Inspire Volume 10 Issue 1 by College of Design Iowa State University

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Featured State Parks & Artists

Backbone State Park, Dundee Kim Moss [16]

College of Design

146 College of Design 715 Bissell Road Ames, IA 50011-1066

Brushy Creek State Recreation Area, Lehigh Austin Stewart & Omar De Kok-Mercado [7] Gull Point State Park, Milford Paula Streeter [1] (BFA 1997 Art & Design / MA 2000 Art & Design / MFA 2011 Integrated Visual Arts) Lacey-Keosauqua State Park, Keosauqua Nancy Thompson [18] (BFA 2001 Art & Design / MFA 2008 Integrated Visual Arts) Lake Darling State Park, Brighton Rob Wallace [13] Lake Macbride State Park, Solon Firat Erdim [2] Lake of Three Fires State Park, Bedford Amy Harris [19] Maquoketa Caves State Park, Maquoketa Brent Holland [5] Mines of Spain State Park, Dubuque Joe Muench [12] (BA 1984 Craft Design) Palisades-Kepler State Park, Mt. Vernon Celinda Stamy [cover] (MFA 2014 Integrated Visual Arts) Pikes Peak State Park, McGregor Barbara Walton [3] Pilot Knob State Park, Forest City Christopher Yanulis [17]

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Pine Lake State Park, Eldora Jennifer Drinkwater [9]

Exhibition celebrates Student Innovation Center’s opening When the Student Innovation Center opens in April, the hands-on hub will be home to several College of Design spaces. The new facility, located just west of the Marston water tower across the street from Design, includes a dedicated designbuild and/or interdisciplinary option studio and two industrial design studios, and a gaming lab and biological and premedical illustration classroom shared with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Multiple other shared spaces include an outdoor maker space; paint booth; metal and wood fabrication and assembly space; digital modeling and visualization lab; digital fabrication space and exhibition space. These are complemented by

special project areas, multipurpose and meeting rooms, open coworking spaces and informal gathering areas offering opportunities for interaction and collaboration. Two industrial robots currently installed in the Department of Architecture’s Computation and Construction Lab in the Communications Building will be moved to the Student Innovation Center, providing access for a wider population of students, faculty and the public. An inaugural exhibition highlighting each of Iowa State’s colleges will feature a reprise of Intertwine, the collaborative yarn-bombing initiative originally exhibited at the ISU Design on Main facility in 2016. Alumni are invited to

Rock Creek State Park, Kellogg Anna Segner [8] (MFA 2019 Integrated Visual Arts) Stephens State Forest, Chariton Clark Colby [4] (BArch 2011 / MS 2016 Architecture)

20 ARTISTS, 20 PARKS Iowa State University artists help celebrate 100th anniversary of Iowa’s state parks contribute by submitting 1-foot-by-1-foot knit or crocheted squares in any color or pattern from now until Aug. 1. Drop off or mail to Intertwine 2, c/o Jennifer Drinkwater, 158 College of Design, 715 Bissell Road, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1066.

Stone State Park, Sioux City Carol Faber [15] (MA 1990 Art & Design / MFA 2004 Integrated Visual Arts) Viking Lake State Park, Stanton Olivia Valentine [14] Walnut Woods State Park, West Des Moines Deborah Pappenheimer [6] Wildcat Den State Park, Muscatine Kristen Greteman [10] (BArch 2011 / MS 2016 Architecture / MCRP 2016 Community & Regional Planning) Yellow River State Forest, Harpers Ferry Nathan Edwards [11]

VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 1 SPRING 2020

Featured State Parks & Artists

Backbone State Park, Dundee Kim Moss [16]

College of Design

146 College of Design 715 Bissell Road Ames, IA 50011-1066

VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 1 | SPRING 2020

Pine Lake State Park, Eldora Jennifer Drinkwater [9]

Rock Creek State Park, Kellogg Anna Segner [8] (MFA 2019 Integrated Visual Arts) Stephens State Forest, Chariton Clark Colby [4] (BArch 2011 / MS 2016 Architecture)

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Backbone State Park “Iowa has these pockets that are really amazing vessels for what has happened in the landscape over time. Backbone and northeast Iowa have interesting topography where glaciers have carved some of the land and waterways and left other areas untouched. I’m so glad it was protected and made a state park,” said Kim Moss, assistant professor of art and visual culture and coordinator of the biological and premedical illustration program. 16

