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HISTORIC PRESERVATION U.S. Department of State partnership provides opportunities for students to study and document properties overseas  
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C O V ER S TO R Y
C U LT U R A L H E R I TA G E
By Heather Sauer
College develops new U.S. State Department relationship
Above, left to right: Roman ruins are one of many “layers” preserved and integrated into London’s active urban landscape. Photo by Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock. Student groups developed proposals to commemorate the long-term U.S.-British relationship at Grosvenor Square. One group developed a “time path” with pavement markers denoting key events while the other group created a “meta-memorial” with kiosks providing context for the existing memorials.
Given the growing student interest in preservation and increasing demand nationwide for trained preservationists, in 2012 a multidisciplinary committee of College of Design faculty began looking to develop a program in historic preservation. Through Iowa State University President Steven Leath’s High Impact Hires Initiative, the college brought Assistant Professor Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock on board in 2015 to coordinate efforts to launch a certificate program and potentially a master’s degree in preservation and cultural heritage at Iowa State. Matching funding for the new community and regional planning faculty position was provided by the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), which views preservation as a key factor in the economic growth of Iowa’s communities. 2
The nascent preservation program received a boost when Tobin Tracey (BArch 1986 Architecture), director of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations Office of Cultural Heritage, learned about the college’s plans and offered his support. The office, established in 2015, oversees the stewardship of the State Department’s historic properties and heritage collection overseas. “One of the really important things to me and our office is education. We’ve always known we wanted to get students involved,” Tracey said. “It was perfect timing; we were establishing a new office and learned through a news article that ISU was starting a preservation program. This was a great opportunity for us to help out the university and for the university to help us.”
Last year the College of Design embarked on the “U.S. Department of State Cultural Heritage Documentation Project,” a unique partnership with Tracey’s office that both sides hope will result in an ongoing series of projects at diplomatic sites around the world.
Relationship commemoration In the fall, 14 students enrolled in CRP 511X: Documenting the Historic Built Environment — an interdisciplinary course developed by Grevstad-Nordbrock — studied the Eero Saarinen-designed London Chancery Building in Grosvenor Square. This Mid-Century Modern landmark has housed the U.S. Embassy since 1960, while the square has been home to a U.S. diplomatic presence since John Adams served as the first American ambassador to Great Britain in the 1780s. The State Department is vacating the embassy, however, and will soon move to a new facility on the River Thames, ending America’s 230-year relationship with Grosvenor Square. “The chancery itself has been fully documented, so working with Tobin, we decided to focus our research on the long-standing U.S. presence and the impact of the American government
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and military leaving the neighborhood,” Grevstad-Nordbrock said. “It wasn’t a traditional historic preservation project, but rather looked at this ‘Little America’ enclave coming to a close and how to commemorate that.” Students in the class — including majors in community and regional planning, interdisciplinary design, architecture, history and sociology — formed two
over Thanksgiving break in November to visit the U.S. Embassy, interview diplomatic staff members and present their projects. “Both projects were very realistic, and I think they were a good way of memorializing the U.S.’s presence in Grosvenor Square,” Tracey said. “Certainly the Embassy was interested in them. Although there’s no current mechanism for constructing them, there could be.” While in London, students met with a diverse range of historic preservation and planning organizations, from a grassroots neighborhood group to Historic England. They learned about British preservation laws and standards and the challenges that preservation faces in a global city that has rapidly developed and gentrified over the last quarter-century.
groups to develop solutions. One devised a “meta-memorial:” The site already encompasses numerous memorials to historic figures and events, so “we wanted to describe the relationship between Great Britain and the U.S. during the time each statue or plaque was put in place,” said Sydney Garland, a sophomore planning student from St. Louis. “Some memorials weren’t installed until years after the event; what was going on at the time it was installed and why was it important to people to commemorate it then?” she said. The team designed a kiosk with interpretive panels that would help provide historical context for the existing memorials and offer a contemporary comparison. The second group created a chronological “time path” that would wind clockwise around the square with markers embedded in the pavement to call out significant moments in the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the United Kingdom that have significance to Grosvenor Square and its occupants over the years.
