Products of Design
Summer Program in France, 2012

"SVA @ Boisbuchet"
June 17 - June 27, 2012
Summer semester: 1 graduate studio credit
Limited enrollment IPG-5372-A

Applications now open

This special workshop is an immersive, multi-disciplinary experience exploring the rapidly changing field of product design. Held in Boisbuchet, France, the program will stress a hands-on, making-driven approach to create new points of entry into the enterprise of design. In addition to intensive study, students will have the opportunity to swim in the estate’s lake, canoe and kayak, take walks through the surrounding woods and relax at the nearby river. Participants feast on farm-to-table nightly dinners with attendees from the two other Boisbuchet workshops taking place that week (approximately 60 people in all), meeting designers from all over the world, and making life-long friendships.

Each day, several facets of the design process will be explored: rapid sketching, brainstorming, materials investigation, prototyping, model building, iteration, narrative creation, sustainability and environmental stewardship. We will complement the studio work with lively debates around the current mandates of design, the challenges of production and consumption, and design’s ability to create value and positive social change. The evenings will offer fun, lectures and discussions.

The program is based on the acknowledgement that industrial-age product design has radically changed in recent years, evidenced by its blurring boundaries and explosive range of new practitioners (makers, crafters, technologists, artists), its multi-disciplinary processes, and its varied outputs, or “products of design.” Participants will investigate the dynamic opportunities these changes present, and through design thinking, design making, and design telling, will complete the program with new skills, new vocabularies and new fluencies.

Participants will stay at the Domaine de Boisbuchet, a magnificent estate in Southwestern France, with a private lake and beautiful meadows and an architectural park.

Tuition includes lodging in spacious dormitories on location of the workshop (a limited number of single and double rooms are available at additional cost), and all meals.

For further information contact Stephanie Pottinger, program coordinator, via e-mail: spottinger@sva.edu; phone: 212.592.2118.

Faculty

Allan Chochinov
Chair & program co-founder, SVA MFA

Allan Chochinov is the Chair and co-founder of the SVA MFA in Products of Design Program. He writes widely on design education and the impact of design on contemporary culture. He has been a guest critic at various design schools in including Yale, NYU, University of Minnesota, RIT, and RMIT, and is a frequent design competition juror. Allan lectures around the world and at professional conferences including IDSA, AIGA and IxDA. He is also a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is the editor-in-chief of Core77.com, the widely read design website, Coroflot.com design job and portfolio site and DesignDirectory.com design firm database. Prior to Core77, his work in product design focused on the medical and diagnostic fields as well as on consumer products and workplace systems. (Projects included work for Herman Miller, Johnson & Johnson, Federal Express, Kodak, A.C. Nielsen, Oral-B, Crunch Fitness, and others.) He has been named on numerous design and utility patents and has received awards from I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club and The One Club. He serves on the boards of the Designers Accord, Design Ignites Change, and DesigNYC.

Emily Baltz
Founder, creative director, Fork & Design

Emilie Baltz is the founder and creative director of B A L T Z WORKS, a collaborative design consultancy that offers creative communication solutions with a focus on the hospitality industry. Her clients have included Limoges porcelain, the Museum of Sex, the New York Parks Department and the city of Ithaca, for whom she developed dining concepts for urban renewal projects. She has taught at Pratt Institute and the Vitra Design Museum Boisbuchet workshops in France. Her photography has appeared in Apicius Magazine, So Good, Vogue, Wired, New York Times Magazine, Traditional Home and the Financial Times. She is a member of the prestigious culinary association of Les Dames d’Escoffier and is the author of Junk Foodie, a gastronomic junk food cookbook for the lowbrow gourmand.