re:D The Magazine of Parsons School of Design 2022 Creating Climate Justice
C Parsons re:D Build CommunityOur re:D is an likeengagement—makegiving,support—throughofalumni,showcaseaward-winningofworkbythestudents,andfacultyParsons.Yourgenerousyourachievements,andinitiatives re:D possible. Donate today and invest in our efforts to make the world a more beautiful, just, and sustainable place for all. Thank you for being part of our community of fearless progress. newschool.edu/giving/parsons Share re:D newschool.edu/parsons/red Engage Join us for in-person and online events and volunteer initiatives: newschool.edu/alumni Partner Seeking student and faculty talent? Email careerservices@newschool.edu or corporatepartner@newschool.edu. Connect newschool.edu/network@NewSchoolAlumni
This issue focuses on Parsons’ long-standing efforts to advance both environmental sustainability and social justice—through thoughtful, innovative approaches that set the school apart and bring to life the university’s vision and the changemaking ambitions of our students. It reflects Parsons’ emerging strategic goal of modifying curricula to promote circular and regenerative practices rather than linear systems of extraction, demonstrating our leadership in offsetting the environmental impact of studio industries and advancing equity and social resilience. (re:D)
DesignRegarding
Can Creativity Foster a Better Climate for Everyone?
2022
Celebrating more than a century of changemaking creativity and critical thought ABOUT THE COVER The cover of re:D features an environmental portrait of climate activist Daniela Balaguera by Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores, BFA Product Design ’20, who created images of young changemakers at last year’s 2021 UN Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. Read more on page 23. newschool.edu/red/acitores
news D WE’RE PARSONS Learn more about us and what we offer NEWS Recent achievements of our community of student, faculty, and alumni innovators STEPPING INTO SUSTAINABILITY: PARSONS’ CURRICULUMFIRST-YEAR Our distinctive first-year undergraduate curriculum champions making that fosters environmental and social justice while addressing students’ diverse interests and experiences 28 10 2016 31 33 MATERIAL MATTERS Learn how our innovations in sustainable practice are advancing the fields of design and construction, social progress, and climate resilience simultaneously MODELING SUSTAINABILITY AND EQUITY: A NEW NORMAL At Parsons’ School of Design Strategies, new entrepreneurial models are making ecological and social resilience the new normal, transforming workplaces into sites of positive change PROFILES Meet our changemaking alumni, students, and faculty and discover work that is making the world more beautiful, just, and sustainable RE:WIND Featuring a sponsored project to design sustainable furniture with renewable materials and artisans in Guyana
parsons.nyc/supportnewschool.edu/red/data-viz-fellowship2FACULTYINPRINT
Recent faculty publications include the sustainability-related title Nina Edwards Anker’s Cocoon: Light in Sustainable Architecture and Design. Sarah Lichtman, newly appointed dean of Parsons’ School of Art and Design History and Theory, co-edited Screen Interiors: From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias, essays on the use of interiors in film design. Lichtman also co-edited Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges Through Art, Architecture and Design from 1945. Professor of urbanism and architecture Miodrag Mitrašinovic´ edited Public Space Reader, on the role of public space in urban activism. Research by the Parsons Paris MA Fashion Studies community was the basis of L’Officiel: One Hundred People and Ideas from a Century in Fashion. David J. Lewis, dean of Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments, co-wrote Manual of Section , which explores an essential architectural representational technique. Morna Laing , assistant professor of fashion studies at Parsons Paris, wrote Sustainability and the Fashion Media: Spectatorship, Affect and Social Change. A century of Parsons’ communication design work is celebrated in 1, 10, 100 Years: Form, Typography, and Interaction at Parsons. The book features faculty from Parsons’ AAS, BFA, and MPS programs, including Juliette Cezzar, Pascal Glissmann, Brendan Griffiths, E Roon Kang, Lynn Kiang, Caspar Lam, Andrew LeClair, YuJune Park, Lucille Tenazas, and Kelly Walters Walters, assistant professor of communication design, also co-edited—along with Jennifer Rittner, assistant professor of strategic design and management—The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection.
1 DATA EQUITY
2 Parsons re:D How our community makes a difference in the world n�w�
a community of support among students and alumni.” Program director Daniel Sauter adds, “We’ve updated the curriculum and trained faculty to foster more diverse program cohorts, but we understood that sustained impact comes with a financial commitment.” The first fellow was selected this past spring by a faculty committee, who will arrange for mentors and other equity- and inclusion-focused institutional support along with the $5,000 award. The innovative funding model, explains Sauter, provides for an endowed scholarship and entails work with clients of Data Culture and others to contribute service fees both to the fellowship and directly to alumni and students working on data viz projects. The flexible funding framework also allows lesser-resourced clients to receive data viz services, enabling them to affordably advance their equity-focused work. The team has raised $57,000 and is working closely with the university’s development team to refine the funding model, which all hope will inspire other programs to establish similar scholarships.
The Disobedience of Design: Gui Bonsiepe, edited by Lara Penin, associate professor of transdisciplinary design, examines the relevance of Bonsiepe’s design theories to current debates.
The creation of a new social justice–driven fellowship for BlPOC MS Data Visualization students has been spearheaded by the program’s alumni and students, reflecting their commitment to expanding equity in their field. Gabi Steele, AAS Graphic Design ’15, MS Data Visualization ’16, a part-time faculty member and co-founder of the firm Data Culture and co-founder and CEO of Preql, and Data Culture Strategist and founding team member Marisa Ruiz Asari, MS Data Visualization ’20, are leading the initiative, called the Data Visualization and Racial Equity Fellowship. The fellowship is supported by donors and institutional partners including Data Culture, Steele and Asari’s woman-led data engineering and visualization firm. “The fellowship aligns with Data Culture’s mission of contributing to greater representation in the industry, which has historically been cis–white male–dominated,” explains Steele. The idea for the initiative was born in studentled discussions held in 2020 about systemic racism, particularly anti-Black discrimination, and other obstacles to diversifying the program and the field. Asari explains that the fellowship is part of the program’s effort to bring “more voices into data science and engineering while building 1 2
The School of Constructed Environments’ programs showed work at 25 East 13th Street. The School of Art and Design History and Theory (ADHT) presented its annual symposium virtually, including research from the first graduating class of the BFA Design History and Practice program, which also showed studio work in an exhibition space.