Preservation challenges Ten students traveled to London with Grevstad-Nordbrock and Tim Reinders, a Main Street design specialist at the IEDA,
“The studio was a good pilot project, an opportunity to establish an ongoing relationship and lay the groundwork for future courses or internships around State Department heritage projects,” GrevstadNordbrock said.
Historical documentation This spring semester, Diane Al Shihabi, assistant professor of interior design, and Mikesch Muecke, associate professor of architecture, are co-teaching DSN S 546: Historic Preservation England: International Perspectives and Design Issues, the college’s first interdisciplinary studio in preservation. The class is studying the Winfield House, a NeoGeorgian mansion in London’s Regent’s Park that has served as the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain’s official residence since the end of World War II. “The students are researching the Winfield House’s historical, cultural and architectural contexts to determine the property’s significance and meaning to the United States and Great Britain,” Al Shihabi said. “They will identify the characterdefining elements of the architectural façade, the interior public rooms and the landscape, and analyze why the site serves as a culturally and stylistically appropriate venue for diplomatic engagement. They will also investigate how the building has changed over time, what preservation efforts are in place and how the staff were impacted by preservation practices.”
Of the 20 architecture, interior design and landscape architecture students in the class, eight will travel to London with the faculty over spring break in March to interview staff and to document the mansion’s gardens, architecture and interior public spaces using 21st-century technologies. The information will be used to create a website and virtual tours for use by Tracey’s Office of Cultural Heritage. Students will photograph and scan spaces such as the foyer, reception rooms and dining room using a portable LiDAR scanner and a Panono 360 camera as well as traditional digital cameras. The laser scanner captures threedimensional data in point clouds, which provide precise measurements of objects and distances between them. The Panono is a spherical camera that takes high-resolution 360-degree panoramic photos. Back at Iowa State, the class will be able to pull the scans and photos into additional software to create 3D models, which can then be taken into a virtual reality environment. “The overarching goal for the new historic preservation program is to combine conventional methods with cutting-edge technology,” Muecke said. “The Winfield House project is a prototype to test the technologies together with traditional historic preservation techniques to communicate the house and its contents for people unable to visit in person.” While in London, students also will visit other historic sites and buildings like Kensington Palace, Spencer House, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, as well as tour collections and learn about conservation at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum.
Future projects Al Shihabi also is working with an independent-study student and the State Department to research and document the Beaux-Arts American Ambassador’s Residence in Prague. Future interdisciplinary projects are planned in Canberra, Dublin, Warsaw and Rome. “We’re off to a good start,” Tracey said. “We want to provide opportunities that educate students as well as result in something tangible for us to use to protect and promote the use and interpretation of our heritage sites and collections.” 3
AWA R D - W I N N I N G P R O J E C T
DISNEY COMPETITION By Heather Sauer
Multidisciplinary collaboration leads to big win for Iowa State
A “simple but elegant design” by three Iowa State University students captured first place in the 2017 Walt Disney Imagineering Imaginations Design Competition, sponsored by Disney to find and nurture the next generation of talented “Imagineers.” Cristina Diaz, Aurora, Illinois, senior in interior design; Alexander Doppenberg, Spencer, senior in mechanical engineering; and Joshua Kurnia, originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, and now of Ames, fifth-year architecture, were the first Iowa Staters to reach the finals in the competition’s 26-year history. This year’s contest in Glendale, California, challenged students to apply the same design principles used in creating Disney’s theme parks, resorts and immersive experiences to develop new outdoor spaces within their own colleges or universities that could address the diverse needs of students, faculty and visitors while providing a respite from daily stress.
‘Hourglass’ project The ISU students earned top honors 4
Left: In the Iowa State team’s “Hourglass” proposal, sand moves through glass handrails at intervals timed to the chiming of the carillon bells. Above: Students Joshua Kurnia, Cristina Diaz and Alexander Doppenberg share their winning project. Photo © Disney/Gary Krueger.
with “Hourglass,” a structure designed like an hourglass turned on its side to metaphorically “stop time,” allowing guests a temporary break from their hectic schedules to relax and enjoy the beauty of central campus. The proposed space features individual, geothermal “pods” belowground for a more intimate experience and aboveground seating with heated benches where visitors can socialize in comfort year-round. The portion aboveground consists of ETFE film, a durable, transparent membrane that’s reflective on one side, stretched over aluminum tubing. People viewing it from the outside see themselves and the landscape reflected, while people inside can see through to the landscape. Special effects corresponding with the ringing of the carillon bells in the Campanile — including sand that moves through glass handrails at 15-minute intervals during the day and embedded
path lights that glow to mimic flowing sand at night — are intended to subtly remind people of time passing and encourage them to resume their normal activities, Diaz said. Doppenberg designed an oscillating pneumatic system on a timer for the movement of the sand.
