Undergraduate Portfolio by Stephen Kennedy

portfolio Stephen James Kennedy

for application to the city design & development group in the department of urban studies and planning at mit

please note This portfolio is a reflection of experiences outside the discipline of Urban Planning. The work selected to include demonstrates skills and efforts that I feel will translate well as I enter this new dialogue. The majority of projects are abridged to highlight aspects that support this demonstration.

portfolio Stephen James Kennedy

portfolio production Printed and hand-bound with support from the People of Resource.

photographic support Michael Gluzman Steven Sloan Ieva Mikolaviciute

for application to the city design & development group in the department of urban studies and planning at mit

contents

people / things

pb♥J

DEPT of REALITY

an airpot

common ground

polyphonic passages

alight, again

artifice lamp

roji

dex industries

origin of species

lunds universitet

georgia tech

parsons

georgia tech

milan design week

people of resource

personal

A selection from several projects at the Ingvar Kamprad Design Centrum, including Space & Interiors and Design Studio I, taught by Per Lilljeqvist.

A group project in workspace design, crosscollaboration between Intermediate Design Studios.

A module in developing an alternative portfolio, led by Stefán Kjartansson, creative director at Armchair Media.

A mechanical redesign project, coordinated by Lionel Gillespie, industrial design.

A group project in Integrated Design: Learning from Fieldwork in the urban environment, taught by industrial designer Katrin MuellerRusso and architect Meret Lenzlinger.

A project in the design of listening machines, in collaboration with the Center for Music Technology, coordinated by Gil Weinberg.

An exercise in creating “Something from Nothing,” assigned to the Senior Lighting Studio, led by Atlanta-based light sculptor Christopher Moulder.

A project in lighting design with limited resources, produced at the studio of Christopher Moulder.

A documentary exploration of the efforts of global designers showcased at I Salone, Euroluce, and Zona Tortona during 2009 Design Week in Milan, Italy.

Website development for a client of People of Resource, in addition to video production, asset coordination, and print design.

A personal project currently in development, exploring the evolutionary nature of products. Thesis initially developed in the Senior Lighting Studio led by Christopher Moulder.

people / things

chairbetjänt

packyou

was a response to discount airline restrictions, limiting travelers to the use of one item of carry-on luggage under a certain weight. The one thing that airlines do not weigh or restrict is the amount of clothing worn. Theoretically, you could stuff your pockets full of everything needed when traveling. PackYou is a vest designed as an additional layer, providing compartments for objects and addressing issues of warmth, comfort, and accessability.

PackYou

My goal was not to redesign luggage for efficiency or suggest that one should travel with more stuff than necessary, but to engage new thoughts about what people pack. When traveling, a life defined by objects becomes contained 1 within the space of luggage. With PackYou, the objects within become foregrounded as the texture of the garment,2 outwardly reflecting the user’s personality as described by their items. As an exchange student in Sweden, I found myself asking new questions about the objects we own. Separated from my personal effects and the comforts of home, I began seeking new arrangements and relationships with both the things I had brought and collected during my time abroad. This frame of mind set the context for several projects about personal contribution to objects and situations.

Chairbetjänt is a reappropriation of an existing piece of furniture, a valet stand (herrbetjänt), found at a small second-hand store in Lund. Working parallel to the conventional purpose of the valet stand as a form to carefully place your suit, its new mode as a chair provides a form to casually toss your clothes onto. A seat and additional pair of legs were added, maintaining the aesthetics and foldability.

ingvar kamprad design centrum

fall 2007

photography

lunds universitet

lund, sweden

michael gluzman

A street food cart, a communal table

Sidewalks are public like parks, but transitional like streets. Street food vendors provide nodes around which to gather in these transitional spaces. What if the service was more like setting a table for guests, creating a public opportunity to gather?

Interaction with the cart informs a means of interacting with others. Whether through conversation or simply observation, users have the opportunity to share an experience they might not have come across otherwise.

