ItaliaDesign Field School

For:   ItaliaDesign Field School 
With:   School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Completed:  July 2009 

Problem:
To understand the dynamic and evolving definition of Italian design over a period of years.

Solution:
The ItaliaDesign Field School is a research field school that has just finished it’s ninth year. The primary way in which the field school engages the question “What is Italian design?” is through interviewing the leaders and upcoming talent within Italian design. These interviewees range from architects to industrial designers to communication designers. The secondary objective of the field school is to understand Italian design by analyzing artefacts of culture such as architecture, urban planning, art history, and fashion.

I participated in the sixth year of the field school. While in-field, we developed a research methodology that assisted in rapidly understanding a neighborhood by combining a psychogeographic method called “Drift” with historical quantitative data on the neighborhood. By doing so, we mapped out emotional boundaries and modes of uncommon navigation and proved their value by overlaying them with historical data on the neighborhood’s movement patterns throughout the day. In essence, providing a “why” to a “what”.

Roles:
Videographer, In-field Video Producer, In-field Researcher, Interview Team Lead, Interviewer, Communication Designer.