Teamwork and ingenuity Disney did not require teams to be multidisciplinary, but Kurnia, who entered the competition last year with a team composed of peers in architecture, thought working with other disciplines could make the project more successful. The trio capitalized on their complementary skill sets, including proficiency in different software packages, to create a cohesive design, he said. “For Josh and me it was really interesting to bounce ideas off of each other,” Diaz said. “We have related backgrounds but different perspectives on things. And it was great to work with an engineer like Alex who could help us determine if it
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was actually possible to do what we were proposing.” The Iowa State team worked closely with faculty mentor Kevin Owens, lecturer in architecture and interdisciplinary design, last fall to develop and refine their winning design. Kurnia took Owens’ “Design for Entertainment” class last spring and Diaz is enrolled in the eight-week course this semester. “Kevin was amazingly helpful, especially in the beginning of the project. We had a hard time developing our concept initially and he had us do sketching exercises to help us solidify the idea of the hourglass,” Diaz said. “Then toward the end he helped us focus on the feasibility of the materials and technology.” The group met weekly at a coffee shop in Des Moines to hammer out their design and presentation. “The Disney competition is all about ‘how big can we dream within the limits of something realizable?’” Owens said. “What really polished the project was bringing some structural and technical reality to it, the kind of constraint that you have to have in the built environment to be credible. It’s got to be captivating but it also has to work.” After finalists were announced in December, teams were assigned mentors (previous finalists) from Walt Disney Imagineering. Students and mentors communicated via Skype and email to hone their project presentations ahead of the final round of competition in January.
Internship opportunities In addition to Iowa State, the top teams represented Carnegie Mellon University; Howard University; Miami University; Savannah College of Art and Design; the University of California, San Diego; and University of Notre Dame. Twentyone students were awarded a five-day, all-expense-paid trip to Imagineering’s headquarters in Glendale, where they presented their projects to Imagineering executives, went behind the scenes to learn more about the various departments and interviewed for paid internships. “The real goal of competing is all of the networking opportunities and the ability to interview for internships and possibly work for Walt Disney Imagineering in the future,” Kurnia said. “Winning is the icing on the cake.” All three students hope to work in the entertainment industry after graduation, and working for Walt Disney Imagineering heads their wish lists. “I got to interview with one of the senior managers in ride engineering, a more behind-the-scenes area of creating propulsion and engineering and design of rides. It was also really cool to visit the research and development department. They have a lot of creative freedom to tinker around with ideas and come up with new technology,” said Doppenberg, who completed a Disney College Program internship at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in the summer of 2015. “Working in either of those two departments would be my dream job,
The Hourglass is illuminated at night, and lights embedded in pathways leading to the structure glow to mimic flowing sand. Renderings © Disney/Team Hourglass.
but just getting into Imagineering and being able to tackle challenges in any of the departments would be a dream in itself,” he said. “It’s funny because I thought I knew exactly what my dream job was before I went to Glendale and then I started talking to people and having interviews in different areas and it kept multiplying; everything sounded like something I’d want to do,” Diaz said. “If I had to narrow it down, I’d like to work in the environmental design and engineering department, which is where a lot of interior designers go,” she said. “Specifically, I would want to do retail and restaurants and resorts. I’m also interested in show set design.” Kurnia, who is interning at Walt Disney World from January through June, wants to do “concept architecture for new attractions,” he said. “I’m also really interested in doing visualization or architectural animations of the new attractions. One of the things I did for the Hourglass project was to produce a walk-through animation. I didn’t realize before that it’s something not a lot of students have exposure to.”
