Author Archives: Jered Gold

Rethinking Art Center’s Future: Guest Panelists Weigh In

This past January not only marked the start of a new year and decade, but the beginning of a new visioning process for the College as well. Two back-to-back events—an evening panel discussion featuring national thought leaders, and a daylong brainstorming session tackling key issues relating to Art Center’s mission statement—were open to the Art Center community.

On January 13, faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees and friends packed the Ahmanson Auditorium for the visioning kickoff. The evening session—Twittered and webcast live—featured a distinguished panel of speakers: Andrew Blauvelt, design director and curator at the Walker Art Center; Katherine Hayles, professor and director of graduate studies in literature at Duke University; Steven Oliver, board member of the grant-making organization United States Artists; and David Rice, chairman and founder of The Organization of Black Designers.

Before introducing the panelists, Art Center President Lorne Buchman stressed the imperative of higher education to value driven learning and thinking. “The capacity of our students and graduates to affect change is enormous,” he said. “We need to be educating responsible citizens—the question is how to do that.”

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20000 Leagues Under the Sea Via Underwater Plane

Another childhood dream of ours is about to become a reality: Virgin has unveiled an underwater plane that will fly into the depths of the Caribbean Sea.

Guests on Necker Island, a retreat in the British Virgin Islands, will be able to dive underwater in a submarine dubbed the Necker Nymph for $25,000 a week.

CNNMoney.com writes: “Beginning on Feb. 20, two riders and a pilot will be able to take the plunge from land, or from a boat. The underwater plane uses the downward pressure on its wings to fly through the water for up to two hours at a time, while an open cockpit will give riders a 360-degree view.”

Read more, and check out a video, at CNNMoney.com.

Fighting Obesity with Design

A group of New York City government agencies have teamed with the AIA to create the Active Design Guidelines, a downloadable publication intended for designers, architects and city planners to help promote more physical activity among the citizenry in new and rehabbing building projects. The guidelines provide architects and urban designers with strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field.

Interesting idea. Read more at Mediabistro’s Unbeige blog.

Concours d’Art Winner Announced

The Dana Point Concours d’Elegance announced today that Transportation Design student John Narciso is the winner of the 2010 Dana Point Concours d’Art.

The Concours d’Art is an annual competition hosted by the Dana Point Concours d’ Elegance and Art Center. Narciso’s winning artwork, which will be used for the event poster, program cover and tickets, depicts the progression of iconic Alfa Romeo designs over the firm’s history. The 28th Annual Dana Point Concours d’Elegance will take place June 27 at Monarch Beach in Dana Point, Calif. This year’s event will feature 100 years of Alfa Romeo and celebrate 80 years of design from Pininfarina.

Congrats, John!

Design in the Age of Open Source Design

In June, Local Motors, the first open source car company to reach production, will officially release the Rally Fighter, a $50,000 off-road (but street-legal) racer.

The design—described by Wired as a “cross between a Baja racer and a P-51 Mustang fighter plane”— was created by Sangho Kim, a graphic artist and Art Center student. The design was crowdsourced, as was the selection of mostly off-the-shelf components, and the final assembly will be done by the customers themselves in local assembly centers as part of a “build experience.”

Per Wired: “As the community coalesced around his Rally Fighter, members competed to develop secondary parts, from the side vents to the light bar. Some were designers, some engineers, and others just car hobbyists. But what they had in common was a refusal to design just another car, compromised by mass-market needs and convention. They wanted to make something original — a fantasy car come to life.”

Read more: In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits

Leading Change for Social Impact Forum Tomorrow

Don’t miss tomorrow night’s forum: Leading Change for Social Impact: Perspectives from Prominent Innovators. Moderated by USC professor Adlai Wertman, the event will feature Mariana Amatullo, vice president and director of Designmatters; Jonathan Greenblatt, social entrepreneur and founder of All for Good and Ethos Water; and Rhys Newman, head of design strategic projects at Nokia Design and former Art Center faculty member.

The forum will be held tomorrow night, Jan. 28, from 7 to 8:30 pm at the Ahmanson Auditorium.

Icsid Calls for Design Solutions Following Haiti Earthquake

In response to the devastation following the earthquake in Haiti, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) has launched a global call to designers from all disciplines to unite in an open dialogue with international relief organizations to assess potential design-effective rehabilitation projects.

To support the UN’s efforts to help the Haitian people overcome challenges in relation to the country’s reconstruction plans, designers, students and relief workers are encouraged to join the discussion by connecting with the Uniting Designers in Disaster fan page on Facebook.

Read more at dexigner.com and Facebook.

Art Center’s Online Student Gallery: Safer Than The Met

Perhaps this is why museum guards say not to get too close to the work: A significant Pablo Picasso painting, The Actor, was damaged after a woman at The Met lost her balance and fell on Friday.

Looking for a safer way to view art? Check out Art Center’s online gallery of student work. All disciplines are represented, from transportation design to fine art to film. Check it out today: Art Center Online Student Gallery

Things That Float

Our own Stephen Nowlin, director and curator of the Williamson Gallery, is the first participant of NASA Images’ “Guest Showcase,” a monthly presentation of digital exhibitions curated by leading professionals in the fields of science, education, art, entertainment, business and academia. The exhibitions will consist of carefully selected images, videos and audio from NASA Images. Nowlin’s piece is titled Things That Float.

“As a native Earthling, bred and raised with an awe-threshold heavily influenced by our terra-firma existence, I remain captivated by how big things stuck to the surface down here can hover like floating poetry up there in the blackness of space,” Nowlin writes.

See the video after the jump.

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