By Heather Sauer

DIFFERENT WAYS OF SEEING Exhibition invites viewers to experience Iowa’s state parks in new ways When not in full flow from spring snowmelt or a pounding summer thunderstorm, the Maquoketa River is more like a stream. As you wade through the clear, shallow water, tiny minnows dart past your feet. The current arranges colorful stones in patterns on the sandy bottom. Water striders skate on the surface of calmer, deeper pools. Several species of dragonfly dart among cattails ribboning the bank. Move away from the river and into the woods. Look up to glimpse a barred owl “who-cooks-for-you”-ing from its perch in a white pine. Bend low to spy a metallic green tiger beetle hunting at trail’s edge. Inhale the scent of loamy soil, leaf litter and limestone warmed by the afternoon sun. Slow down, observe, experience, connect. The river loops back upon itself as it carves a steep ridge of bedrock — the Devil’s Backbone. This is where it all began.

Centennial celebration Iowa’s state parks have inspired visitors ever since the first site, Backbone State Park, opened in Delaware County in 1920. A new exhibition, “20 Artists, 20 Parks,” opens in Des Moines in March before traveling to Dubuque, Clarinda and Sioux City. It showcases artwork that 20 Iowa State University artists made last summer in 20 state parks — all to celebrate the state parks’ centennial in 2020. The show is organized by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources; the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs; and the ISU College of Design. Nancy Thompson (BFA 2001 Art & Design / MFA 2008 Integrated Visual Arts), associate teaching professor of art and visual culture, spearheaded the project at Iowa State. Thompson established the foundation for such work in 2009-10, when she visited two-dozen

state parks and created artwork she exhibited in four shows around Iowa. In 2017, Thompson invited students and colleagues to join her in creating artwork that responded to the geological history and landscape of Ledges State Park south of Boone. Iowa DNR bureau chief Todd Coffelt attended the resulting “Common Channel” exhibition and was impressed with the content. He reached out to Thompson and the Iowa Arts Council to collaborate on a similar project for the 100th anniversary of Iowa’s state park system. “The ‘20 Artists, 20 Parks’ program highlights two important contributors to quality of life in Iowa — arts and the outdoors,” said Coffelt when the initiative was launched last year. “By focusing on the unique natural and cultural aspects of our state parks, we are able to tell their story in a new and inspirational way.” During their residencies last summer, the Iowa State artists — including graduate students and faculty members from the Colleges of Design, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Liberal Arts and Sciences — worked closely with DNR park rangers to learn about the parks’ histories and ecosystems. The artists visited their assigned parks often to take photographs and notes, draw sketches and gather ideas. They created their artwork on-site or in their studios and will return this summer to lead public programs designed to engage park visitors in new ways. The traveling exhibition provides an opportunity to share the artwork statewide and promote the DNR’s centennial programming at all 72 state parks and forests.

Moss visited Backbone several times last spring and summer, hiking the trails, walking the river and camping in the park. “So much of my time outside is noticing the small things, being drawn into microenvironments. At Backbone, you can explore on or off trail and become lost in that world, unaware of the busyness of life,” she said. “One of the most enjoyable ways to get lost in the park is walking upstream, looking at liverworts and things that live along the riverbank. I saw some trout lily — spring ephemerals that like sandy soil and dappled light. Those encounters are what make a park like Backbone special.” For “20 Artists, 20 Parks,” Moss created a 2-by-3-foot centerpiece wood panel flanked by four smaller square-foot panels with isolines — used to denote elevations on a topographic map — burned into the surface. She cut windows into the wood and placed inside them images of organisms and objects created with watercolor, colored pencil and digital rendering. She attached pegs to the window coverings to allow visitors to lift each one away from the landscape, revealing what is often unseen. On the back of each cover is a poem Moss wrote related to the image. “When people visit these special places in Iowa, I want them to slow down and notice all the elements — something really small like a beetle on the ground or looking overhead and seeing an owl. These places host a whole array of things and if you slow down and really look, you can discover an entire world within a square foot. I want them

to experience that act of discovery — that’s why it’s an interactive piece.”