A dream come true The top three teams were announced at a Jan. 27 awards luncheon. Some of the feedback from the Imagineering executives about Iowa State’s winning project included “‘Amazingly professional presentation,’ ‘diverse talents that came together in an impressive collaboration’ and ‘a simple but elegant design that would fit magically into campus.’” Team Hourglass received an undisclosed cash prize, and the university was awarded $1,000. Notre Dame’s team finished second, while the team from Carnegie Mellon and Miami University took third. Disney does not plan to build any of the designs; the competition is a way for entrants to demonstrate their skills and creativity. “The real prize was going and getting to network with our possible future employer,” Doppenberg said. “We’re very grateful to all the people involved in our lives and in this project, and to Disney for the opportunity. It’s a dream come true for all of us.” 5
O U T R E AC H S T U D I O
MORE THAN FUN & GAMES By Sherry Speikers
Studio helps transform school playgrounds and neighborhoods
ISU landscape architecture students asked Philadelphia children to draw pictures of their ideal schoolyard. Above right and opposite: Design charrettes and surveys helped determine priorities for the final master plans. Images courtesy of Bambi Yost.
In urban neighborhoods, where growing populations stress aging infrastructures, the sight of a decaying parking lot — with cracked concrete, faded paint and a disordered traffic flow — isn’t unusual. What’s different about some of these eyesores in South Philadelphia is that they double as school playgrounds. “I wouldn’t want to play there,” said Jessica Alvarado, an Iowa State University fifth-year landscape architecture student, about the playground at Stephen Girard Elementary School. “It wasn’t friendly at all. Just cold, dead concrete.” Such barren conditions limit children’s options for outdoor play, an activity experts agree is critical to their cognitive, physical and social development. And students and communities aren’t reaping the benefits scientifically linked to green space, including improved learning, better physical and mental health and safer neighborhoods — until now. This past fall, Iowa State fifth-year landscape architecture students worked 6
with schools and communities to reimagine the schoolyards at four South Philly elementary schools. The advanced landscape architectural design studio, taught by Bambi Yost, assistant professor of landscape architecture, is part of a larger collaboration of stakeholders working to breathe new life into more than 300 neglected schoolyards in the School District of Philadelphia — and by extension, their neighborhoods. “Schoolyards seem simple, but they are not. They serve as public gathering spaces and contribute to community identity formation. The bigger issues are social and environmental justice — providing equitable amenities and opportunities to people regardless of their socioeconomic status,” said Yost. “Communitysupported, greened schoolyards can transform an entire neighborhood.”
Understanding the context Yost’s students combined their technical skills with the strategies of communitybased design to develop master plans for each school. Their mission was to
transform the schoolyards while ensuring their designs reflect each neighborhood’s character. The ultimate goal is that the plans are welcomed, implemented and maintained by the community. “Ownership is the best form of sustainability,” said Alvarado, Caguas, Puerto Rico. “If you involve community members throughout the design process, the end result will be more meaningful to them. They will take better care of it.” Alvarado and others spent four days on site gathering data, soliciting input and gaining a deeper understanding of place by exploring neighborhoods. They spent most of their time at the schools, where they observed how schoolyards were used and had students draw pictures of their ideal playground. “Kids don’t have the limitations that come with age and experience. I think they’re better designers than the professionals,” said Nick Johnson, Olathe, Kansas. “The kids taught me to be more creative and think in different ways.” Iowa State students also held design charrettes where they led parents, teachers, neighbors and children through the process of defining their desires for the schoolyard. Here, the challenges inherent to community-based design began to surface.
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the neighborhoods’ history and character intact. For example, at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary School, the neighborhood’s cultural diversity and the school’s inside decor of colorful murals come together on the playground. A mural serves as the playground’s footprint and incorporates metaphorical imagery representing changes to the neighborhood over time.
Taking ownership Laurel Landau’s two boys attend Gen. George A. McCall Elementary School, and she is the president of McCall’s Home and School Association. She immediately recognized the project’s broader impact.
“There was a real conflict between the families who’ve lived there for generations and younger people moving in,” said Anna Smith, Atlantic. “It was challenging, trying to meet everyone’s needs when they were so different.” “In community-based design, you aren’t fulfilling the needs of one person but an entire community. People don’t always agree,” Yost said. “The hard part is finding common ground among all the perspectives while respecting the history and politics of place and people’s fears and concerns.” For example, students at George W. Childs Elementary School wanted to ensure an existing basketball court transferred to the new schoolyard. Neighbors wanted to exclude it due to noise. The solution? Repositioning and buffering the court to mitigate noise. “There’s so much more to design than what shows up on paper: community feedback, politics and compromise,” said Julian Sabin, Iowa City.