Founded on the precedent value of street food in other cultures, we set out to determine an authentic opportunity to bring a healthy, hearty alternative to the streets of Atlanta. pb♥J is a street food cart designed with the shared experience of a community in mind, through the simple act of making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The orientation of the communal work surface creates the opportunity to work alongside as well as across from 2, as opposed to an impersonal line1 of entry-to-exit for service.

Intermediate design studio

spring 2009

group members

modeling & rendering

logo

georgia institute of technology

Atlanta, ga

michael gluzman, travis ekmark

stephen kennedy, michael gluzman, travis ekmark

travis ekmark

Aside from references to childhood nostalgia and the heartiness of the ingredients, PBJ’s inherent simplicity makes sandwich makers’ diversity of methodology highly legible. This makes it easy to strike up a conversation about whether to apply jelly to the peanut butter side or the plain side...

Above: Workplace efficiency and cleanliness were primary goals in the design, affording removability with sliding trays for each user.

Bottom left: The vernacular of jars allows for a strong visual offering of variety. People’s delight for these simple ingredients is contagious. Everyone picks something different, applies it in a different way.

Bottom Right: Storage

was another important consideration, developing removable compartmentalization carts for transportation and refill.

DEPT

department of reality

Sa Su M

10.30 10.31 11.01 11.02 11.03 11.04 11.05 11.06 11.07 11.08 11.09 11.10

Kick-off: Brainstorm execution detials, finalize roles

Name-storming

Class, Framwork: IA, wireframes, confirm critics, clarify goals of experience, coordinate intro filming, select team paths

Establish content holders: vimeo, flickr, tumblr

11.11

11.12

Begin graphic design & GUI

11.13

Class, Content: deadline for securing critic, graphic design review, determining nature of intro and interview films

11.14

Sa Su M 11.15

11.16

11.17

11.18

11.19

Sa Su M

11.20 11.21 11.22 11.23 11.24 11.25 11.26 11.27 11.28 11.29 11.30 12.01 12.02 12.03 12.04

Class, polishing: selecting included content

Filming: personal intros

Class: flipping the switch!

Site troubleshooting Filming: core interviews

Begin rituals

Editing: begin hardcore processing of footage

The portfolio is an expression of oneself: ideas, work, brand. In an economy of information and an oversaturated job market, the role of the portfolio may be changing. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Is fitting into an intellectual culture more important?â&#x20AC;? We tested ways of self-expression that are true to the tools prevalent to the times.

ritual examples: morning commute tools of the trade daily music Last thing you see bed start/finish

Development involved creating a bank of video content in response to a series of daily rituals over the course of four weeks. Each day, a task or question was posed and each member of the team created an honest response using accessible digital recording devices. The output was a video-based website, archival in format, showcasing the experimental portfolio created by the Department of Reality.

favorite object memory challenge stimulant of choice time overflow list failures / regrets parallel park a car embarrassing moments

Acting as an agency, the group was structured into design, content development, and production teams. I acted as project manager, working closely with the art and creative directors. Tasked with project organization, I created an illustrated timeline that tracked the progress and checkpoints of the various teams, weaving in hierarchy as the project progressed.

Using the contemporary mediums of digital video, content management websites, and microblogging, we posted daily rituals and responded with short videos.

Schedule illustration in use during weekly meetings, evaluating progress and denoting next steps for each team.

experimental media

Fall 2008

group members: shabnam ghaffari, srikanth jalasutram, travis ekmark,

web coding

georgia institute of technology

Atlanta, ga

ted ullrich, shelton davis, Michael Gluzman, natasha powell, nicholas komor

ted ullrich

Above:

what your mom likes about you best

The scheme of the site defined a matrix of intersections, with the rituals listed on the vertical axis and participants on the horizontal.