Pilot Knob State Park Christopher Yanulis (BA 2018 Interdisciplinary Design), a graduate student in integrated visual arts, conveyed his impressions of Pilot Knob State Park near Forest City with an abstract video collage and a mixed-media artwork, intended to spark both familiarity and a sense of discovery. “Pilot Knob is a small park with a lot contained in it. It has an iconic observation tower built from glacial till boulders, and when you climb to the top of the tower, you can see everything for miles. The sphagnum bog (the only one in Iowa) is also an interesting element for a park,” he said. Yanulis layered video footage of the park from multiple visits with his recordings of park ranger Michael Strauser narrating the history of Pilot Knob and reading a poem about the park by one of its earliest proponents, Eugene Secor. A prolific musician who plays guitar and bass, Yanulis also

wrote and recorded “All of the Green” to accompany the video, with additional vocals by his wife, Amelia Drake. For his mixed-media piece, Yanulis layered paper to create a textural base and used colored pencil, gouache and ink to capture a still image from the video. “The digital and physical pieces inform each other,” he said. “It’s the concept of viewing nature and the landscape in a different way.”

Lake of Three Fires State Park Like Moss and Yanulis, Amy Harris sought ways to represent her park from multiple points of view, “whether out on the lake looking at the shoreline or hiking around the lake,” she said. “Although I love representational artwork, I wanted it to feel like an experience, and a fixed point of view is momentary — not quite how we really experience things.” 19

Harris, associate teaching professor of art

and visual culture, constructed a textile mandala to capture the sense of peace she felt while visiting Lake of Three Fires State Park, just north of Bedford. Harris digitally manipulated her line drawings completed on site to develop the shapes that form the mandala. She printed her photos and watercolor paintings of the park onto fabric, cut them into shapes inspired by the manipulated drawings and sewed them to a shibori-bleached background, adding hand-embroidered and free-motion machine-stitched elements. Recognizable up close, the images of the lake, moss, algae, trees and sky become colors and textures from a distance. “I wanted viewers to have that same near/far experience and the multiple viewpoints in the park. I hope it creates the same calm, meditative feelings I experienced,” Harris said.

Lacey-Keosauqua State Park Thompson created four paintings — an acrylic triptych and three smaller pastel works — on location at Lacey-Keosauqua State Park in southeast Iowa, the second state park established after Backbone. “I was really inspired by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) structures in the park and by the mature hardwood

forest,” she said. “They have beautiful trails and a renovated campground.” Reflecting on the project overall, Thompson said, “We all have different ways of seeing our environment, and different ways of interpreting it through our art. I hope this work will revive people’s passion for these special places and help us prioritize what’s most important to preserve and protect.” Learn more about the “20 Artists, 20 Parks” project, exhibition and public programming at https://iowaculture.gov/ arts/get-involved/20-artists-20-parks.

Traveling Exhibition Polk County Heritage Gallery Des Moines March 16 – May 2, 2020 Reception: Thursday, April 9 Dubuque Museum of Art May 30 – Sept. 20, 2020 Reception: Friday, June 5 Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum Sept. 30, 2020 – Jan. 8, 2021 Reception: October (Date TBD) Sioux City Art Center Jan. 30 – May 9, 2021 Reception: Saturday, Jan. 30 3

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By Heather Sauer

to experience that act of discovery — that’s why it’s an interactive piece.”

Harris, associate teaching professor of art

VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 1 | SPRING 2020

C OV ER S TO RY

By Heather Sauer

to experience that act of discovery — that’s why it’s an interactive piece.”

Harris, associate teaching professor of art

I N T ER N AT I O N A TU AL LUSM ND I PI O ROFILE

By Heather Sauer By Hailey Allen

ADVANCING E D U C AT I O N Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar leads Smithsonian Institution initiatives Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar had not budgeted for food. It was her first month as a graduate student at Iowa State University, and she was always hungry. She had come from India for her master’s degree in graphic design. The flights, the luggage, the housing, the tuition –– those were expected expenses. Somehow food and groceries had been overlooked. “You become resourceful to survive. I very quickly learned where there was free food on campus,” NeuholdRavikumar said, laughing. “I found that a lot of exhibitions, events and graduate critiques often had food as a draw to attend. I went to openings of things I didn’t even understand, but then I’d meet people there. And it was interesting because when I did my thesis, one of my committee members came from the Department of Anthropology,” she said. “I would have never met him had I not gone to an event with free food.” 4

Creating connections The food was the draw, but the connections are what stuck with her. Neuhold-Ravikumar (MFA 2003 Graphic Design) is now the director of education at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where she leads educational workshops on design and design literacy and helps audiences connect with the museum’s content. “Our engagement with schools takes much-needed resources, content and expertise to classrooms around the country,” she said. “We have helped communities in Long Beach, California, come together to brainstorm solutions to homelessness and worked with school systems in South Carolina to build the pipeline to careers in the mobility industry. We think it is important to build the creative confidence of the next generation to tackle the complex problems in the world and in their futures.”

