By far the biggest space to be designed and built for What We Do came out of the Industrial Design department (unsurprisingly). Here, some of the two-dozen students who showed up to help are supporting the construction of the erector set-like, 23 foot wide, geodesic dome that will house all of the presentations on Market Square before being wrapped in clear plastic.
What I Am: Omni from Justin Rosengarten on Vimeo.
This is hands down the best spring break I have had ever, and it came in my last year of college which is awesome. I co-lead a team of 8 from RISD along with 11 from University of North Alabama came down to Louisiana for a week to help out with the local Habitat for Humanity in the town of Gray.
It was definitely a change of pace from school at RISD and having a week with no school work was definitely refreshing. Having spent a day exploring New Orleans and the nearby area, I could really see the recovery of from past hurricanes, but yet still see reminiscences from hurricane Katrina littered in the outskirts of the city and towns.
What made this the best spring break trip was really the people whom I was with, 8 from my school and 11 from Alabama. For 6 days we bonded through work and after in games and laughter. It is refreshing to meet new people from a different background and with different experiences. You can really never go wrong with bowling and pool, and a little competition can only make things a little more fun.
To really sum up my trip, it was a blast, one that is filled with joy for those who volunteered where we also brought joy to those who worked there and the families whose houses we helped build. You will never know the fruits and joys of what you do til you do it, and we were greatly rewarded.
From time to time stepping back and looking back at what you do can be as rewarding as doing it. Often at times, we hardly find time to ask why do we do it? “Why” could very well be the most important question, it is about understanding yourself and understanding how we channel our energy and creativity into what we do.
Creativity can be a strange thing, it comes and goes sometimes out of our control, and by understand the “Why” could help us through our creative process and at times the lack of it. At TED, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert gave a life changing talk about the tension of creativity and the individual, and why is it important that as creative beings we have to have authority over our creativity. Here is a talk about a different way to think about creative genius.
My name is Tino Chow, and I am a senior in Industrial Design. I am a TED Fellow, a social entrepreneur, a designer, an artist, a thinker, a blogger and a trouble maker. - There you go, that is my bio and my resume.
Life is a lot about discovery and when I saw this poster on the hatch in the Industrial Design building, it put a smile on my face, especially knowing who went around campus putting these teaser poster for What We Do. What’s behind the door, where does the hatch lead to? Curiosity is what drives us to take bolder steps forward. As artist and designers, risk-taking is woven into our DNA. We take risks in our work to make a statement, not to simply have something nice said to you.
At a design conference, Jessica Helfand of Winterhouse Studio showed me this piece of truth about myself as a creative individual. We, as artists and designers, live the life of our jobs and take the same risks in life as in our work. We make statements through our work and we make that same declaration through the way we live our lives.