4 PARSONS BENEFIT 2022 This year’s Parsons Benefit raised $2.6 million for scholarships and was held in person at The Glasshouse. The event, chaired by Liz Rodbell of the Steve Madden Group and Gena Smith of LVMH, honored visionary figures who have shaped the design industry. Honorees included Tory Burch, executive chairman and chief creative officer of Tory Burch LLC; Lauren Santo Domingo, co-founder and chief brand officer of Moda Operandi; Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation; and visual artist Kehinde Wiley. Burch announced the new Tory Burch Empowering Future Fashion Leaders Endowed Scholarship Fund, a $1 million gift aimed at addressing students’ financial needs. Entertainment included performances by vocalist Amanda Barise, a BA/BFA Eugene Lang College and School of Jazz and Contemporary Music student, and keyboardist and composer Nico Sleator, Jazz and Contemporary Music ’21. Attendees took in a static show of work by MFA Textiles students and alumni and New York and Paris BFA Fashion Design alumni, along with work by MFA Fashion Design and Society graduates, on the runway. Parsons Executive Dean Rachel Schreiber wore a beaded jacket by Zehua Wu. Parsons Paris Executive Dean Florence Leclerc wore a jacket–and-pant ensemble by Parsons Paris BFA Fashion Design graduate Sofia Guastella newschool.edu/giving/parsons-benefit’22
news 3 Mariana Amatullo, vice provost for Global Executive Education and Online Strategic Initiatives, and Andrew Shea, assistant professor of integrated design, co-edited Design for Social Innovation: Case Studies from Around the World. Associate professor of illustration Nora Krug illustrated a new edition of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder’s bestseller on resisting authoritarianism. Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism, by Otto von Busch, associate professor of integrated design, explores ways design can be used to challenge arrangements of power. Kimberleynewschool.edu/red/fac-books3ALUMNIBOOKSHELFHoffman , BFA Illustration ’89, wrote and illustrated Heilbronn wimmelt, a richly illustrated children’s book depicting the highlights and denizens of the city of Heilbronn. Gaithuan Gonmei, AAS Fashion Design ’20, shares pandemic stories in Corona in the City For Long Live King Kobe, Spencer Ostrander, BFA Photography ’11, created a photo essay documenting the aftermath of the death of Tyler Kobe Nichols, a young Brooklyn victim of violence, in collaboration with author Paul Auster and Nichols’ mother. Katya Kazbek , BBA Strategic Design and Management ’11, wrote Little Foxes Took Up Matches, a modern-day folktale exploring gender, family, and political upheaval. Visit the 2022 Alumni Bookshelf to see the full list of alumni authors who released books this year. newschool.edu/alumni/bookshelf
5 PARSONS FESTIVAL 2022 Kicking off in May, this year’s festival put graduating students’ studio work, research, and exhibitions on public view. The windows of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) displayed videos of work by 2022 graduates, and the center and floors above hosted programming by Parsons’ School of Art, Media, and Technology, including BFA and MFA Fine Arts shows, a BFA Illustration show, and BFA and MFA Design and Technology thesis shows. Parsons’ three Communication Design programs—AAS, BFA, and MS— presented their creative efforts in Framework 101 , a book highlighting recent work. MS Data Visualization program graduates hosted an online symposium to share their research. The School of Fashion presented BFA and AAS work in the University Center, and MFA Textiles thesis projects were on view in midtown.
Parsons’ School of Design Strategies (SDS) programs shared student presentations in person and virtually and launched a site to document research. SDS’s BFA Integrated Design program presented Re[surge]: The Exhibition, a show exploring the potential 3 4
The directors of Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab, Jonsara Ruth and Alison Mears, and their work developing hempcrete, a nontoxic natural concrete, were recently featured on the TV show America by Design and in Metropolis magazine. Parsons BFA Architectural Design students Claudette P. Bryan, Devin Costello, and Marina Berenguer—working under faculty members Joel Towers and Kayeon Lee—took the first two of ten slots in the 2022 Top Ten for Students Competition, offered by the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. BFA Product Design alums Miriam Josi ’17 and Stella Lee Prowse ’17 were awarded the 2021 residency at the prestigious French design center Domaine de Boisbuchet, where they created the first-ever chair made with mycelium biomaterials. Their work exemplifies promising low-energy, regenerative production that remediates the soil. Synoptic Office, the design firm of communication design professors YuJune Park and Caspar Lam, redesigned Carnegie Hall’s interactive Timeline of African American Music. The meteoric rise of Renell Medrano, BFA Photography ’14, continues with her cover photograph for Kendrick Lamar’s fifth studio album. Akua Shabaka, BBA Strategic Design and Management ’19 (see page 27), was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List. Shabaka’s company also won a 2021 CFDA/ Vogue Fashion Fund Award. Other Parsons alums selected for Forbes’ 30 Under 30 are sustainable designer Wei Hung Chen, BFA Fashion Design ’16 (see page 25), and artist Rahm Bowen, BFA Integrated Design ’18.