Neuhold-Ravikumar also was recently appointed interim associate provost of education and access for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. “My life has gotten more complicated since I took the interim position, but it’s exciting because it has expanded what my role was at the Cooper Hewitt. There I oversaw education for one museum. In my present role, I look at education across the entire Smithsonian,” she said. That includes 19 museums, nine research centers and a zoo. “To be able to think about education at that level is an incredible opportunity,” Neuhold-Ravikumar said. “As the Smithsonian approaches its 175th anniversary, we aim to empower people to feel a sense of ownership toward the content, research and stories of the institution.” So how does one go from a graphic

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design student to working for the Smithsonian?

leadership and advocacy in her local community.

“I think it was partly the experience of being a teaching assistant when I was at Iowa State. It was not something I had planned, but it was very different from any educational experience I’d had before that,” said Neuhold-Ravikumar, who

Her extensive resume is a testament to her love of the arts and design. “I was raised believing that I was a creative individual, who felt like I could contribute to the world in creative ways,”

Opposite: Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar moderates a panel with the Cooper Hewitt’s 2019 National Design Award winners. Photo: Brett Mountain Photography, LLC. Below: In her role as education director, Neuhold-Ravikumar leads workshops on design and design literacy. Photo by Asya Gorovits.

Ravikumar seeks to make connections with others and help them make connections with design. For her, graduate school wasn’t about building her portfolio, getting the grade or being praised. It was about meeting new people at free food events, and every opportunity she had to share ideas with others. She advises students to “take a moment to build those relationships while they’re in school, because that is your network, and that is who you will rely on for a very long time.” “The things that have really helped me to date from my education have nothing to do with my portfolio. I don’t even remember what was in it anymore. The connections I made with people, including my professors, that’s what have stayed with me for most of my life,” Neuhold-Ravikumar said.

holds a bachelor’s degree in the history of fine art and drawing and painting from the University of Madras. “I developed a love for connecting people to ideas and content, and giving them a place to really see what was possible.”

Rapid rise After graduating from Iowa State, Neuhold-Ravikumar began teaching design at the University of Central Oklahoma. During her 13 years at UCO, she rapidly worked her way up from undergraduate professor to the director of graduate programs and later chair of the Department of Design. Eventually she had held both the assistant and associate dean positions for the College of Fine Arts and Design. At the same time, Neuhold-Ravikumar was active in AIGA, the professional association for graphic design, including leadership roles in the AIGA Design Educators Community and local and national boards. She was named an AIGA Fellow by the Oklahoma chapter in 2015 for her

Neuhold-Ravikumar said. "For me, design is very much a profession where you help people and communicate with people. It is a meaningful field for me.” In her current roles with the Cooper Hewitt and Smithsonian Institution, Neuhold-Ravikumar is excited to work on prioritizing education and developing a new vision for the future of the institution.

Above: Neuhold-Ravikumar welcomes participants in the National Design Week Design Career Fair. Photo: Dana J. Quigley Photography. Below: She shares the museum’s resources with classrooms around the country. Photo: Paul Taylor Photography.

“[Education] brings me the most joy, and also I feel my work is valuable and is changing people’s lives. In some sense, it’s the best place I can contribute to the field of design,” she said. “I credit my education at Iowa State for challenging me to think in very different ways. The fact that I have transitioned from designer to educator to now a leadership role in education, Iowa State helped me see how I could transfer my skill set and think through any problem like a designer would,” she said.

Building relationships Throughout her career, Neuhold5

I N T ER N ATN I ONNAABLR S T IUODNI O S AVA AT

By Hailey Allen

SAVANNA STUDIO

Above: Professor emeritus Gary Hightshoe describes the significance of the landforms at Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Photo by Mindy Cooper. Opposite: Students and vans at Ames Monument, Wyoming. Photo by Michael Martin.