Moving toward consensus Not all design dilemmas are as easily negotiated as the basketball court. “At some point you realize you can’t please everyone, so you prioritize,” Smith said. Culling through collected surveys, drawings and technical data, Iowa State students determined the priorities that would drive the development of their preliminary designs. Yost coordinated feedback from stakeholders, and students revised plans accordingly to get everyone closer to consensus.
“Feedback was mostly about preventing vandalism, ensuring lines of sight and keeping kids safe. It’s sad you have to think about those things, but it’s reality,” Smith said. “This studio requires students to consider real issues and context as they zoom in on detail. They’re no longer working at a conceptual scale inside a studio, which is where most people are comfortable. Instead they have to figure out how to build something. They have to apply every technical skill they’ve learned in the program and be creative with it,” Yost said. The final master plans will be used by the schools to secure funding through grant applications and other initiatives. “I’ve completed other community design projects but this was different. The game changer was the multiple iterations of the design process. The back-and-forth communication helped us create a better product — something phenomenal that will improve kids’ lives,” Sabin said. True to their charge, the teams reenvisioned the schoolyards while keeping
“This project is good for the whole community,” Landau said. “When you live in the city, playgrounds are your backyard. They provide kids with a place to play, and they bring people together. A lot of people stand to benefit.” Landau coordinated project meetings and communications, and she encouraged parents and neighbors to get involved. Now that the master plan is complete, she’ll work with others — including Yost — to raise funds necessary for construction. “I really think we can make this happen. It’s important that we do,” Landau said. “Kids will have more energy and enthusiasm, and they’ll do better in school. A greener environment will uplift their spirits and the community.” It’s this deep sense of ownership that makes community design projects successful and ensures their sustainability over time. And, it’s exactly what Iowa State students were aiming for. “As a designer, nothing you create is yours,” Johnson said. “Most rewarding is when the community says, ‘This is ours.’ That’s when you know you did a good job.”
Yost’s studio effort is part of a national movement advocating greener schoolyards. She collaborates with Lois Brink, chief strategist at The Big Sandbox, and with other public and private organizations. The LA 404/504 studio is part of The Big Sandbox’s Philadelphia Schoolyards Exchange Program. Last year, Yost’s students worked with six schools and their communities in Philly’s Mount Airy neighborhood. Two of the students’ master plans won awards from regional and state chapters of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Another master plan generated a $10,000 donation to build a temporary nature play area.
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I N T ER N AT I O N A L S T U D I O
I N T EG R AT I V E DESIGN By Heather Sauer
Panama projects engage technical, experiential factors
Above: Visiting the rainforest helped students design for this environment. Photo by Lee Cagley. Right: Joseph Danielsen, Andrew Meyer and Charvi Jagani chose a light color palette to complement the rich hues of the rainforest and Panama Canal.
A serendipitous meeting by two College of Design faculty members resulted in an amazing interdisciplinary studio they hope to repeat with involvement from additional disciplines. “Last summer Lee [Cagley] and I ran into each other waiting for the elevator and started talking. We discovered both of us were doing hotel projects for studios. I was looking for a city to do the project in and Lee was going to Panama City, which sounded like a great opportunity to work in a totally different environment,” said Morrill Professor Tom Leslie, Pickard Chilton Professor in Architecture. “We decided to combine efforts and offer students a truly integrated experience.” Leslie and Cagley (BA 1975 Interior Design), professor and chair of interior design, paired up to teach the Panama Integrative Design Studio for nearly 30 students enrolled in ARCH 403/603: Comprehensive Design or ID 668: Advanced Experimental Interior Design. 8
The hypothetical project site was “a beautiful clifftop site on the Amador Peninsula along the entrance to the Panama Canal, right next to an underconstruction convention center where an American officers’ and yacht club used to be when it was the Canal Zone,” Cagley said. He was born in the Canal Zone — his father was an engineer who worked on the Lake Alajuela reservoir — and has long wanted to lead a project there. “If you’re going to build there now, the Panamanian government requires you to make it climate positive, meaning it generates more energy than it consumes and restores more biodiversity than it destroys,” Cagley said. “This was the perfect kind of challenge for our students to tackle.”