Recipients of CFDA student scholarships include Firas Zedan, BFA Fashion Design ’22 (also a Coach Dream It Real x CFDA Design Scholarship Award recipient); Nayon Kim, BFA Fashion Design ’22 (CFDA Design Scholar award); Alexandra Petina, Eva Heugenhauser, and Tao Li, MFA Fashion Design and Society ’22 (CFDA Design for Social Justice Scholar Awards); Rebecca Flood, BFA Fashion Design ’22 (CFDA Suntchi Image-Maker Award); and Padina Bondar-Gibbs, MFA Textiles ’22 (Geoffrey Beene Design Masters Scholar Award). Fine Arts program faculty Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher were recently awarded a prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant to support work including a publication documenting their 30-year creative collaboration. Xin Xin, assistant professor of interaction and media design, and Marisa Morán Jahn, assistant professor of design strategies (see page 20), were selected for the Sundance Institute’s Art of Practice Fellowship. MFA Interior Design program faculty Maria Linares Trelles and Lluís Casanovas Blanco presented Expansions at Biennale di Venezia 2021. Second-year MFA Industrial Design students Nikki Bregman, Blanca Codina Bernat , Utsavi Dalwadi, Sadaf Farahanifar, and Jessica Thies were named winners for their individual projects in the NYCxDESIGN Awards Student category. Melanie Crean was selected as NYC Public Artist in Residence. Professor Craig Bernecker, the MFA Lighting Design program director, received a LIT 2021 Lifetime Achievement prize from the international industry organization Lighting Design Awards. Koray Çalıs¸kan, associate professor of strategic design and management, won the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2021 in Social Sciences and Humanities for his work on cryptocurrencies. Elizabeth Mirzaei, BFA Photography ’06, was nominated for an Academy Award for Three Songs for Benazir, a short documentary about a displacement camp in Kabul. Twenty-three 2021 grads were selected for ARTSTHREAD x GUCCI’s annual Global Design Graduate Show, and the following were chosen as winners: Lily Qian, BFA Illustration; Carlyann Campione, BFA Photography; and BFA Architectural Design alumni Eric Hu, Anthony Vesprini, and Nalin Chahal (Flood Points, the trio’s collective thesis project, which focused on rising coastal tides in Queens, New York, also won the grand prize in Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab’s sixth annual Role Models Contest). Sana Garner, AAS Interior Design ’16, is co-host of Peacock’s new renovation series, Backyard Blowout. Parsons Paris Integrative Studio faculty member Rachel Marks presented her 6
4 Parsons re:D of design—reflecting the program’s radical positivity—in the post-pandemic period. newschool.edu/red/festival20226COMMUNITYACHIEVEMENTS
7 CURATORSHIP ON CAMPUS Jazsalyn, MFA Design and Technology ’21, a founder of black beyond (see page 24), cocurated _assembly, alchemy, ascension [a^3], an XR and new media exhibition in the Kellen Gallery of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC). Kelly Walters, associate director of the BFA Communication Design program, curated With a Cast of Colored Stars, an exhibition examining racialized iconography in Black American popular entertainment. Disorienting Plans—held at the SJDC and organized by independent curator Andrea Ancira and Gabriela López Dena, MS Design and Urban Ecologies ’19, a part-time faculty member and former Vera List Center for Art and Politics Student Fellow—explores mainstream feminist narratives on the built environment. The New School Art Collection was awarded $500,000 by the Mellon Foundation to preserve panels painted by José Clemente Orozco and create curricula around the collection. The Vera List Center for Art and Politics Visiting Artist Lecture Series presented “On Conditions and Conditionality: Ecological Injustices and the Biopolitics of Resistance.” The event brought attorney, author, and activist Rasheeda Phillips; artist and pedagogue Adelita Husni Bey; poet and essayist Kay Gabriel; and philosopher Romy Opperman into dialogue with the campus community.
8 VISITORS TO CAMPUS Last year’s Revealing NYC seminar welcomed Ellen Lupton, the noted graphic designer and MA program director at Maryland Institute College of Art. Lupton also taught a class in the MA History of Design and Curatorial Studies program in collaboration with Cooper Hewitt. The event Black Tech, Green Solutions brought together Taj Eldridge of Include Ventures, SaLisa Berrien of COI Energy, Kameale Terry of ChargerHelp, and Donnel Baird of BlocPower.
Nayla Ajaltouni, coordinator of Collectif Éthique sur l’Étiquette, spoke to Parsons Paris students about human rights and sustainability in the fashion industry. Other visitors to Parsons Paris included Philippe Schaus, CEO of Moët Hennessy; Sibylle Scherer, president of Chandon; Azza Yousif, creative consultant and fashion stylist; Gay Gassmann, contributing editor at Architectural Digest; Spencer Phipps, designer of the sustainable fashion line Phipps International; and Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger.
9 COURSES OF ACTION Parsons’ commitment to climate activism and social justice is reflected in classes offered 8
news 5 installation Esohpromatém at ChangeNOW’s 2020 Ars Technica exhibition, held in Paris’ Grand Palais. Parsons associate professor Sven Travis presided over the SXSW panel “Quantum Computing for Design and Social Good,” along with IBM’s Russell Huffman and New School colleagues Lin Zhou and Maya Georgieva, senior director of the university’s Innovation Center (Georgieva also presented “State of XR in Education: Trends & Insights”); E-Line Media lead producer Carolina Torres, MFA Design and Technology ’08, addressed the future of indie games; Tri Minh Vo, MFA Industrial Design ’20, founder and president of Carbon Better (see page 15), spoke about climate change; Parsons instructor Darío Calmese discussed design for liberation; Ricardo Martinez , MS Nonprofit Management ’09, CEO of Equality Texas, joined a panel on LGBTQ rights in Texas; and Gabriel Torres, BS Media Studies ’21, discussed how gaming technology can be used to fight inequality. Terike Haapoja, a School of Art, Media, and Technology faculty member, received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for her work in film and video.
Joining this year’s Stephan Weiss Lecture Series, Re:Frame. Interrogating Capitalism through Historical Narrative and Creative Practices, were Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Kwamou Eva Feukeu, Ryan Rising, Ominira Mars, Kewulay Kamara, Donnay Edmund, and others. Justin Garrett Moore, Jerome Haferd, Lexi Tsien, Vanessa Keith, Andrea Chiney, Arianna Deane, and Ashley Kuo of A+A+A Studio participated in the School of Constructed Environments’ Racism, Classism, and the Constructed Environment Lecture Series. Morehshin Allahyari, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Leslie Wayne joined the School of Art, Media, and Technology’s Visiting Artists Lecture Series. Sustainable textile entrepreneur Frances van Hasselt spoke to the MFA Textiles community.
newschool.edu/red/gromek-institute11TISHMANCENTERFELLOWS
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The university’s Gromek Institute for Fashion Business—established to foster interdisciplinary study of the apparel industry and give new designers essential business resources— recently held its inaugural panel, co-hosted by the MPS Fashion Management program and led by Abrima Erwiah, Gromek Institute director, co-founder of Studio One Eighty Nine, and Parsons faculty member. Titled “Fashion’s
The new Ripe for Creative Disruption: Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship supports 20 environmental changemakers in collaborating to advance climate justice. The recently selected fellows span the disciplinary and geographical spectrum and include artists and policymakers from areas ranging from the U.S. mainland to the Mariana Islands. As Angela Mahecha, EJM fellowship program director, explains, “We must invest in and provide support to the people and movements that courageously break from the status quo and seek creative paths to build a new, more just world.” EJM fellows have the opportunity to develop new approaches to organizing around environmental justice and mapping the future of these organizing efforts. The program is sponsored by the Tishman Environment and Design Center and complements its annual Arnold and Sheila Aronson Fellowship.