Traveling classroom celebrates 20th anniversary department chair from 1994–2007, The Savanna Studio. For landscape architecture students and alumni, the name evokes memories of countless sketch lay-downs, of stories and songs around campfires, of friendships forged in vans and shared tents, of long hikes and longer drives across states filled with endless miles of fields, forests, towns and cities. “I’d had this dream of taking students into the field, and in 1999 when we redid the undergraduate curriculum, we proposed combining a suite of courses for landscape architecture into the fall semester,” said professor emeritus Gary Hightshoe (BS 1969 / MLA 1970 Landscape Architecture). “The traveling studio was inaugurated in 2000, and we’ve been doing it ever since. It’s made a huge impact on student growth and development, and opens a window to new possibilities for the rest of their education and beyond.” With support from professor emeritus J. Timothy Keller, who served as 6

Hightshoe, professor Mira Engler and associate professor Heidi Hohmann were the pioneers of this traveling classroom. The studio has become a mainstay within the landscape architecture department, a rite of passage for sophomores in their first semester of the professional program that bonds the class in a way most students don’t get to experience. Sixteen credits, six weeks, five vans, three instructors. Students travel across the savanna region of the US, from Iowa to Wyoming, and from Minnesota down the Mississippi River, to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.

Regional landscapes Savannas occur worldwide. They consist of grasslands and prairies lightly interspersed with trees. Oak-dominated savannas are found in the Midwest, Southwest and West Coast, and pinedominated savannas in the Rocky Mountain and Southeast regions of the US. Because of their wide distribution, it’s important for landscape architects to understand them well, Hightshoe said.

During their travels, students visit and study a range of regional landscapes from urban to rural, from city plazas to national parks. They learn how to observe and inventory sites; identify plant species and communities; draw and record landscapes and analyze cultural aspects of design. As part of the semester, students also visit museums and historic sites, tour design firms and meet practitioners and alumni. To celebrate the studio’s 20th anniversary last fall, the Department of Landscape Architecture held a “Savannabration” event for alumni to reunite with former classmates and faculty, share memories and learn from current students how the program has changed and what experiences they have in common.

Shared experiences It’s 2003. The studio is in its fourth year, and the logistical complexities of moving more than 30 sophomores (most of whom have never camped before) across several state lines to eat, sleep and learn in all weather for two separate three-week stretches have been mostly worked out. The class is camped at Yellowstone National Park, and Eric Becker (BLA 2007) is sketching: geysers gushing plumes of hot steam, the vast sprawl of trees and the swirling blue-green bodies of water. Daily sketching is meant to improve students’ drawing skills, and

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it helps them better understand the landscape they’re immersed in. “I’ve talked to a lot of people in the industry that don’t get this type of experience in their curriculum," said Becker — now an associate landscape architect for James Corner Field Operations in New York — when he returned for Savannabration last October. “I realized how much I loved being outside and on project sites,” which confirmed his choice of major and career path, he said.

It’s 2013, and Nate Byro (BLA 2017) is also at Yellowstone, sketching the same geysers as so many others have before him. Snow dusts the ground, and bear tracks are visible. “It was one of the most life-changing experiences I’ve had,” he said. “[This studio] was part of the reason I chose landscape architecture. It opened up my mind to the spirit of the place and to really understanding the region, and that’s important for a designer to know.” The recent graduate now works for multidisciplinary design firm RDG Planning and Design in Des Moines. “Hearing that alumni carry the same experience with them and value it, regardless of when they were in the program or where they go when they graduate, makes me proud to be a part of this,” said Carl Rogers, associate professor and current chair of the landscape architecture department, who, like Hohmann, had just joined the faculty when the Savanna Studio started.

Hands-on learning Hightshoe came out of retirement for a semester to join Hohmann, associate professor Michael Martin and lecturer Joan Chen as an instructor for the anniversary class. It’s an intense experience for students, said Martin, who has taught the studio for 10 of its 20 years.

“They’re outside all the time. They’re in a city, in a park, in the rain, in the sun, in the cold. They’re building an awareness about particular effects, like ‘this certain tree has a certain effect in a city when there’s sunlight,’ and they know because they’ve been there and they’ve had to draw it and make note of it,” he said. Sophomore Zoey Thune, from Waterloo, said the hands-on learning helped her to think more deeply about her surroundings. “I’ve noticed myself thinking when I’m outside walking around, ‘oh, that’s an interesting pavement,” she laughed. “It’s just always in my brain now.”

Associate professors Michael Martin and Heidi Hohmann critique students’ sketches in Pacific Plaza Park, Dallas. Photo by Mindy Cooper.

“That’s the skill you need as a designer, to be able to see what the essential qualities are of a place, and then record that and use that as the inspiration for the design process,” Hohmann said. And that outcome is exactly what Hightshoe envisioned all those years ago when he first proposed the studio. The landscape is often taken for granted by its residents and visitors alike, who may overlook the significance of the savanna ecosystem, Hightshoe said. The studio asks students to pay attention, understand, appreciate and value the environment they're in.