Restoring the rainforest Cagley and Leslie asked students to design a high-rise luxury hotel, spa and convention center making use of local labor and materials on a site where at
least 40 percent is reverting either to rainforest or to highly biodiverse habitat. The class broke into 10 teams of up to four members, with the only “rule” being that groups should be interdisciplinary. They spent the first two weeks of the semester researching the history, customs and urban conditions of Panama City to learn as much as possible about their project site. In early September, 11 students traveled with the faculty to Panama, where they were able to see the canal in operation, learn how it works and how water in the new canal is being recycled. They toured luxury hotels in the area to better understand the competition for their projects and visited the rainforest “to understand what’s being lost and what’s at stake,” Cagley said. “We took an aerial tram through the rainforest on a sunny day, which gave them a chance to glide well above the forest floor and see what the canopy is like. The next day, when it was foggy
Connor Yocum and Catherine McClurg’s hotel design featured guest rooms located below the rainforest canopy to highlight the best views.
and raining, we climbed a 12-story former radar conning tower now used as an observatory in the middle of the rainforest,” he said. “Students were able to experience each stratum of the forest with all the layers of vegetation and wildlife. They all came away with an incredible dedication to restoring rainforest and habitat, and each team later approached that in their projects in different ways.”
Drawing on experience Back in Iowa, the teams drew on their research and the travelers’ insights to develop their hotel projects. “Visiting the rainforest helped us visualize how tall the trees grow and how much light penetrates through the canopy,” said architecture graduate student Charvi Jagani, Ahmedabad, India. “It was also valuable to experience the humidity and density of the rainforest. We made decisions about materials to use based on sustainability and their performance in such a wet environment.” Visiting the site influenced her team’s efforts to decrease the building footprint to allow more space for biodiversity while minimizing the perceived verticality of the 18-story height by emphasizing horizontal planes. “We designed wide balconies and decks that extend out from the building façade and carried the language through the interior lobby spaces and guest rooms with horizontal reveals,” Jagani said. Nathan Thiese’s team took a different approach to achieve similar goals. “Things grow rapidly in Panama, so as long as you give them space to grow, trees, plants and ultimately wildlife will be restored,” said Thiese (BFA 2015 Interior Design), an interior design graduate student from Des Moines.
“We reduced the footprint of our building and increased space for biodiversity by designing a very narrow tower with a single loaded corridor 120 meters long, 12 meters wide and 80 meters high. It would be one of the tallest structures in the area, with guest rooms facing the canal and the corridor facing Panama City,” he said. Based on his experience on the trip, Thiese’s team incorporated a number of open-air spaces to provide greater opportunities to interact with the surrounding landscape. “It’s hot and humid but once you’re in the shade it’s pretty comfortable. There’s always a bit of a breeze. The form of the building also is light and airy.” Fifth-year architecture student Connor Yocum, Johnston, and his teammate, interior design senior Catherine McClurg, Dubuque, won the CSI-ISU Design Competition sponsored by the Construction Specifications Institute’s Central Iowa chapter with their proposal for a concrete and steel structure with large glass expanses to allow guests to feel like they were immersed in the rainforest. “The rainforest caps at 35 to 50 meters. Without the on-site experience, I wouldn’t have realized that the best views are just below the canopy, where you can see activity happening in the branches, and not at the top of the building the way they are in most high-rises,” Yocum said. “We organized our project so the best guest rooms, along with the spa, are located at the ‘sweet spot’ in the forest, and the louder, public areas like the bar are higher.”
Learning to communicate A significant challenge in the overall project involved the fact that the two design disciplines can be separated by a common language, Leslie observed.
