Design Revolution Road Show

Our former intern, Jince, is a student at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP), so we were not at all surprised to see him out on the college’s lawn and the first to greet us with his usual jovial smile. Jince had helped us plan the event with help from his professor Sooshin Choi, pasted posters all over campus (so many that administration made him take them down), and is even the co-author of our Design Revolution Toolkit.

As we pulled up to McMicken Commons, which is essentially the central nexus of campus, we were almost immediately mobbed by a group of excited DAAP students who had been awaiting our arrival. Our location was central to a slew of star-architect-designed buildings on campus, from Peter Eisenman to Frank Gehry. Before heading to our lecture, we enjoyed bagels with a select group of students and faculty who discussed DAAP’s program with us and asked for suggestions on how to move to a more social impact-driven collaborative model (though it seems they have some great studios in place already, including one looking at Cincinnati’s transportation system from the perspective a variety of disciplines). Sooshin Choi talked about the importance of building skills before you can rebel as a designer (as our intern Jince said, “I want to understand the beast before I tame it.”). We heard about the college’s co-op program, in which students spend every other term in an internship to better learn the profession from a real-world standpoint and extend their education into the practice of design.

Jince interviews his fellow students about the Design Revolution (see video above)

After our lecture, in which we urged students to put pressure on faculty to teach more studios focused on social impact (the faculty was in a meeting), we headed back out to the trailer where we were joined by the Dean of the college, and dozens of others.

It was great to catch up with Jince and some of his colleagues who are equally as impassioned about taking design beyond the product. We took a small detour to Graeter’s, the city’s famous ice cream establishment before packing up shop and taking to the road again. A HUGE thanks to Jince and everyone at DAAP for hosting our third-to-last-stop!