10 CENTER OF DIVERSITY
12 GOVERNORS ISLAND PROJECT A joint proposal by The New School and CUNY was one of four finalists in a 2021 international competition to establish a Center for Climate Solutions on Governors Island. The universities’ proposal imagines the 172-acre island in New York Harbor as a laboratory for prototyping just climate solutions that can be replicated in other cities to mitigate environmental harm and build resiliency. The proposal includes the adaptive reuse of the island’s historic buildings to create space for public environmental education and for efforts to develop solutions based on design-, technology-, and nature-driven processes. Partners include more than 40 community12 11
6 Parsons re:D throughout the school, from Sariah Park ’s recent course Indigenous Fashion to Samantha Box’s course Photography and Climate Change: Making Art in the Anthropocene. The School of Constructed Environments recently addressed design’s impact on the environment through courses and its Climate Colloquium. This spring, three Parsons program directors— Preeti Gopinath (MFA Textiles), Michele Gorman (MFA Interior Design), and Yvette Chaparro (MFA Industrial Design)—organized the student-led Decolonized + Decarbonized Workshops and Dinner Party lectures and events. The workshops and dinner featured presentations about food waste and strategies for creating the objects needed for the carbonfree dinner party. The Mycelium Millennium conference, hosted by the Healthy Materials Lab, imagined an era in which biological resources like mycelium and fungi are used to create everyday objects. Participants in the MS Strategic Design and Management program–led Science+Design Atelier 21 event built on scholar Kristin Asdal’s bioeconomy research to develop initiatives aimed at creating a more just economic future.
Diversity: Where It Stands, Where It Stalls, Where It’s Going,” the event filled Tishman Auditorium and featured Olivier Rousteing, creative director of Balmain; Brandice Daniel, CEO and founder of Harlem’s Fashion Row and Icon 360; and Victor Glemaud, creative director and founder of In the Blk. The discussion, moderated by WWD executive editor Tara Donaldson, centered on the industry’s efforts to diversify and to hold fashion companies and retailers to their commitment to increased representation, including dedicating shelf space to Black-owned brands. This spring, Erwiah and instructors Ibaba Wadud and Jeff Drouillard, MPS Fashion Management ’18, took part in an Albany, New York, rally led by the sustainable fashion advocacy organizations Act on Fashion Coalition and New Standard Institute. The groups lobbied New York state lawmakers to support the Fashion and Sustainability Act, a groundbreaking piece of legislation that sets out legally binding environmental standards for the fashion industry. The law would make New York a global sustainability leader for the $2.5 trillion industry. Follow the link below to learn about the Gromek Institute’s upcoming events.
14 PARSONS PARIS CENTENNIAL In 2021, Parsons Paris celebrated its centennial with events held at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, the American Center for Art and Culture, and Parsons Paris’ Galerie D, located at Fondation Fiminco. The centennial celebration included partnerships with Jacadi and Deutsche Telekom focused on inclusivity; with The Kooples exploring gender fluidity and environmental sustainability; and with the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa on cultural heritage. The Parsons Paris Advisory Board held virtual “fireside chats” with Philippe Schaus, CEO of Moët Hennessy; Sibylle Scherer, president of Chandon; and Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger. Led by MA Fashion Studies director Marco Pecorari, Parsons Paris students collaborated with L’Officiel on a project exploring the 100-year-old fashion magazine’s archive. An online symposium—bringing together faculty from Parsons’ Paris and New York campuses along with members of the creative community —opened with remarks by Parsons Paris Dean Florence Leclerc , Professor Gina Walker, School of Design Strategies Dean Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, and New School Provost Renée T.
This past May, New Schoolers from the Class of 2022 and their families gathered to celebrate graduation at the 86th Annual Commencement. Honorary degrees were awarded to trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard; economist William A. “Sandy” Darrity Jr.; economist, environmental activist, and two-time vicepresidential candidate Winona LaDuke; Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention; and this year’s Commencement speaker, Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Distinguished Teaching Awards were presented to Leonardo FigueroaHelland (Schools of Public Engagement), So Mak (Parsons), Dianca Potts (Eugene Lang College), and Joel Towers (Parsons). Awards for Outstanding Achievements in Social Justice Teaching went to Ujju Aggarwal (Schools of Public Engagement) and Frank Leon Roberts (Lang). Ali Bebry, BA Psychology/ BFA Contemporary Music ’22, and Jon May, MS Media Management ’22, were student speakers. In recognition of her service as dean of Lang and interim provost, Stephanie Browner was appointed to lead the processional as faculty marshal. 13 14 15
Collaborations expand the university’s networks while enriching our interdisciplinary pedagogy, aimed at fostering social progress. To broaden access to our unique approach to learning, The New School recently launched N Ventures, the university’s new strategic arm that helps partners achieve critical business goals. N Ventures focuses on three areas: on-demand learning that enables a global audience to master the creative skills needed to bring about positive change; licensing partnerships that aid companies in developing groundbreaking products and services; and custom-tailored collaborations that help partners explore marketplace innovations through sustained transformative learning engagements. The N Ventures team partnered with Parsons faculty—including designer Michelle Roh, BFA Fashion Design ’12 on interdisciplinary curricula created for New Jersey’s Newark School of Fashion & Design, a new high school focused on developing students’ academic and creative potential. Students completing the first year of the program included Sa’Kayla McLendon, who recently placed gold at the New Jersey Family, Career and Community Leaders of America event, earning herself a spot at the national competition in San Diego last summer.
15 NEW GRADUATES
White. Topics discussed included how art and design education can make classrooms, schools, and society more humane.
news 7 based, educational, and environmental organizations. Commenting on the unique resources the university offers for the project, New School President Dwight A. McBride, PhD, observed that climate solutions “will require not only science but also design and social science to inform how we lead substantive transformation.”
The team is completing a request for proposal— the next phase in the competition—with the aim of participating in NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ Rebuild, Renew, Reinvent: A Blueprint for NYC’s Economic Recovery initiative.
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S TEPPING INTO SUSTAINABILIty
Professor Catherine Telford Keogh navigated the room, encouraging students to explore as they created colors using only natural ingredients for the first time ever. “You must try mixing hibiscus with vinegar!” she said suddenly, as one student’s experimentation yielded a lush burgundy tone. The students, nearing the end of their first year at Parsons, weren’t just getting acquainted with natural dyes. They were gaining firsthand knowledge of art and design practices that reduce consumption and waste while incorporating regenerative materials with a smaller carbon footprint. Learning to create in ways that respect the planet, in this case, meant discovering centuries-old earth-based practices that foreground
On a mid-April afternoon last semester, in a fifth-floor classroom of the Parsons building, nature was at play. Filtered through clouds, light spread across rectangular work tables, illuminating vials of pigment derived from the land: the golden glow of turmeric, ruby from the flesh of an onion saved from the compost bin, purples extracted from blueberry and hibiscus.