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“In architecture we start with a big problem and often feel like we’re done when we’ve solved it. Interior designers start with a sense of how individual spaces should work and feel, and aren’t done until they have a completely coherent, holistic set of experiences when going through a building,” he said. “The really engaging arguments emerged when students were deciding ‘where do we spend our time?’ ‘how do we develop the project?’ ‘what do we focus on?’” Yocum found that “having a partner from another discipline forced me to explain why I did things that seemed totally obvious to me, but for someone looking at it through a different lens it didn’t make sense,” he said. “We both asked each other ‘Why’d you do that?’ all the time, and by learning how to answer in terms the other person could understand, we understood our own design processes better.” The faculty members themselves sought to model the way different disciplines can contribute to a project. “We tried to crit as much as possible at the same time. Anytime I would propose changing something to make a better interior space, I would ask Tom what that does to the building. And he would ask how proposed changes to the building affect the interior, so students understood that whatever decisions they were making affected the others,” Cagley said. Cagley and Leslie invited Carl Rogers, interim chair of landscape architecture, to participate in the final review and provide another perspective. They hope to involve landscape architecture in a future integrative design studio. “It’s really about thinking of all of us as designers engaged in the same enterprise,” Leslie said. 9
A LU M N I P R O FI L E
DANIEL R AES
Rendering by Daniel Raes.
By Heather Sauer
Footwear designer finds early success
“It was incredibly frustrating — one of my first big failures — but I learned a lot from it and now in my career, failures are a part of daily life. You start out designing 15-20 shoes and maybe only five make it to the shelf. It was a good lesson in design and humility.” Above, left to right: Raes is a junior technical designer at Keen in Portland, Oregon. His first professional design, the Slater boot, is named after his hometown. All photos by Euri Park.
Daniel Raes is right where he wants to be. A junior technical designer at Keen in Portland, Oregon, the Slater native (BID 2013 Industrial Design) always dreamed of being a footwear designer. His favorite part of every school year was buying new shoes. In high school he investigated job opportunities and found he needed a degree in graphic or product design to gain entry to the industry. “I knew Iowa State had a College of Design and I had heard it might be starting an industrial design program, so I enrolled, and after my freshman year in the Core the new program was approved,” Raes said. “I put it as my first choice and thankfully, I got in.” In the beginning, the program “was kind of like the Wild West,” he said with a laugh. “We were blazing a trail 10 10 10
through unknown territory. But we had the flexibility to choose our classes and customize our education. There were opportunities to try lots of different things — and sometimes fail.” Raes recalls a “really fun, large project” to produce a Veishea parade float promoting the Lego “Nature Connects” exhibition at Reiman Gardens. “Our class had to design and build the entire float, which featured an animatronic butterfly based off of one of my original sketches. The idea was that it would go up and down and the wings would flap. It was a unique challenge that required a lot of technical expertise. A couple of days before the parade we realized with the way we constructed the butterfly, the motion wasn’t going to work. The float was still cool, but the butterfly was static,” he said.
Where the jobs are During his senior year, Raes attended the Pensole Footwear Design Academy, an intensive four-week class that teaches students the entire footwear design process from inspiration and concept development through prototyping and marketing. The summer after graduation from Iowa State, he moved to Portland and participated in the Pensole World Sneaker Championship, which gives aspiring footwear designers a chance to demonstrate their skills and potentially have their designs sold at retail. “I had to be where the jobs are, and I knew Portland was the place to be because so many different shoe companies are located here,” he said. Out of 30 participants in the international competition, Raes was one of eight finalists. When Keen approached Pensole for recommendations for a contract position, the head of Pensole gave them Raes’ name.
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“Word-of-mouth is so powerful, especially in the footwear industry,” Raes said. “You make a lot of friends and they put in a good word for you or you find out about positions before they’re even posted. Pensole gave me the connections I needed to get into Keen.”
Professional success Raes is now one of two in-house technical designers at Keen. They work with contract designers, a color designer, merchandisers, developers and marketers. In the past two-and-a-half years, Raes has designed men’s, women’s and children’s styles in every category, including utility (work/construction), trailhead (hiking), waterfront (sandals) and lifestyle (everyday). His first professional design was a side project while he was on a short-term contract doing tech packs for other designers. “The department head said I should design a shoe I would want to wear, and it would give me experience.” He set to work designing “a good-looking leather boot that would make it through the winters of Iowa.” A couple of months into the process, Raes was hired full time and Keen decided to produce the boot. “Because the project wasn’t briefed by the merchandisers, it didn’t have a name. I named it the Slater to honor my hometown and everyone who has been so supportive of my desire to be a footwear designer.” The Slater — and seven other shoes Raes designed — debuted in fall 2016, and he has had one released this spring. Currently he’s designing a pull-on snow boot “that needs some kind of attachment system so you can put it on or take it off Raes goes through several rounds of sketching and feedback before creating a tech pack and obtaining shoe samples.
while wearing gloves. It’s interesting to start with a very specific problem and respond.”