The videos created are the content. Clicking on a thumbnail opens a video set corresponding to the ritual, participant, or both.

an airpot

A redesign of a coffee airpot, improving upon existing models requiring multiple, sustained moments of input energy to pumping the coffee out. By combining container and mechanism into one unit, all the effort of pumping the coffee out is input as potential energy in a compressed spring mechanism.

redesigning a simple mechanism

Initially, much of the volume of the device was devoted to the 1 pumping mechanism. By combining the role of the containing element with the functionality of a compression mechanism, an 2 optimized volume can be achieved. 1

advanced design studio

fall 2008

georgia institute of technology

Atlanta, ga

A butterfly valve operates a flow-controlling disc. All that is required to extract the brewed liquid is a simple squeeze, releasing the spring to force the container to compress. The cocking mechanism, similar to a toaster, brings the spring back to its loaded state, ready for another pot of coffee.

top:

An initial breadboard model showing compression of the container component, forcing liquid up and out through the spout.

Bottom Left:

Concept renderings, modeled in SolidWorks and rendered through Alias Image Studio.

Bottom Right:

profit orga of most non-profits. New tranport stops only includes Ikea and the new businesses residentia developing toward the waterfront. common ground

an initiative for positive community development

the jump off

The staring point for this project was collecting cards in Red Hook. Concentrating on this one, universal media, we analyzed the distribution of information within the context of this diverse neighborhood.

the problem

Non-profits and small businesses are at a disadvantage in distributing information. They use flyers which are an unpopular media and hard to display. Consequently, people in the ommunity are less aware of the non-profits and their happenings.

the jump off

the research. recording our data.

Red Hook today consists of an eclectic landscape, with many new developments in progress: artist studios

hip bar scene

live/work spaces

foodie restaurants

waterfront develop.

new transportation

bougie cafes

new condos

big box companies

Our documentation involved both ethnographic observation and participation in the daily life of the neighborhood, as well as transmediation of these findings into maps, such as the one on the following pages, to create readings of community development. Engaging the changes of the neighborhood, we focused on the need for appropriate opportunities to emphasize the positive development of a cohesive community by find common ground for long-time locals and those becoming locals.

integrated design curriculum

summer 2008

group members

parsons the new school for design

New York, ny

liliane vandalberghe, jamie florence, klover k.

added value

promotes sustainable Top: Postcards advertising local events and development of Red Hook businesses were extremely pervasive as a through urban agriculture, method of information distribution in almost youth empowerment, every location we visited. We naturally began educational programs, CSA collecting these as data points referencing (community supported neighborhood activity. agriculture) Farmer’s Market, and restaurant partnerships.

No. 9

Spring 2008

Celebrating the Borough’s Food Culture, Season by Season

source: ediblebrooklyn.net

Through the anthropoligical lens of the Integrated Design Curriculum, I had the opportunity to study and explore this transitional neighborhood in practicum. In small groups, we documented the values found exploring the neighborhood, interacting with locals, and participating in the events of the summer.

source: rhhi.org

how

The South Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook has a unique situation, steeped in controversial local history and long considered one of the worst neighborhoods in America. The gentrification of Red Hook is unique in that the pace of transformation is slower due to disconnected transportational access from the rest of New York City. Its transition provides an interesting frame of reference in the study of contemporary issues of gentrification.

The staring point for this project was collecting cards in Red Hook. Concentrating on this one, universal we analyzed the distribution of theymedia, provide... information within the context of this edible BROOKLYN® diverse neighborhood.

red hook edible brooklyn a new magazine that initiative Through our and interactions with most dynamic organizing forces, creating investigates where both community and commercial instituopportunities to engage youth in the decookshop Brooklyn’s food comes through tions, we found that a common shared velopment of their neighborhood SOJU MOJO a LOXAPALOOZA a ENTREPRENEURS SWEET DELIVERANCE a LICENSE TO TILL a ADDED VALUE

Bottom:

provides residents with value was food. Several community training and employment organizations, such as Cook Shop, focus sooninteaching turn,sustainable they can create and healthy eating their own programs and and cooking practices. The Red Hook provide services Initiative support and Added Value are some of the in education, employment, health/nutrition and community development.

the

Member of Edible Communities

from andlike how it gets there. enterprises the community’s notable farm. We sawfor this free celebration It urban is available in of local engagement grocers, through foodshops, as an effecrestaurants, tive way to strengthen the community. bakeries, coffee shops, and street corner newsracks throughout the borough.