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The evolution of Parsons’ distinctive first-year curriculum is enabling young creatives to champion making that fosters sustainability and social justice and reflects their experience
“We are seeing students continuing to face large and broad social questions, environmental questions, personal and political questions,” Millington said. “Our students are inspiring the faculty to rethink how we teach. And Alaiyo and I, and our team of First-Year Leadership, actively listen and respond to students by adapting our courses and our teaching community.”
Telford Keogh said her mission as the coordinator of the program’s Sustainable Systems courses has been to retool both the reading list, “to center how social justice and environmental justice are deeply intertwined,” and the syllabus, to foster interdisciplinary approaches to art and design that address these entanglements. She is currently collaborating with faculty to create an open-source library of biomaterials, including those developed by students in the First-Year program, like Putrevu. “Our work encourages students to think critically about the earth systems and social structures that situate us all and build sustainable futures from the ground up,” says Telford Keogh. As she begins her second year at Parsons, Putrevu has continued exploring nature-based design solutions.
Millington became the program’s director in 2019 and passed on that role to Alaiyo Bradshaw last year. In her leadership, Bradshaw has continued to steward the program, focusing on community development and student experience. The duo collaborate closely, building on each other’s ideas and years of teaching experience. They reflect on how the curriculum has evolved to address the changing concerns of the diverse student body and a call— heard throughout Parsons’ programs—to explore natural, regenerative making materials.
The First-Year program was reborn in 2013 under the leadership of then Executive Dean Joel Towers, program director John Roach, and many others throughout Parsons. The shift from a traditional foundation year to today’s curriculum was prompted by the desire to better enable students to complement their studio practice with critical reflection, developing skills needed in a changing world.
During a recent conversation between the student and her instructor, Telford Keogh smiled when Putrevu announced that she had enrolled in a course dedicated to experimentation with biomaterials, biofabrication, and biotechnology. Putrevu said her course of study shifted sometime about eight weeks into her first year at Parsons, when she decided to pursue a dual degree incorporating intensive study of environmentalism. “I realized that I didn’t want to be a designer in the future without considering the implications of my work in an environmental and social dialogue,” says Petrevu. “That one class changed my entire future.”
news 9 material and ethical relations with the land. And in a broader context, the first-year course challenged students to contemplate a question particularly relevant for today’s artists and designers: How can we imagine a more sustainable future for everyone?
“There’s a distinct culture within First-Year,” said Bradshaw. “It leads students to know how to reflect, archive, present, and make connections across the board. What will you take with you? It makes you think about the longevity of the project or the experience. It’s a very sophisticated way to document and be responsible for a project.”
One response involved faculty development activities and mentorship focused on inclusive teaching. Another was the formation of faculty working groups in which instructors come together to address curricular justice in the classroom. In addition to building more innovative teaching methods, First-Year has expanded reading lists and lessons, adding an EISJ Pedagogy Website and an index of BIPOC artists and designers to its robust collection of unique teaching resources. Creativity and critical thinking are world-changing tools. Accordingly, woven into Parsons’ First-Year curriculum is an emphasis on asking questions, self-reflection, and analysis that links capacities from the liberal arts with the design process. In the paired integrative studio and seminar courses, students are asked to consider what they have learned in the course of the semester and find through lines.
Like everything at Parsons, First-Year curriculum is devised carefully to be a living, breathing thing. It is designed to generate outcomes that are often unexpected and sometimes groundbreaking. As students’ curiosity spurs them to pursue knowledge, they grow into a creative space beyond their comfort zone.
Madhurya Putrevu, a BA/BFA dual-degree student studying Product Design at Parsons and deciding between Environmental Studies and Psychology at Eugene Lang College, began her first year in August 2021. Putrevu kept a journal of her assignments, insights, and discoveries throughout Telford Keogh’s Sustainable Systems class in her first semester, documenting her evolving creative process. Her culminating project began with a reflection on the ubiquity of cement tiles in her native India and a realization that the cement industry is India’s third-largest polluter. Putrevu set out to construct tiles from mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms. She researched a process for creating a natural alternative grown over a five-week period from a mixture of old paper strips, wheat bran, and mycelium. After the tiles were formed and baked, Putrevu used natural pigments to dye them in designs popular throughout India.
Telford Keogh’s lesson exemplifies the systems-based educational curriculum that orients the entire Parsons first-year cohort before the students break off in the second year to specialize in their own nook of art or design.
OPPOSITE: First-Year students test natural dyes and invent their own (top). Madhurya Putrevu used what she had learned in First-Year to create a sustainable alternative to cement tiles (above right), whose carbon-intensive manufacture contributes to climate change. The curriculum has enabled students like Kai Mbayo, now a junior, to incorporate their justice-focused interests into class projects. A graphic novel panel by Mbayo appears above center.
“We designed the current curriculum to better equip students to build systems rather than simply to manufacture,” says Anette Millington, the associate dean of the School of Art and History Design and Theory for First-Year. She helped incorporate into the First-Year program opportunities for teachers to develop their pedagogy and better fulfill the ambitious goals of the curriculum, which explores the social and environmental implications of working in art and design.
Material
MArch program director Arta Yazdanseta is prototyping an evaporative cooling ceramic cladding system that lowers cooling costs by enhancing buildings’ natural ventilation and supporting vegetation that offers shade. One unit is shown above. An installed group of coupled units appears on page 13.
11 Sustainable building, dismissed in the 1970s as a fringe movement promoting construction of buildings pressed into earth berms, was reborn in 1989. At that year’s American Institute of Architects convention, a group of young professionals disrupted the proceedings, forcing passage of a resolution titled CPR: Critical Planet Rescue. Three decades after the tumult, millions of square feet of construction receive LEED certification daily and energy efficiency is written into building codes as a matter of course. The move toward efficiencies in product design has undergone a comparable shift from countercultural to default position. Ideas once confined to the Whole Earth Catalog or Patagonia’s corporate citizenship principles have taken forms like Nike’s Move to Zero product takeback program and asset managers’ increased attention to environmental sustainability in companies’ operations. The climate crisis, an issue raised by the United Nations and taken up by activists—including a younger generation frustrated by government inaction and climate-driven inequality—has galvanized people worldwide. Still, these sustainability measures have fallen short in reversing the built environment’s negative effects on the climate. For as long as professional designers and citizens have been talking about buildings’ share of greenhouse gases, that output has been an unchanging 40 percent of total CO2 emissions. Use of petrochemicals in product design has become so widespread that this past March, researchers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam announced that they had identified microplastics in the human bloodstream for the first time. If success is measured in pounds of carbon rather than reputation, then perhaps the sustainability movement has not been such a success after all.