Nate Byro (BLA 2017, in blue jacket) with classmates in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, in 2013. Photo by Michael Martin.

“It taught me to see the world differently — how things are built and interacted with, even about the different cultures within the US,” said Jen (DeWall) Cross (BLA 2009), who works for RDG Planning and Design in their Omaha office. “To be an intuitive designer, you have to be an intuitive observer, and that’s the biggest lesson Savanna [Studio] taught me.” Through all the drives, hikes, storms, fields, trees, towns, lessons and friendships, the Savanna Studio remains a unique and unforgettable experience. “No other school has a program like this,” Hightshoe said.

Students learn about savanna vegetation first hand with Hightshoe at Babi Yar Park in Denver. Photo by Michael Martin.

SPONSORED PROJECT

By Hailey Allen

A STUDY IN S TA R B O A R D

Industrial design students collaborate with Crest Marine on pontoon redesign The world of industrial design is full of possibilities. A world where fresh perspectives and a blank slate are the best tools a designer can have. What began for six Iowa State University students as an exercise in boat design became an opportunity for collaboration and innovation. Industrial design can encompass products and services as diverse as shoes and chairs, medical technology and public transportation systems, and user experience design. When Nathan Miklo, a senior in industrial design from Okoboji, interned at MasterCraft Boat Company last summer, it opened a door to industrial design he’d never considered before. At the end of his internship, Miklo and several industrial design classmates were offered an opportunity to collaborate 8

with Crest Marine LLC, a boat manufacturing company owned by MasterCraft Boat Holdings. He and fellow seniors Joshua Becker, Algonquin, Illinois; Samuel Christianson, Mason City; Charlie Erdman, Barrington, Illinois; Benjamin Satterlee, Rockford, Illinois; and Nathan Timmons, Lees Summit, Missouri, were asked to help redesign its flagship pontoon model for the 2021 model year change, as part of a sponsored independent study advised by Matthew Obbink (BFA 2006 Integrated Studio Arts / MFA 2017 Integrated Visual Arts), assistant teaching professor of industrial design. Crest Marine has been a pontoon manufacturer and retailer since 1957, with its headquarters and manufacturing campus located in Owosso, Michigan. The company sought new ideas to

incorporate into the latest Savannah model, its best-selling ultra-luxury model for the past seven years. Engineering manager Tracy McKinney tasked the Iowa State student team with developing these ideas and creating a complete digital rendering of what the redesign should look like.

Redefining ‘ultra luxury’ This was the second time the students worked together as a team, but their first time working on a sponsored project like this. From a prior independent study with Obbink, completed as juniors in the program last year — a single-gear bicycle with a hand-shaped wood frame, custom CNC-machined dropouts and a carbon fiber belt drive that recently won first place in the 2019 INDUSTART International Industrial Design Awards

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transportation design student category — they developed their ability to not only work with any material, but also to create working prototypes through engineering, Miklo said. They were confident they could make a great product, but as they had never worked on boat design before and had

real distinction as to what made a boat ‘luxury’ other than the expense of the materials used,” Miklo said. “We decided we wanted to make the distinction obvious — that these were a step up from just an average pontoon.”

Insights and inspiration Because Crest Marine gave them specific

The students were able to use skills learned in the advanced computeraided industrial design course, taught by assistant professor Pete Evans (BArch 1995 Architecture / Graduate Certificate 2014 Human Computer Interaction / MID 2017 Industrial Design), to create the final 3D design renderings for Crest Marine using SolidWorks, KeyShot, Rhino and Maya software. From Crest Marine’s perspective, one goal of the collaboration was to gain new insights and inspiration for models to come, and the Iowa State team presented ideas that are practical as well as forward-thinking. “There’s new life in the designs; it’s a jump start to the system. That requires the fresh perspective of someone not involved in the marine industry to see those different things and try to change them,” said Tyler Powers, Crest Marine’s head designer.