...at the harvest festival & recipe swap.

the pro

Non-profit disadvant They use media and

Consequen are less aw happening

common ground

15 17

(continued)

In an effort to catalyze one of the few existing events that already connects residents new and old, we designed an informational postcard to promote the annual Harvest Festival. The festival is the gastronomic celebration of the end of the Red Hook Community Farmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growing season. By using information cards as precedent, we structured the promotion as a recipe card, used in conjunction with a recipe swap to connect a diverse cross-section of the community. Cook Shop volunteers distribute the cards throughout the community and ads print in the issue of Edible Brooklyn preceding the event.

Accumulated postcards were translated into data and mapped to illustrate the two channels of information flow between both commercial institutions1 and community centers2. Information about commercialized events3 traveled primarily between buildings along the Van Brunt St corridor. Information regarding locally organized events 4 traveled on a perpendicular axis through the heart of the neighborhood, anchoring around instituions near the projects.

The channels demonstrate a mutual exclusion between where locals and visitors can find event information, the nature of those events, and where the events are held. Few events linked the long-time locals and newer residents of Red Hook.

The recipe cards serve as tangible information reflecting the diverse flavors of the community and become ephemeral units of cultural values across both generations and community groups, archived in a community recipe book. Ultimately, a small interjection of information can result in a more resilient community connected by the shared value of food.

integrated design curriculum

graphic design

parsons the new school for design

stephen kennedy, liliane vandalberghe

polyphonic passages

17 The membranes span an array of support towers, where they attach to a series of flexible piezoelectric sensors. Upon interjection, the membrane stretches, flexing the sensors and creating an electronic reading based on changes in resistance. The coordinates and variables of the interjection are transcribed into associated musical elements, resulting in outputs similar to traditional instruments.

Variables in the interaction, such as location and depth, are mapped to musical qualities, such as pitch and loudness.

left:

Over time, the community traveling through the membranes will become aware of the euphonic, collaborative output of their interactions with their environment and one another.

below:

A project in musical objects, navigating the collaborative effect of people and their environment. I explored how technology, music, and environment can influence the collaborative nature of people. My point of departure for the project was to incorporate a membrane as a mediator for music. Stretched taught1, the membrane is a reading of silence. Interjecting into the surface 2,3 of the membrane is a means of breaking that silence. Music, in turn, would be the output.

I explored scales of interaction with a musical membrane, ultimately deciding to work at the scale of an environment in the form of a passage 4. A daily influx of people in the lobby of a busy office tower provided the appropriate frame for the installation. In this context, individuals typically move in and out anonymously. The passages create opportunity to move beyond cooperation to collaboration by combining creative output (musical interjection 5) and social negotiation (veering when walking past someone else 6).

What is the mediator?

A membrane: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say, simply for a point of departure, that there exists a definable membrane through which meaning can move when translating from one discipline to another. What I mean by membrane is a thin, pliable layer that connects two things and is, in this case, the middle position...â&#x20AC;? Elizabeth Martin of Pamphlet Architecture, Architecture as a Translation of Music

music technology department

fall 2008

collaborators from the center for music technology

georgia institute of technology

Atlanta, ga

akito van troyer, Meghashyam Adoni

alight, again

Alight, Again is a project in response, exploring the relationship between a designer and his environment. Tasked with spending time in an unfamiliar location, I selected an abandoned warehouse on Atlanta’s West Side to seek out opportunities to respond to the site through making. Parameters included a minimum of fifteen hours spent at the site, no additional materials brought to the site, and the use of only one tool in the production process.

