Design – Page 3 – Kristen Baumlier

Category: Design

Gallery Tank: A Portable Jacket Gallery

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Kbaumlier

In the future, in a post apocalyptic time, what will the role of art be, and where will it be seen?

One possible answer to this question can be seen in the project called Gallery Tank, originating from Tallin, Estonia, which is a portable indie-gallery that is built inside of a jacket. It has been designed to host artist works, and to be delivered to the audience directly.

Called a “Jackery,” the creater of the project, Ott Pilipenko, created the art gallery jacket which he wore and showed at Camp Pixelache in Helsinki, Finland last week.

The grey jacket that Pilipenko wore was grey, seemed to be made of a durable fabric good for the outdoors. It had some zippers on it, and was covered with yellow and red caps.

He demonstrated how the jacket works, and invited us see the exhibition. He unzipped an arm sleeve and showed us the artist’s name and the name of the show which was printed on the inside of the unzippered pocket. We were invited to unscrew the yellow and red caps. Inside of each cap was a small printed images of a small drawings that were printed on fabric.

After we opened one of the caps, we were invited to carefully blow hot air onto the image. Some of the images would disappear – and some would not. Each of the 10 “cells” were 2 cm in diameter, and could be opened and closed.

The current show in the jacket gallery is the work of Estonian artist Britta Benno which opened on May 16^th. The artists’ works and theme coincided with the Acadmey of Arts fashion show which had a theme based on the end of the world “Blow away the bad stuff” concept which was clearly used in the design and execution of showing the art.

There also was a gift shop in Gallery tank, which when it was unzipped, held silkscreened pocket handkerchiefs that a number of us were able to get as a souvenir.

Pictures of the jacket, and a list of upcoming shows are listed on the Gallery Tank website, which also features a map that shows where the jacket and exhibition have been shown.

Image Source:
http://tank.kelder.ee
Links:

http://tank.kelder.ee

The Hexayurt Sauna @ Camp Pixelache

Posted on May 20, 2012May 21, 2012 by Kbaumlier

One of the kick-off activities at Camp Pixelache in Helsinki, Finland was a group activity to build a hexayurt structure that would later in the evening become a sauna.

A hexayurt is a 6 sided structure that can be built out of any materials including plywood, has little waste in its construction.

To make the simplest hexayurt, you make a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon. Nex, cut six more sheets in half diagonally, and screw them together into a shallow cone. Finally, you lift the roof on to the wall with a large group of people, then fasten it down with more screws. You can seal and paint it for durability – and the hexyurt is done.

For the sauna design, Justin Tyler Tate and Ernest Truly were commissioned to build a mobile stove (kiuas in Finnish) for the Hexayurt Sauna. They built the stove in a shopping cart, and created a chimney from a long box like metal piece that came from a local factory. The outside of the hexayurt was a local material, also from a local factory. The stove design was made by putting ghte chimney structure in the center of the cart, and then putting rocks around this. The fire was made in the chimney, which then lit up the rocks.

It was rainy when the stove was lit, but we all stood around getting warm near the stove, and also took turns checking out the hexayurt structure. I did not wait for the stove to make it into the hexayurt since my feet were wet, but I heard the rocks did get warm – and people stayed up til 3 am in the sauna hexayurt structure.

The hexayurt shelter is meant to be an easy to build shelter, and is inspired by the Buckydome geodesic dome structure. The designs of the hexayurt are online and are open source. Since the design was put on the web 10 years ago, there are now more variations on the designs, one of which has expanded headroom and a full-height doorway.

The hexyurt design has no copyright or patent, and anyone can build it for free. It is meant to enable areas to create shelter, and in a crisis these could be made quickly and efficiently when shelter is needed.

A Hexayurt has been built in Haiti, were used at Occupy in Pittsburgh, and many hexayurt structures popped up at Burning Man this year (over 500!)

They goal is to get hexayurts all over the world – and I plan to see if we can build one where I work – maybe to use as another classroom, mediation room, clubhouse, or a sauna?

Links:

hexayurt.com/

Video about the Mobile Stove for the hexayurt at Camp Pixelache

Vinay Gupta at Camp Pixelache: Tools and Language

Posted on May 19, 2012May 21, 2012 by Kbaumlier

As the opening lines of Do-Re-Mi from Sound of Music go, “Let’s start at the very beginning…” I have many things to write about from my experience at Camp Pixelache in Helsinki last weekend – and I am going to start at the beginning.

The beginning of the festival started with a keynote talk by Vinay Gupta, who is one of the world’s leading thinkers on infrastructure theory and managing geopoltical risk. He is an environmentalist and a sustainability activist. He developed the Hexayurt, the free/open source emergency shelter and recently published the book The Future We Deserve.

His talk was called Tools and Language – Why government can’t manage the 21st century, but we can. In his talk he talked about the shifting balance of power between the State and Corporations, which is a huge part of the problems our democracies face in responding to issues like climate change.

He started the talk by talking about some lessons that he had learned, and by sharing some of the tools and projects he has developed that address issues of future survival and climate change.

He talked about the hexayurt structure, which is a six sided structure that can be built for cheap, is made out of plywood or similar materials, and can cost less than a relief. It can be built anywhere in the world at any scale, and is an open source design. The hexayurt started when someone asked Gupta if he could build a 6 sided structure based on the BuckyDome ( a geodesic dome) structure. He worked on this – and came up with the first hexayurt structure. He shared it with a few friends, and each year since then there have been more and more people building these structures. It took 10 years for the hexyurt to be used on a larger scale.