Opposite: Students met regularly with faculty adviser Matthew Obbink (far left) to review and refine their design ideas. Photo by Christopher Gannon. Above: Senior Joshua Becker sketches some early concepts. Photo courtesy of Nathan Miklo.

no experience with luxury pontoons, they had to find somewhere to start. To better understand what they would be designing, they toured the Crest Marine facility in Michigan and saw how pontoons are made, looked at previous models, met with Crest Marine’s design and sales teams to discuss the company’s main objectives, and shared some of their initial ideas to get feedback. What started as a lack of knowledge turned out to be an advantage. Crest Marine wanted the students to redefine what “ultra-luxury” was. With no preconceptions or bias, the students were better able to explore new and different ideas. “We needed to know what consumers look for in the experience of pontooning. It was a slow start, because it’s a new field of design for all of us, but once we started applying our regular design process we began to figure it out,” said Becker. “We realized, from a student’s point of view, who had never owned anything like this before, that there seemed to be no

parameters to meet and direction for the design, the project was different from their normal ideation and design process. They also had to learn to allocate tasks and skills to reach certain goals, Erdman said. They had six different viewpoints as a team, as well as a company critiquing them, so moving forward with ideas without taking feedback personally was challenging.

“They put a lot of thought into the use of the boat, and the overall design they’ve come up with is really cool. There’s manufacturability in the design,” McKinney said. McKinney and Powers were particularly impressed by the group’s ideas for luxurious fabrics and modular moving furniture and their innovative gate and entrance designs. McKinney called it “a streamlined experience from normal pontoon styling.”

Mutual benefit

The student team couldn’t share precise details and design of the boat due to a nondisclosure agreement with the company, but that is often the case with sponsored projects like this, Obbink said. They’re beneficial experiences for both the sponsors and the The team toured Crest Marine’s Michigan facility to learn how pontoons are manufactured. students, he said.

“This is our first sponsored project. With the privilege of working for a company, there are also new challenges, such as Photo courtesy of Crest Marine. different deadlines, expectations and culture,” Erdman said. “But having these restrictions also made us think more deeply and critically about our decisions and actions.”

“The students get to work with different companies and study something they wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to with the regular Iowa State curriculum, and the companies get talented students working with them on a specific task or problem.” 9

I N T ER N AT I O N AULLT ST OP O R T FAC Y USDUI P

By Heather Sauer

VERNON STONE AWARD Endowed fund supports faculty development Ten years ago, members of the architecture Class of 1965 launched an effort to establish an endowed faculty fund to honor professor emeritus Vernon Stone, who taught fifth-year undergraduate and graduate students at Iowa State from 1950-52 and from 1959 until his retirement in 1985. The Vernon Stone Fund in Architecture now supports outstanding architecture faculty in the College of Design. Stone, who died in 2015, was known for his passionate and rigorous teaching style that prepared graduates for the challenges of professional practice. Vernon Stone Fund awards provide for the enrichment of an architecture faculty member’s experience or knowledge which will directly benefit students. Awards in the amount of $1,500 to $5,000 have been made to support research, coursework, publications, workshops and colloquia.

Indigenous architecture Lynn Paxson, University Professor of architecture, received the first award from the Vernon Stone Fund in 2011 to support development of an exhibition and catalog of contemporary Indigenous architecture of North America. 10

“This is a long-term project to document Indigenous or Native architecture that hasn’t made it into the press,” Paxson said. The Stone award allowed Paxson to travel to the Pacific Northwest and to New Mexico to begin researching and documenting Native architecture, including cultural, community and visitor centers; schools; multicultural student buildings on and off college campuses; convenience stores on reservations and other facilities. “In addition to typical pictures of a building, we were interested in the story of how the project happened: How did they fund it, how did they choose the architect, how did they pick the site and build it? In most cases, there aren’t newspaper stories or other records. We had to find people who could tell us about the projects themselves,” she said. Paxson’s team is initiating work with the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, to determine how best to archive and maintain a digital repository of everything they’ve collected. The team also wants to create

Longhouse Education and Cultural Center by Jones & Jones Architects, Landscape Architects, Planners at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. Photo courtesy of Lynn Paxson.

a mobile, regional exhibition to educate and encourage more people to tell their stories and help identify more buildings. “I’d like to be able to send my students to these projects as precedents. This initiative will one day provide a way for people to access information that otherwise would be lost.”