Matters
David J. Lewis, dean of Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments (SCE), remembers a moment in 2018 when he was struck by the disconnect between the popularity of sustainability and its real-world impacts.
BY DAVID SOKOL At Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments, next-generation approaches to sustainable practice have been in use for some years. Now the SCE community are rallying around a materials perspective that can advance their fields, social progress, and climate resilience simultaneously.
By then, Lewis, who is also a principal of LTL Architects, had been teaching about mass timber—engineered wood that can be used instead of more energy-intensive concrete or steel—at SCE regularly. But while running Parsons’ third biannual Timber in the City event, Lewis heard a conference speaker compare mass timber favorably to traditional city-building materials for speeding construction, which spells less time for gas-powered vehicles to idle on a job site and fewer commutes for tradespeople. If paired with proper forest management and other techniques, the presenter added, mass timber used in building could mitigate more carbon dioxide than it expends, thanks to plants’ ability to capture carbon through photosynthesis.“Sustainability is not doing less bad; it’s about being truly regenerative in practice,” Lewis recalls thinking, pondering a future in which more carbon is sequestered than is emitted by the built environment. To get there, “you can’t just electrify your way out of global warming; you have to change the very framework by which things are done.”
—Sarah Templin, MFA IndustriAl DeSign ’18 Nelson De Jesus Ubri, BFA Architectural Design ’15, created a timber-based environmentally sensitive rehab plan for a Bronx public housing building.
David Leven is a partner of the New York–based architecture studio LEVENBETTS and an associate professor at SCE. “We get to go back and forth between the pedagogical and the pragmatic,” Leven says of his two roles, noting that “investigations in decarbonizing in my teaching have completely changed my thinking about practice.” This past spring, Leven taught a section of SCE’s acclaimed Design Workshop program with the mass timber expert Brett Schneider, an architect and engineer who is a senior associate of Guy Nordenson and Associates. Simultaneously LEVENBETTS collaborated with Schneider to develop two projects: an open-air pavilion whose design highlights the expressive potential of wood, and an affordable housing prototype. Both structures are on display through early November at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, as part of the
Bentonville, Arkansas, institution’s Architecture at Home outdoor exhibition. Designed for lower-density American cities, the LEVENBETTS installation is a 500-squarefoot module that can interlock with others to suit the number of occupants. Reflecting a lifecycle perspective, the project sources its lumber from Arkansas forests where replacements are planted after tree felling. Leven also points to the massiveness of the project’s exterior walls, which insulate interior spaces from dramatic temperature swings, reinforcing “the idea of longevity for communities, as opposed to thin, throwaway affordable housing.” The longer a mass timber building remains in use, too, the longer its sequestered carbon is withheld from a waste stream where it would be rereleased. As the SCE faculty’s enthusiasm for mass timber spreads within Parsons, young practitioners are contemplating uses of the material during their school years and beyond. While completing graduate studies at Columbia, Nelson De Jesus Ubri, BFA Architectural Design ’15, a former Parsons Scholar, conceived a Bronx redevelopment in which units at an existing New York City Housing Authority building were retrofitted as mass timber apartments. New units were also added atop the structure. De Jesus Ubri says that the speculative project was designed to minimize the demolition-related disruption and emissions that residents in this underrepresented community would be exposed to. He added that designers of his generation presume carbon neutrality as a baseline. Another example comes from Mark Gardner, SCE assistant professor and principal in the design firm Jaklitsch / Gardner, who points to the 2019 Design Workshop project, the Pagganuck Pavilion shade structure at Governors Island. The installation is a contemporary interpretation of a Lenape longhouse rendered in mass timber. Gardner also credits Tommy CheeYou Yang, MArch ’20, and his 2019 Design Workshop classmates for weaving public history and ethnic studies into the design, linking sustainability and Architect and professor David Leven employed mass timber—a sustainable material he often uses—for his House of Trees, created at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
SCE’s architecture professors are optimistic about the use of mass timber as a near-term strategy of regenerative design. Thanks to the inclusion of mass timber in several American building codes in recent years, the substitution of the material for concrete and steel is an increasingly accepted means of preventing carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere.
“Thedepartmentsdifferent at SCE overlap, share information, and work with one another earnestly, because we can’t have silos at this critical moment for the planet.”
12 Parsons re:D A regenerative approach to the built environment goes by many monikers, such as decarbonization and net-positive design, with subtle distinctions between them. Irrespective of name, regeneration is based on the idea that environmental impact must be looked at broadly, beyond a building’s operations or the recyclability of a consumer item’s container. Assessments of impact must also take supply chains into account—that is, all the carbon dioxide produced in extracting, shipping, and assembling the discrete materials that make up a building or product. Only when designers consider the entire life cycle of the project at hand can they fully offset the resources it has consumed. Regeneration represents the cutting edge of sustainability, because it could finally allow this movement to significantly reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. Parsons faculty are now reframing sustainability as a matter of regeneration, and they are centering students’ SCE education on that concept. “This is not a sound bite: The different departments at SCE overlap, share information, and work with one another earnestly, because we can’t have silos at this critical moment for the planet,” says Sarah Templin, MFA Industrial Design ’18, an industrial and material designer who lectures at Parsons. Lewis adds, “The role of academia is to lead the conversation, to create the imperative for industry and policy to change.”
Building with Nature
schools designed by Stephen Finney, MFA Interior Design/Lighting Design ’15, employ sustainability measures such as passive ventilation and energy-saving
The Lab at Urban Farm (foreground) and the Pagganuck Pavilion (background) are wood structures created for Governors Island by students in Parsons’ 2018 and 2019 Design
SCE MArch director Arta Yazdanseta is also investigating the plant world and ways the design and construction industries can embrace flora to advance sustainability. Like Lewis, she is considering solutions across several time horizons. For the short term, Yazdanseta is pushing these industries to rethink the use of vegetative surfaces. While many buildings sport green roofs nowadays, she argues that architects and their clients treat
ABOVE:Workshops.Somaliland
LEFT:daylighting.SCEDean David Lewis’ students created cubes of carbon-neutral or carbon-sequestering architectural materials, including bamboo, cork, wood, and hemp-lime, a natural compound promoted by Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab.
13 social justice in an organic way. (Today Yang teaches at Carnegie Mellon; De Jesus Ubri is an associate at the New York City Economic Development Corporation.)
Lewis notes that mass timber benefits both people and the planet, because “surrounding ourselves in vinyl siding, petroleum-based membranes and paints, and other products has as many implications for the health of frontline workers and building occupants as it does for the environment.” Yet, he says, the use of mass timber is just the first step in breaking loose from the world’s profit-driven addiction to fossil fuels. Currently LTL is completing Manual of Biogenic House Sections, a book that explores other plant-based materials with which the architecture and design fields could achieve regenerative design.