Inspiration and development Among the many perks of the job is frequent travel. As part of the company’s trend research, Raes goes on “inspiration trips” to places like New York City with members of the design and development teams. “Instead of sitting at a computer pulling images, it’s nice to see first hand what’s in the stores and what people are wearing on the street — everything from high fashion to athletic wear,” he said. “Our job is to decide how we can filter that and put it into an outdoor design.” Raes has traveled to Asia three times to visit the factories that make Keen’s shoes. “The developer and I will go and make changes to the samples right at the factory. It’s more efficient because we’re there in person and can explain things more easily, draw directly on the shoe instead of on a photo and see more samples.” The most recent development trip to China ended with an inspiration stop in Hong Kong, which sparked ideas for the fall 2018 line. “I can’t even explain how things have just fallen into place,” Raes reflected. “It’s been like finding a bunch of heads-up pennies, all of these lucky circumstances. I had to put in the work to have the skills to take advantage of the opportunities. Iowa State really helped me with that. One of the best things about industrial design is you learn to solve problems and take whatever idea is in your mind and bring it to market.”
inspire Inspire is published twice per year by the Iowa State University College of Design and is mailed to more than 16,000 alumni and friends. Newsletter Staff Editors Heather Sauer, Charles Sauer Writers Heather Sauer, Sherry Speikers Photographers Lee Cagley, Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, Gary Krueger, Euri Park, Kyle Vansice, Nicholas Williams, Bambi Yost Graphic Designer Alison Weidemann Contact Us 134 College of Design Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011-3091 designews@iastate.edu design.iastate.edu facebook.com/CollegeofDesign Twitter: @ISUdesign Instagram: @isucollegeofdesign
Alumni Updates Have you married, moved, changed jobs, published or exhibited your work or earned an award? Let us know at http://www.design.iastate.edu/ alumni/share-your-news/. On the Cover Ten students traveled to London last November with community and regional planning Assistant Professor Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock and Iowa Economic Development Authority Design Consultant Tim Reinders. They’re pictured in front of the U.S. Embassy building. Photo by Nicholas Williams. Iowa State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran. Inquiries regarding nondiscrimination policies may be directed to the Office of Equal Opportunity, 3410 Beardshear Hall, 515 Morrill Road, Ames, IA 50011, Tel. 515 294-7612, email eooffice@iastate.edu
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Office of the Dean 134 College of Design Ames, IA 50011-3091
VOLUME 7 | ISSUE 1 | SPRING 2017
New lab offers access to computational design, digital fabrication Developing technologies, such as computational design and digital fabrication, are transforming the design and construction of contemporary architecture. While these technologies have great potential to make buildings more environmentally sound, economical and beautiful, they present many challenges to architectural curricula and professional practices. A new initiative of the Iowa State University Department of Architecture, the Computation + Construction Lab (CCL), http://ccl.design.iastate. edu, combines cutting-edge research, teaching and outreach to serve the architectural discipline as well as the public. The lab’s mission is to democratize access to computational
design and digital fabrication while enhancing architectural education, said Assistant Professor and Daniel J. Huberty Faculty Fellow in Architecture Shelby Doyle, who co-founded the lab in 2016 with Lecturer Leslie Forehand and Assistant Professor Nick Senske. Their vision is to position the lab at the intersection of design, technology and theory to engage present-day design challenges ranging from climate change to population migration. Early successes include two projects recognized by ArchDaily as among “The Best Student Design-Build Projects Worldwide 2016:” the TwoXTwo installation and the Flux Pavilion for the 80/35 Music Festival (featured on the cover of the Fall 2016 issue of Inspire).
The Flux Pavilion designed and built for the 80/35 Music Festival. Photo by Kyle Vansice.
The work of the CCL is made possible through support from the ISU Department of Architecture, College of Design and Office of the Vice President for Research. Additional support is provided by the Stan G. Thurston Professorship in Design Build, as well as local community and industry partners.