Learning from failures A Vernon Stone Award allowed associate professor Rob Whitehead (BArch 1993 Architecture) to pursue research into “failures in structural design/learning from failures” by funding his travel to archives for research and to conferences to present the work. Whitehead visited the Eero Saarinen archives at Yale University to “dig into his designs for long-span concrete shell buildings to see if I could understand a bit better how these were built, and I discovered he really didn’t know how to design concrete shells,” he said. “Looking at failures in historical construction was something I had been nurturing for years. I became interested in the fact that renowned designers like

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Saarinen made mistakes, which I realized would be useful in teaching methods and scholarship.” The theme of learning from failures was central to Whitehead’s recently published textbook, Structures by Design: Thinking, Making, Breaking (Routledge, 2019). He developed his construction history research into several international conference papers and presentations

residential street in the Fourmile Creek neighborhood of Des Moines.

inspire

The area is part of the Lower Fourmile Creek Greenway project, a long-term plan to purchase properties that sit in the floodplain and turn the area into a greenway. “The city has removed some of the houses but the streets are still there,” Erdim said. “They took away a section of road and scored another for us to depave.”

Newsletter Staff

Third-year architecture students engaged in a depaving project in Des Moines’ Fourmile Creek neighborhood last fall. Photo courtesy of Commonstudio.

and a chapter in Constructing Building Enclosures, edited by Clifton Fordham (Routledge, anticipated 2020).

Design ‘unbuild’ exercise Assistant professor Firat Erdim, coordinator of the third-year architecture studio, used his Vernon Stone Award for a three-day workshop with all five sections of ARCH 301. Instead of taking 80-plus students on a field trip, Erdim invited Daniel Philips and Kim Karlsrud, founders of the research practice Commonstudio, to visit campus last September and work with the entire cohort.

Work began with abstract exercises about surface, thickness and ground. Students then got their hands dirty breaking apart and moving chunks of asphalt, which uncovered a gravel bed, and seeding new topsoil. The question, Erdim said, was whether they could do a minimal transformation to allow plants to invade the area without controlling the outcome, and “let the landscape tell the story of how it became what it is.”

Erdim is pulling together the students’ work into a booklet to present to the city of Des Moines. He hopes this project can serve as a pilot for future studio work and research.

Supporting Stone’s legacy “Involvement in the Stone Fund counts as one of my greatest successes,” said Jim Lammers, FAIA (BArch 1965 Architecture), who, with former classmate Bill Roe (BArch 1965), has led the fundraising effort. “I’m grateful for all those who so generously support Vernon Stone’s legacy.”

In addition to Paxson, Whitehead and Erdim, architecture faculty who have received the Vernon Stone Award include associate professor Ulrike Passe; the late For the workshop, professor Calvin Lewis (BArch Philips and 1970); associate professor Karlsrud identified Rob Whitehead's textbook on the Cameron Campbell (BArch theme of learning from failures. the ground as 1997 / MArch 2003); assistant the intersection professor Peter Goché (BArch between landscape and architecture 1991 / MArch 2005) and former assistant — the theme of the third-year studio. professor Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco. Part of the workshop was a “design To contribute to the fund, please go unbuild” project to depave a former to www.foundation.iastate.edu/stone.

Inspire is published twice per year by the Iowa State University College of Design and is mailed to more than 17,000 alumni and friends.

Editor Heather Sauer Writers Hailey Allen, Heather Sauer Photographers Asya Gorovits; Brett Mountain Photography, LLC; Christopher Gannon, Dana J. Quigley Photography, Paul Taylor Photography Graphic Designer Alison Weidemann Contact Us 146 College of Design 715 Bissell Road Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011-1066 inspire@iastate.edu design.iastate.edu Connect With Us facebook.com/CollegeofDesign Instagram: @isucollegeofdesign LinkedIn: Iowa State University – College of Design 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 “Portal” (oil on canvas, 2019) by Celinda Stamy (MFA 2014 Integrated Visual Arts), assistant teaching professor of art and visual culture, highlights the entryway to Palisades-Kepler State Park near Mt. Vernon, viewed from inside the park looking outward. Image courtesy of the artist. 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 non-discrimination policies may be directed to Office of Equal Opportunity, 3410 Beardshear Hall, 515 Morrill Road, Ames, Iowa 50011, Tel. 515 294-7612, Hotline 515-294-1222, email eooffice@iastate.edu

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Featured State Parks & Artists

Backbone State Park, Dundee Kim Moss [16]

College of Design

146 College of Design 715 Bissell Road Ames, IA 50011-1066

VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 1 | SPRING 2020

Pine Lake State Park, Eldora Jennifer Drinkwater [9]

Rock Creek State Park, Kellogg Anna Segner [8] (MFA 2019 Integrated Visual Arts) Stephens State Forest, Chariton Clark Colby [4] (BArch 2011 / MS 2016 Architecture)