Yazdanseta, an architect and professor, is developing a modular system of clay vessels that naturally cool buildings through evaporative cooling and shade from vegetative canopies.
the technique as window dressing. If plants’ evapotranspiration and solar interception were integrated into a building’s energy modeling, the structure would demand less energyintensive heating and cooling and become less reliant on traditional supply chains. Yazdanseta is at work on a forecasting tool with which architects can easily predict such performance. She hopes that employment of the tool will promote the use of vegetative surfaces, making a sizable impact on the urban heat island effect that disproportionately plagues inner-city neighborhoods.Inthelongerterm, Yazdanseta is participating along with other researchers in an effort to boost the use of mycelium as a building material. Mycelium is a multicellular fungus from which mushrooms sprout. Just before mushrooms appear, mycelium fibers can be coaxed into geometric shapes that can be adapted for use in building. Unlike mass timber, which is non-metabolizing and is shaped for use in building, “mycelium has its own agency, and as designers, we need to get comfortable with sharing control,” Yazdanseta says. “But there’s also much to get excited about. Mycelium is a smart living organism that has the ability to heal itself and which is capable of dealing with things like toxins or even agricultural or urban waste.”
This diagram by Sarah Templin, MFA Industrial Design ’18, details her system for maximizing Sabai Design furniture’s capacity for circularity and making it more environmentally sustainable.
The Loliware straw is also emblematic of the SCE Product Design community’s shift to plant-based materials to unlock substantial gains in sustainability. Both professors and alumni seek to capture carbon at the outset of a design process, rather than mitigating the harm of carbon-intensive choices. Assistant professor and DMFD studio founder Daniel Michalik ’s material of choice is cork, thanks to his acquisition of a cache of the material during his time as a graduate student from a source trying to offload a shipment of agglomerated recycled cork. Unburdened by cost, Michalik experimented with the material with creative abandon. “I fell in love with it aesthetically, and it was super-forgiving to use—it moved in ways that other woods or metal didn’t,” he remembers. And just as Briganti found her initial attraction to seaweed reinforced by learning about its environmental benefits, so the appeal of cork for Michalik was deepened by the knowledge that “cork supports complex biodiversity and ancient systems of knowledge.” Currently Michalik is promoting the cork aesthetic through furnishings installed in Google’s first-ever retail flagship, commissioned by the store’s designer, Suchi Reddy. Currently on sabbatical, Michalik is applying his research from the Google Store project to a larger initiative that proposes cork agriculture and industry as a model for regenerative material usage and also involves cataloging threats to theThatsystem.Sea Technology and cork can be safely disposed of or reintroduced into the supply chain (a capacity known as circularity) aligns with SCE product designers’ intense focus on what happens to a product after it has been consumed. “For me, circularity is so exciting because it’s about material and design in tandem; it’s about thinking about design for disassembly, so that all of a product’s materials could be brought back to the manufacturer,” says Templin. That thought process is illustrated in Templin’s class on soft goods, in which students are reimagining the everyday lounge seat so that it can be dismantled and its components reused. In that process, upholstery adhesive remains a figurative sticking point. “To replace that adhesive, our brainstorming will borrow from other industries, such as bookbinding or joinery,” she explains. Templin notes that her work advances social justice, like so many of the material-centered sustainability developments taking place at Parsons. In the case of upholstered seating, “thinking about disassembly means you’re thinking about the people who make and dismantle your products. If you can redesign a product to eliminate adhesives, you can eliminate anything that could cause a toxic exposure.”
14 Parsons re:D
Loliware is the company Sea Briganti, BFA Product Design ’10, founded to develop drinking straws made from algae. Briganti has become an influential advocate of regenerative design materials.
One of five children of a professional athlete mother, Sea Briganti ’10 spent long stretches of her Hawaii childhood swimming in the ocean. “I steadily noticed more and more plastic pollution along the shoreline,” Briganti recalls. Having begun the BFA Product Design program in 2006, she says, “I started to look at the world completely differently through my education.” While visiting home during a summer break, Briganti began to focus on the seaweed salads that are part of the Hawaiian diet. “I was looking at seaweed as a foodstuff, yet in that moment it felt more like a material. It’s elastic, it’s structural, and later I would learn that seaweed is a climate change–fighting hero for sucking carbon out of the ocean and restoringAnotherhabitat.”wonder of seaweed? It can be processed to form a plastic-like material. But unlike plastic, the seaweed derivative dissolves or biodegrades after use. In 2011, Briganti created an edible cup from seaweed, and three years later, she received her first venture capital investment to launch the New York–and San Francisco–based company Loliware as a mass manufacturer of the cups. Now the company has announced that the seaweedderived pellets it creates are compatible with existing plastic infrastructure. “So the whole world of manufacturing can really compete with plastic,” Briganti says. All specifiers need to do is replace petroleum-based pellets with Loliware’s proprietary Sea Technology. While Loliware produces its own drinking straw, Briganti explains that the product represents more a promising disruption in a traditionbound field than an end in itself. “We’re proving the material science and igniting imagination through the seaweed straw. Both corn and paper straws are more carbon intensive to produce than plastic straws; these billion-dollar industries wear a green halo but are in fact worse than plastic.” Forbes covered the launch of the seaweed-based pellets within a day of Loliware’s April announcement.
Quitting PetroleuM
The Parsons SCE community is making other inroads. Because policy is often based on evidence, the collection of sustainability data is a subject that is increasingly attracting these experts’ attention. Yazdanseta’s development of a forecasting tool for vegetative surfaces is one example. Another is a life-cycle assessment incubator for lighting products and lighting design strategies, just launched through the GreenLight Alliance by Leela Shanker, MArch/ MFA Lighting Design ’18. Measurement efforts are also being conducted on behalf of individual organizations as well as whole disciplines. Tri Vo, MFA Industrial Design ’20, founded the Austin-based CarbonBetter to map and reduce companies’ environmental footprint, while SCE lecturer Aurora Jensen models buildings’ energy flows and carbon consumption through the nationwide consultancy Brightworks Sustainability.Theexperts at Parsons acknowledge that the design professions need a framework shakeup as much as capital and governance do. Gardner speaks bluntly on behalf of architects: “We are handed a system of work in which there’s little time to consider the consequences of the materials we use or the labor that goes into their making.” As for product designers, cork champion Michalik notes, “The dominant narrative in product design is that someone Google’s new consumer goods store (far left) features custom-created pieces in cork, a highly regenerative material used by designer and professor Daniel Michalik in his Cortiça chaise (left).
all Hands oN Deck
pursues an education to create cars, shoes, blenders, or toasters that go to market. We shouldn’t accept that that’s necessarily the job. A product designer can use the skills of making to effect political or social change or propose new ways of living where people don’t rely on as many objects coming off the production line.”
