Our stop at Auburn University in Alabama was our first two-day stop, and it was great to be able to spend some time at a school and get to know the students. Our first day was chock-full of visitors and excitement, and I popped in to a few of the industrial design studios to talk about our work and make the case for design that empowers. Right off the bat, we were greeted by Chris Arnold and Clark Lundell of the Industrial Design department, and got a tour of the department’s facilities. I was blown away by the amount of production, and that the students are always making and critiquing and building and prototyping.
We had set up shop outside the Wallace Center, across from the Auburn football stadium. After the lecture in the architecture department’s building, we opened up shop to all passers-by and students. Classes came out in swarms, and most were enthralled by the Whirlwind chair and the Hippo Roller set up outside. Faculty attended as well, including some from the architecture department. It’s great to speak with educators who are just as excited about rethinking their curricula to produce work that has a positive social impact. Our toolkit comes in handy for educators as well. In most cases, students see the value of this work and it is often the educators who ask for help in re-developing their studio courses to accommodate student interest.
We were also thrilled to have Carl Brown, Auburn alum and creator of SinkPositive, in attendance. His SinkPositive design is featured in both the book and the exhibition as a standard toilet retrofit that saves water and encourages hand-washing. Carl had some great insights as to his own work’s purpose and not designing products so much as creating tools for people to rethink the way they live on a daily basis. (thanks for coming, Carl!)
Carl Brown, creator of SinkPostive
Later in the day, an entire studio came outside and set up shop in front of the Airstream to plan out their semester of work. The sidewalk and street was littered with sidewalk chalk diagrams of their project plans, and we chimed in to help them think about how to do research that was engaged in the community.
Franklin’s motorized power train wheelchair retrofit
One of our favorite visitors was Franklin, who graduated from the ID program at Auburn and is now working in the shop as an assistant. Franklin is a quadriplegic, with a spirit unparalleled by anyone we’ve met on our trip thus far. He has spent the past year(s) prototyping a device that attaches to his wheelchair (or any wheelchair) to turn the standard wheelchair into an electric ride that can take him across campus, across town, up the ramp to the stadium, and more. The power train is a simple battery-powered retrofit- the foot rests of his wheelchair sit on top of a platform with a lip to keep them in place, and the entire motor is steered by a hand control. We tested it out and also had Franklin give us a demo. We were blown away by the ingenuity and refinement of both the design and experience of using it. Go Franklin!
Towards the end of the day, I was approached by an elderly (white) woman who was offended and angry that we had posted the above picture as our Daily Postcard a few years back. She felt it misrepresented what Alabama was all about and showed the entire state in a bad light. I had taken the photo while driving through Selma, Alabama, because I felt it was both beautiful and tragic. The structure in the photo is in fact a home that children live in, not just a dilapidated shed. In my mind, it was an important view to document, and while the woman kept saying “this is not Alabama,” it in fact IS housing in Alabama (not all, obviously, but a home that people live in in this particular region). I was sorry to have offended her, but do believe that snapshots like these bring some visibility and awareness to that which folks like her may not want to acknowledge or discuss.
On day 2, after a lovely meal the night before at professor Shu-Wen’s home, we ate lunch with some students at Big Blue Bagels, an Auburn fixture (delicious!). One of our student “chaperones” was Sarah Chaplin, who had spent a semester in Hale County’s Rural Studio and had some insights as to what was successful and what had failed both in Hale County and within her own work. We spoke to her over the course of the two days and look forward to keeping in touch with her. Watch her interview above. Thanks to all who made our two day visit a huge success!
