's design-build praxis, Design in Partnership with the Lama Foundation, has been featured in the recently published Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED academic Case Studies. See press release below:

New Book presents Public Interest Design Education

Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies presents the work and ideas of over 60 thought-leaders that together are shaping a broad curriculum of public interest design. Written in a guidebook format that includes projects from across design disciplines, this book describes the learning critical to pursuing an inclusive, informed design practice.

The second book in Routledge’s Public Interest Design Guidebook series, the editors and contributors feature a range of examples and strategies where educational and community-originated goals unite.

Featured chapter themes include Fundamental Skills, Intercultural Competencies, Engaging the Field Experience, Inclusive Iteration, and Evaluating Student Learning. The breadth of projects and teaching strategies provides valuable knowledge for students of design, educators, and practicing designers in the pursuit of serving the public through design.

Contributors include (in order of Table of Contents):
Rahul Mehrotra; Lisa M. Abendroth and Bryan Bell; Jeffrey Hou, Benjamin R. Spencer, and Daniel Winterbottom; Mariana Amatullo, Dan Gottlieb, Penny Herscovitch, and Susannah Ramshaw; R. Todd Ferry and Sergio Palleroni; Bryan Bell, Robin Abrams, and Gene Bressler; Susan Verba, Sarah Perrault, and Tracy Manuel; Anthony Guido with Jeremy Beaudry, Jamer Hunt, Sharon Lefevre, Michael McAllister, and Jonas Milder; Maggie Hansen and Emilie Taylor Welty; Lisa M. Abendroth, Kelly Monico, and Peter Miles Bergman; Lee Davis and Mike Weikert; John Folan; Megan Clark and Shalini Agrawal; Pedro Pacheco; Ursula Hartig and Nina Pawlicki; Christian Benimana; Lisa Grocott and Kate McEntee; Deland Chan; Benjamin R. Spencer; Angus Donald Campbell and Naudé Malan; Brian Gaudio; Benjamin Peterson; Eduardo Staszowski; Paula Horrigan; Edward M. Orlowski and Julia Jovanovic; Chris Harnish; Nadia M. Anderson; Bethany Lundell Garver; Michael Zaretsky; Julie Stevens; and, Thomas Fisher.

Case study projects include:
Design in Partnership with the Lama Foundation; Pleasant Street Pedestrian Project; A Social Approach to Design; Cooperative Education at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center; Com(m)a; The Farm Rover; On-Site: Public Art and Design; South of California Avenue; and, With Sacramento.

Order information and link:
https://www.routledge.com/Public-Interest-Design-Education-Guidebook-Curricula-Strategies-and/Abendroth-Bell/p/book/9781138646650

Contact: Lisa Abendroth, lisa@seednetwork.org; Bryan Bell, bryan@designcorps.org

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