First up:
Inna Alesina

Inna is a product designer and a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Inna talked about a return to older or existing materials, finding new uses for them, and the importance of process over final products. She is most famous for her want/need cup published on DesignBoom and slue of innovative products that use objects like old cd’s and cardboard tubes.

Second Speaker:
Emiliano Godoy

Sustainable design advocate, Emiliano Godoy, showed incredibly cool possibilities in environmentally-friendly materials from his sugar disposable series to his expressions in plywood furniture. *Did you know that human bodies are now so toxic that buried bodies poison soil and cremated bodies poison the air?

Third Speaker:
Chris Lefteri

Chris Lefteri is a London-based author, industrial designer, and curator of 100% Design. He discussed the importance of “story” to narrate intention of the use or to inform the use of materials. His books take the structure of cook books to explain materials in a language that relates to designers.

Final Speaker:
Michelle Addington

Michelle, a professor of sustainable architectural design at Yale and has background in materials, manufacturing, and engineering through her with DuPont and NASA. The premise of of her talk was that materials have a constituency and contingency, or a set of properties that are unchangeable and behaviors that are changeable. Contingency of materials calls for the work of designers to investigate and innovate.

Example of Michelle Addington’s lectures:

For creative people in the 21st century, understanding emerging and innovative new materials is a core necessity. MTRL 2020 is an event centered in providing the students and faculty of the University of Cincinnati and the surrounding community a common forum within which to achieve that understanding. With expert speakers in various fields of materials research, breakout sessions, a panel discussion, and a gallery exhibition of innovative materials, the three-day event seeks to heighten the level of awareness to the importance of materials knowledge across the design disciplines and the inter-relation of these materials with outside disciplines. In addition to suggesting ways that faculty might incorporate the dissemination of innovative materials-related information, application, and experimentation into their curricula, MTRL 2020 is intended to add momentum to the push for the creation of a permanent materials resource within the University of Cincinnati College of DAAP. -MTRL 2020

I am developing wearable environments for post crisis situations. As such, the traumatized body is the site for design- a concept that deviates from the traditional disaster relief shelter. I’ll spare you all the theory (ask me and I’ll divulge), but this series of “site models” represents the psychological and physical traumatized body expressed as torso busts.

The first model- psychological model- uses newspaper clippings and chicken wire as a narrative of the stripping of identity caused by the stories/memories of crisis, which is, then, perpetuated by media creating a suffocating sense of feeling trapped.

The next two models represent systems of the physical body that generate the formal qualities we perceive of other bodies and our own. These are the skeletal, muscular, and integumentary systems.

The final model is a representation of the psychological body and the interdependence of physical systems of the body -OR- the “fusion of skin, bones and memory” (surface and structure through folding). This is the impetus for design!

*For those who are wondering…Yes, I do have male site models and even children…a family of sorts! I just haven’t photographed them yet.

Design work on these wearable environments to follow!

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Gondar sits in the mountainous, northwest region of Ethiopia. It was the nation’s capital before Addis Ababa when the city of Gondar grew to its height between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The emperors during this period had so much wealth and power that they entertained and met with European leaders from countries like France and Portugal. Portuguese architects brought Indian builders (as India was partially colonized by Portugal at the time) to erect palaces for the emperors of Ethiopia. Portuguese and Indian influences can be seen on the palaces of the Royal Enclosure.

(description of photos coming soon)

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The ETH Zurich School of Architecture in Addis Ababa is a collaborative between Ethiopian and Swiss students and teachers. The remote branch of Addis Ababa University is a playground of design-build projects by students. A bamboo structure sits in a field as an exercise in structures (I bet they had fun calculating those forces!). Adjacently, the shipping container house is the first design-build structure on campus. Equipt with electrical amenities, the two story house proves functional yet empty for experimental testings.

The current project in 2010 was a rammed earth house. Construction was underway at the time of the visit. The house was a design challenge as well as a political statement. Much contemporary building in Ethiopia uses non-sustainable, expensive, imported materials like concrete and steel. The Ethiopian students felt that there can be pride in using traditional building techniques like rammed earth in contemporary ways that speak both to culture and progress.

These pictures were taken at three branches of Addis Ababa University, the last housing the Architecture School. The architecture students’ workshops and structures are also in this album.

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Ethiopia was the first country to adopt Christianity in the fourth century AD. Today over half of the county practices that same Orthodox Christian religion in cathedrals designed and constructed by Ethiopians. While other regions of Ethiopia house ancient churches and cathedrals, the earliest existing churches in Addis Ababa date back to the 1880′s during the campaigns of Emperor Menelik II. More info coming soon!

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I traveled to Ethiopia this summer and photo-documented the journey. The images will be presented in a multi-part, two-week long series exhibiting architecture from different parts of the country. There will be some famous monuments and cathedrals- and some interesting finds- covering the vast history of Ethiopia dating back at least to 1100 bce! *Those archeologists have only started digging, so who knows how much further this civilization will go back!

Comment with any great sources you find or any suggestions you have for further investigation! Enjoy, and let Abitchu be your guide to the architecture of Ethiopia!

-note: Abitchu is the slobbering baby above

For the newest publication of my portfolio go to:
Portfolio Book

Or- keep looking for updates to the site.

It’s a series of studies for a wellness center at Cranbrook in Michigan at the site, volume, and detail level. More development and a full design will be added to the site in 2010.

In the meantime, look for a fashion design project coming soon! I don’t want to ruin the surprise!

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