Vinay used this as a way to demonstrate the lesson that “change is slow” and “lasting change chages people.” He also talked about passive cooperation, and that the hexayurt structure was passed on from person to person, and the documentation and free licenses made it easy for people to use and access.

Vinay also shared a model he developed to support crisis management called Six Ways to Die. (6WTD.) This model helps explain what needs to get done in a crisis. Basically the six ways to die are: Too hot, too cold, thirst, hunger, illness, and inury. If you map out estiamtes of the thtreat in each area and any spystems or behaviors that need to be added to the situation to keep people safe, you can plan for emergencies. He also talked about the crisis in Haiti, and how when you have different type of organizations trying to work together – it can be a “goat rodeo” or a mess – since the groups have different methods to get to the same goal of helping those in need in a crisis.

One last lesson that Gupta talked about that I found interesting was that having a controlled vocabulary and precise language is important. Our language affects our thinking – and it is important to have a shared understood vocabulary. Gupta talked about how the Occupy movement at first did not have this – and it was a bit of a mess when Occupiers would be on the news interviewed, etc. Currently, Occupy is working on making a controlled vocabulary. This vocabulary maps and shapes our thinking. And Gupta refered to the Whorf theory – which is the linguistic principle that the structure of a language affects how we are able to concpetualize the world.

Gupta’s ideas are easy to access. He has a blog, a wiki website, and many of his lectures and talks are on his sites.

They also taped and posted his lecture on Vimeo. I recommend watching this –there is a part 1 and part 2 – and check out his lecture at http://vimeo.com/pixelache.

Links:

Vinay Gupta Talk at Pixelache – Vimeo Video Part 1 and Vimeo Video Part 2

hexayurt.com – http://hexayurt.com/

6 Ways to Die

Build a Hexayurt Shelter

Posted on May 11, 2012May 9, 2012 by Kbaumlier

On Friday May 11^th at the Pixelache Festival in Helsinki, volunteers will be building a hexayurt shelter. What is a hexayurt? It is a structure that costs less a relief tent, can be built anywhere in the world at various sizes, and can be made from local materials. The hexayurt can be used as a emergency or relief structure or as a cheap easy structure for other uses.

The hexayurt that we are building at the Camp Pixelache Festival will be used as a sauna later this night (note: The Finns love saunas, and most households and hotels have saunas.) A the event will be Vinay Gupta, the developer of the free/open source emergency shelter Hexayurt who is participating in Camp Pixelache.

To make the simple version of the hexayurt, you build a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon shape. Six more sheets of plywood are cut in in half diagonally, and these are screwed together into a shallow cone shape. The roof is lifted onto the wall by a large group of people, then it is fastened down with screws. The structure can be sealed, painted, or if you are in the desert covered with reflective materials.

The basic hexayurt design is a 166 square foot (15 sq meter) structure. The design can last for years and costs approximately $100 to make. The basic design can be improved with proper windows, doors, room partitions, stove fittings and other architectural features. Hexayurts have been built on the beach, at Occupy Pittsburgh, and at Burning Man.

Image Source:
http://hexayurt.com/

Links:

http://hexayurt.com/

Hexayurt @ Camp Pixelache in Helsinki

Hexayurt Designs

Attract, Engage, and Extend : Designer Christine Enderby

Posted on April 25, 2012April 26, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Today I attended a lecture by Christine Enderby, the Creative Director of Ziba that was part of the Design Matters Lecture Series at the Weatherhead School of Management. Enderby  works at the design company Ziba, which is a globally respected design and innovation company based in Portland. At the lecture she shared some examples of guiding multidisciplinary teams. Her clients range from working with Rubbermaid, Procter & Gamble, Kandoo, Pampers, Olay, Borghese, and Costco and Kirkland Signature.

In her lecture, she talked in depth about a case study with a company that wanted to bring their product to Japan. She could not officially say the name but it seemed like it was Tupperware. She talked about how design is people-centric, and that getting insight into the consumer is integral to the design process. Her team identified it was important to work with a group of the Japanese population called the professional housewife to determine what was their values, habits, and aspirations. They gave some of the housewives an assignment to document their day, write about their relationship to food and their family, and learned some interesting things. In Japan space is at a premium – and it is considered a “vertical” society. Many of the women would file plates in a drawer, and storage and things fitting in the fridge and other places that they had was important They also learned that using ceramic and quality pieces at the table was important.

The outcome of their study was a profile of who their customer is, what is their cultural background, and what latest trends they find interesting. The outcome was that the housewives valued performance, precision and tradition and had aspirations of care, order, and to successfully complete the task of preparing and storing food.

The team also learned that the current Tupperware containers were considered to be high quality in Japan, but they did not fit into the storage and refrigerators in the home.

We did not see examples of what was going to be developed for the Japanese market out of this research – but Enderby mentioned that it would be smaller and out of new materials that might look like ceramic or other quality materials.

Enderby in her presentation mentioned several times the idea of “attract, engage, and extend” and that it is necessary to get awareness, to give more than an initial benefit, and to create depth and ways to extend awareness past a item or product.

I am currently starting a new project called Food Font Food which is a project comprised of food and design workshops, font making activities and the use of the interactive online design tool Food Font. The project supports education, interaction, and communication about food, health, and design. The talk today had some good food for thought about building a brand, doing research, and getting inspiration which I plan to think about applying in the development of my design tool and project.

Image Source:
Tupperware – Japanese site and Kristen Baumlier

Links:

Tupperware – Japanese site

Ziba