Amidst the vandalism over the six years the warehouse has been abandoned, the majority of the fluorescent tubes had been knocked to the ground, released from their coffins in the ceiling.

The arrangement of the tubes reflected the organic, intensely graphic grafitti also present throughout the site.

top right:

I searched for the unbroken fluorescent tubes, seeing them as the survivors. Using one of the skylights in the space, the tubes were arranged to capture a moment of release from the warehouse.

I utilized rubber bands as my one tool to create modular bundles of tubes to place in a scaffolding across the skylight.

The bouquet of tubes captures the ethereal quality of light entering the cavernous space during day and night.

Christopher moulder lighting studio

spring 2009

photography

featured in “something from nothing”

georgia institute of technology

Atlanta, ga

ieva Mikolaviciute & michael gluzman

a film by Sidarth Kantamneni

Artifice Lamp

Shade

Concrete

T-12

n/a

Fluorescent Tubes

Made entirely from materials purchased at Home Depot for under $25 total, this lighting design was a practice in imagining around constraints. The visualization affords the control of containing and releasing light in juxtaposed formats.

Christopher moulder lighting studio

spring 2009

georgia institute of technology

Atlanta, ga

Original concept sketch. Casting the shade in a mold made of aluminum sheeting with a foam central plug. Dissolving the foam plug out of the cast twelve-inch diameter shade with acetone.

top left:

middle: Section drawing and faceted production drawing of shade with internal housing and mechanism for rotating flourescent tube components.

lbs dry mix

02.00

tubes, deconstructed

Aluminum

00.00

Bulb Housing

Aluminum

02.00

MR-8

n/a

03.00

Halogen Light Bulbs

is a cast concrete lamp shade suspended from the ceiling. A fluorescent tube penetrates the shade, initially containing light.1 When the pull is tugged, the ends of the tube swing upward and break visually as the light is released from below.2

04.00

Internal Frame

Interface between tubes & bulbs

Artifice

Quikrete

Sheet

???

units

bottom: Stills from video footage of the lamp in use, showing transition from light emitted by the tubes to light cast down through the shade.

A documentary on the state of global design

Our film is our documentation, our deliverable, the residue of our experiences. Partnering with Computational Media students from Georgia Tech and a director from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, we captured stunning footage of the week’s events at the highest quality, taking advantage of our access to HD Red cameras. We plan to premier the film at Modern Atlanta 2010: Design is Human.

is the operational name of a group of Atlanta-based design students who traveled to Milan, Italy, for the 2009 Design Week, April 20-27. Our effort was to gauge the current landscape of entrepreneurship, design, and what we saw as a generational shift away from apathy and toward optimistic self-reliance. Instead of sending new graduates out into a desolate job market, we set out to create a bank of knowledge and experience extracted through interviews with the world’s top established and emerging designers.

Above:

christopher moulder lighting studio

april 2009

project role

group members: michael gluzman, Lindsey Sharp, David Ascano, Russell Babb, Patricia Parsons, Sarah Cornish,

georgia institute of technology

milan, italy

Public relations coordinator, interviewer

Wesley Wingo, Sidarth Kantamneni, Stuart Lawder, jennifer abernathy, REbecca Reynolds, travis ekmark

Roji

A still from our promotional animation, produced by Michael Gluzman. Map illustrated by Stephen Kennedy.

As one of the team’s primary interviewers, it was my role to engage directly with designers, gaining perspective on the trajectory of their efforts from the very beginning. Our interviews for the week ranged from several of the world’s top established designers, including Tom Dixon, Ingo Mauer, and David Trubridge, to emerging talents, such as 5.5, Ayala Serfaty, the Dutch designers at Tuttobene, and Swedish group Front.

left:

The team’s dossier included customizable cards allowing individuals to indicate their contact info, a calendar highlighting our scheduled interviews, and illustrated maps of the city. Prior to the trip, we visualized our strategy through a website with a promotional animation and fundraised over $10,000 in three weeks to support the documentary.

right:

Dex industries

portfolio website