Solo
This thesis explores various ways in which comfort and security can intersect to aid a woman traveling the globe alone in having an amazing, meditative, and life-altering experience. 10 years ago a statistic for women traveling alone did not even exist. Today women travel solo for business, making up about 50% of business travelers worldwide, for pleasure, and often times both. With an overflowing amount of people in the world, women must exercise safety and knowledge of place, while also having a pleasurable and memorable travel experience.
Biography
As a graduate of The University of the Arts with her Bachelor degree in Industrial Design, Tiffany holds a patent from her previous life as a Pharmaceutical Package Designer. Now, Tiffany is pursuing her Master's degree at Pratt with an interest in trekking the world to explore herself and the world around her.
Tiffany Burnette
Won Young Cha
Nature creates, People design
Natural forms evolve. Nature in its evolution "designs", grows, encourages and rejects in the service of life. Nature makes what it needs in an ever adaptive way. Designers can learn from these patterns. We learn the lessons of nature and follow its intelligence in developing and using tools and in creating things for function and beauty. As humans, we have moved beyond problems of survival, but we have created other problems; how to make our tools beautiful so we appreciate doing everyday things.
By observing and interpreting nature we can see a wealth of forms that can be an inspiration for our designed objects. Structures, shapes, patterns, and materials all can be used to make our objects more enjoyable and thus more useful. By examining variations and repetition, many new and fun forms can make everyday tasks exciting.
Biography
Won Young Cha received her first degree in journalism in Korea. She then studied fine art in New York prior to enrolling at Pratt for Industrial Design.
Keen Gat
Souvenirs and Brooklyn
Souvenirs and Brooklyn are the central themes of my project. Through reading and interviews, I’ve been investigating some of the ideas related to souvenirs: place, narrative, scale, nostalgia and desire are a just a few. I am using Brooklyn as a sort of case study to inspire design experiments (and provide a reason to hang out in Coney Island).
Biography
Since college, where my major was Geography, I’ve spent most of my time trying to make designers’ ideas come true in the form of props and displays. I’ve really enjoyed my time here at Pratt learning about where those ideas come from.
Julia Greene
Making the Cafeteria Cool: Setting the table for student empowerment and community development through design
The cafeteria system in New York City public schools is the largest in the country, serving over 850,000 meals each day. However, it is still largely unused by the students, especially at the high school level because it is simply uncool to go there. Students who cannot afford to buy their own lunches often forfeit nutrition for the sake of hanging out with their friends. I am working with art students at Vanguard High school, a public school in Manhattan, in order to give the students ownership of their space and make going to the cafeteria a fun, viable alternative to McDonald's and the local pizza place.
Biography
Julia will probably bake cookies for the thesis presentations. You should come see her presentation, if only for the baked goods.
Yu-Shan Huang
The Message of Carrying
Subways spread all over New York city from Queens to Brooklyn,and from Bronx to JFK. It is the major transportation mode for the New Yorker. Therefore security is a critical issue to address. By studying how people carry their belongings and human behavior on subway, it is the goal of this project to create a safer way to carry passenger's belongings on the subway.
Biography
Yu-Shan graduated from Shih-Chien University Fashion design department in Taiwan. With her love for design and fashion, she aims to be the connector between industrial and fashion design. Through her double majors and culture backgrounds, she is able to combine function and aesthetic in her works.
Carolina Kim
Domestic Intelligence: Objects for Thoughtful Living
Historically, we have developed new technology for the purpose of “faster results” and “greater efficiency” however these time saving innovations have resulted in more of us spending our waking hours working and commuting and less time at home with family and friends. Using ecological systems as a reference point and analogy for the home, my goal with this thesis has been to create a seamless network between users and ordinary household objects to encourage us to move more thoughtfully through our everyday acts and refocus on the importance of home.
Biography
With prior degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (philosophy) and Parsons School of Design (fashion design), Carolina is ready to hang up her collegiate stripes. She has plans to stay in this weekend with her boyfriend, a book and a big glass of wine.
Kandice Levero
Hold On
At Pratt I have studied Solid works, slip casting, machining, furniture design, three-dimensional philosophy and a lot more. I wanted to show all of it off in combination with my own personal aesthetic in a small video with interaction set to music. If you could design three minutes of a film what would it look like? I mean control every tiny detail. “Hold On” is a thesis about gorgeous little things and their place in a film. Working with symmetry of the number six I have designed a set for a short movie. What can a set specifically designed for six look like? I hope everyone is at least delighted and surprised by the results of this colorful experiment. This is my second video project in what I hope becomes a larger collection of thoughts and reflections on design. Please see all the work at nonejusto.com. Email if you want to answer that three minute question.
Biography
Kandice Levero is trying hard to remember that the world is big and she is small. She wishes life was a Hemmingway book or maybe a Fellini film. Or maybe a little yellow glass marble, or a berry bowl, or a big pink wedding cake.
