Visitors to Art Center’s homepage may have found themselves wondering if that Brady Bunch-like grid of student selfies splayed out on Art Center’s homepage was some kind of post-modern meditation on ’70′s pop culture. And they’d be wrong. The real explanation — a refreshed batch of student profiles — is a lot like Art Center itself: A practical solution to a real world need whose outcome is a lot more interesting than anyone might have expected going into the project.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a series of deeper dives into the creative lives of those profile subjects, with highlights from the body of work they’ve produced at Art Center. We’re kicking off the series with this look at Product Designer Alex Cabunoc’s truly impressive array of innovative social impact designs aimed at improving the lives of inhabitants rural communities in the developing world. For the project featured in the above video, Cabunoc teamed up with fellow student Ji A You to create the GiraDora foot-powered washing machine for a Designmatters challenge to alleviate the water shortage in Lima, Peru. The product he produced has vast potential to improve the health and quality of life of women in water-poor communities throughout the developing world. In the below Q&A, Cabunoc provides some personal context to his Art Center journey.