Ebbin Martin
Trash to Treasure
While I would like to say that I learned alchemy, or acquired the midas touch for this thesis: "Trash to Treasure", the truth is more pragmatic. I foraged in trash bins, dumpsters, Goodwill and the street for raw materials with which to design 'new' products. Research, interviews and experimentation informed my design process, leading me to the composition of 'useful' objects made up of cast-off waste. You, the listener/viewer/reader, have indirectly taken part in this thesis as a 'disposer of objects', the very fuel of my exploration. Thank you for that!
Biography
I grew up in a liberal college town in the Midwest. The son of one Artist/gardener/beekeeper and one Biochemist/smoker/workaholic, I was exposed to enormous ideas - both fictional and seemingly fictional. I spent (too) many years as a student, bicycle mechanic, cook and welder before realizing 'Industrial Designer' was a job title, and that it described exactly what I really enjoyed doing most: making things. As a student of Fine Art, I had to make things have a function; as a student of Engineering, I had to make things look good; as a student of Anthropology, I wanted people in 10,000 years dig up something I made. To me, Industrial Design is the natural intersection of these three disciplines: Art, Engineering and Anthropology. The studies of beauty, function and need mixed in a blender to produce shampoo bottles, pint glasses, and tennis shoes. I cant wait to get started.
Jason Neufeld
Design Pollination
Did you know that Brooklyn was once commonly referred to as "the Vegetable Capital of America"? Today, interest in agriculture can be observed in the flourishing farmers markets and increased availability of locally produced food. With research that ranged from picking tomatoes at a community farm in Brooklyn to beekeeping in Manhattan, my thesis focuses on pollination and its connection to food production. My concepts and designs explore urban agriculture and the relationship we have with bees.
Biography
My interests oscillate between art and science. I view industrial design as a medium that integrates these two pursuits. As an undergraduate, I studied environmental science at the University of Texas. In Austin, two friends and I formed Redstart Paint Design, a partnership specializing in decorative murals.
Dimitri Sideriadis
Presence: Using low-tech methods to set up emotionally satisfying high-tech communication experiences
My project is about satisfying our most basic communication wishes. Simple experiments and emotional investigation lead to personalized communication objects that express the nourishing nature of informal intrapersonal contact.
Biography
I grew up and went to school in Connecticut. Then I moved to New York with my wife, Julie. I want to design meaningful experiences.
Noel Spangler
A Serious Need for Play: Design With Unity In Mind
War, terrorism, poverty, global warming, corporate greed…According to the wisdom of the ancient seers and modern-day mystics, the world is fast approaching a ‘crisis point’ in which the fate of humanity will depend upon its ability to awaken from its current ego-induced “trance” and enter into a new dimension of consciousness based on a more unfied perception of reality. This thesis proposes a model of “play” that is non-goal-oriented, unstructured, and paradoxical in nature, which is intended to expand awareness by loosening the mental boundaries that reinforce our sense of separation from ourselves and the planet.
Biography
Noel Spangler was trained in fine art and earned his Bachelor’s degree in film from Vassar College. At Pratt, he designed whimsical products and experiences for both children and adults. Noel’s study of philosophy and his practice of Transcendental Meditation has also served to stimulate his curiosity about the deeper nature of reality.
Heather Taylor
Dressing Everybody
Dressing EveryBody combines two great passions: a love for clothing design and a desire to help others. Like the rest of us, people who are physically challenged have a need for clothing that is functional, as well as fashionable. This thesis studies how clothing is put on and taken off the body and specifically focuses on the needs of people with limited hand dexterity, upper body limitations and the lower-body clothing issues of wheelchair users.
Biography
Heather has always wanted to make clothes and her drive to help others has led her to enter a design field where the two can be combined. Prior to coming to Pratt, Heather studied product design at Parsons School of Design and worked in Interior Design for six years.
Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn
What kind of cultural and visual ideas can we mix and share together to create a common vernacular? This is a story about some LEDs and my gramma. Every good idea comes from my grandmother. I took some stuff from my gramma and put some lights in it. A lot of lights. Good ideas can come deep memories, and some deep memories are shared. Can we recognize common "phrases" among us to discuss our station in life? How can we use these visual ideas and phrases to share and comment? I tried to do this with light.
Biography
Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn has made furniture in Seattle, textiles in Copenhagen, and a mess in New York. He is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and a native of the Pacific Northwest. He's an Eagle Scout who loves his gramma and knows how to tie many knots, including a falcon's nest. KTC hopes that some day he can do to design what KFC has done to chicken.
Miralba Yepez
Spank!: Fetish Furniture
This thesis focuses on creating and designing fetish furniture that can accommodate a couple’s alternative lifestyle.
A married couple have asked me to design them furniture that can be used for both every day occasions and for after hours play. Furniture that is functional, attractive, and can be transformed from day furniture to fetish furniture. Through art, film, and design, sex has always influenced us and will continue to do so. We need to be open-minded within our own sexual culture to help us better understand others’.
Biography
Born in Ecuador and raised in Queens, New York since she was a little tot. Miralba has always wanted to make furniture and her interest for the weird and unusual have driven her to become a designer. She has a BFA in Graphic Design from the School of Visual Arts and hopes with her new skills derived from Pratt, she will start her own furniture business for the weird and unusual.