The inquiries are far-ranging and the potential solutions many. Lewis says none of it would have unfolded without designers and architects first taking a hard look at the supply chain. He compares this moment at SCE to the Industrial Revolution: “What we do next shouldn’t look like before, nor should it be built upon existing power structures that benefit a very small minority. Adoption of a materials approach can produce the unexpected and the new, rather than a slightly better version of what we have— plus a truly regenerative understanding of the constructed environment.”
15 Assistant professor Barent Roth agrees with Templin, who was a student in his class on life-cycle analysis. But Roth, the founder of Anthropocene.Design, is also thinking about reducing the present-day waste stream, which is growing by the day. For its winning entry in the 2019 NYC Curb-to-Market Challenge, Anthropocene.Design created Circular Economy Manufacturing, a solar-powered facility on Governors Island that shreds single-use plastic from New York City recycling bins, then melts the material and reshapes it into new products in a heated rotational molder. “Right now, NYC is recycling 1,000 tons a day; we’ll be transforming the roughly 75 tons of HDPE they collect daily. It’s just a slice of the single-use plastic that’s being discarded. But it’s a start,” says Roth, who imagines similar facilities popping up widely. Lewis lauds all these ideas. “The moment you unpack material, you have the opportunity to reimagine systems that have gone off the rails,” says the SCE dean. Still, a single material cannot fix an entire system, especially one that has “gone off the rails.” As Mark Gardner observes, “You can’t work within the same framework and hope for a different outcome. There are issues like financing rules and government regulation that have to change, too.”
daviD LewiS, DeAn, school oF ConsTructeD EnvironMEnTs A partnership between the Ghana-based sustainable agriculture organization OKO Forests and CarbonBetter, a carbon-sequestering firm founded by Tri Vo, MFA Industrial Design ’20, is reforesting lands stripped for mining.
“The role of academia is to lead the conversation, to create the imperative for industry and policy to change.”
David Sokol is a New York–based writer specializing in design.
materialsingle-use(ataBarentdesignerAnthropocene.Design,andprofessorRoth’sfirm,developedsolar-poweredprocessorleft)toturntonsofNYC’splasticintofornewproducts.
aModelingSuStainabilityandequity:newnorMal
The community of Parsons’ School of Design Strategies is developing approaches to entrepreneurship and management that make environmental and social resilience the new normal, transforming workplaces into sites of positive change
BY SARAH FENSOM
tainability
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Harwig Landau notes that in 2021, she set out to raise $500,000 in institutional funding, but brought in only $25,000. Though the disappointment was “crushing” at first, the setback forced her to reevaluate her company’s launch, business model, and timetable and whether it was a fit for institutional capital in the first place. What Hartwig Landau discovered was that a slower, more deliberate pace
Root Diamonds is a socially responsible jewelry venture that Fas Lebbie, MS Strategic Design and Management ’20, is launching in November. The start-up will train local workers in Sierra Leone to create finished pieces to be brought to market rather than shipping mined stones abroad, where their processing and sale would benefit nonlocals and reinforce established extractive economic systems.
17
hen Nicole Hartwig Landau arrived at Parsons as an undergraduate in 2013, she had a very clear path in mind. “I came to get my business degree because I was going to be a buyer at Bloomies,” she recalls. But Hartwig Landau soon discovered that her coursework in the BBA Strategic Design and Management program was opening up possibilities beyond her initial plans. “I found that the transdisciplinary approach to business I was cultivating was so applicable to all industries,” Hartwig Landau says. “And then it wasn’t just about fashion for me anymore.” She felt that Parsons’ emphasis on social justice was teaching her to be empathetic both as a designer and as a businessperson. “When you apply design thinking to practical scenarios, you realize you can’t not build empathy into what you’re doing,” says Hartwig Landau. In 2018, Hartwig Landau founded Capri, a financial education company that provides practical money management tools and in-depth educational resources for women—a group historically underserved by the financial industry. Hartwig Landau recalls developing the project while still in the BBA program, on the eighth floor of Parsons’ 16th Street building. “That’s where I did all my initial ‘whiteboarding’ on Capri’s core values, our strategic themes, what we were trying to solve, and what was wrong with traditional models,” she says. Capri launched its beta phase in January 2021 with $100,000 in funding from a mix of friends, family, and mission-aligned angel investors. Social resilience is at the core of Capri’s objectives. “Women are so incredibly disadvantaged when it comes to money and so misunderstood by the finance industry,” says Hartwig Landau. “Our core focus is serving a gigantic market—half the population—that is wildly underserved by an industry that is often predatory and, in terms of ethics, does not get A’s across the board.”
In the classroom, Godelnik finds, this reframing translates into asking better questions. “I tell my students to make sure they’re focusing on the real issues and looking at them deeply, from a systemic point of view—not just at the surface,” Godelnik says. He has his students use the sobering report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to identify problems and opportunities strategic design needs to address. “Because the IPCC clearly defines the challenges we need to focus on, it helps us see what companies need to prioritize when it comes to innovation and how we need to re-design design overall.”
While Hartwig Landau was at Parsons, she undertook an independent study with Raz Godelnik , director of the BBA Strategic Design and Management program and an assistant professor of strategic design and management at the School of Design Strategies. The experience helped her conceive Capri’s internal structure. “We talked a lot about the future of work and what I thought was wrong with the work world,” Hartwig Landau recalls. Godelnik offered Hartwig Landau resources for applying human-centered design to the management of organizations. These resources guided her toward actionable steps and “putting theory into practice.”
18 Parsons re:D two main goals of Hartwig Landau’s independent study are essentially the same as those he has for his undergraduate students in the BBA program and graduate students in the MS Strategic Design and Management program. “For one, we want to instill in our students the courage to challenge the status quo in ways that are substantial, that move beyond just incremental changes. This is exactly what Nicole is doing with Capri,” Godelnik says. Second, Godelnik notes, the idea that strategic design is guided by a “morally ethical perspective” is essential. “This means looking at what the designer Dan Hill calls ‘dark matter,’ the invisible elements—cultural, economic, and power dynamics—at play in businesses we’re creating, not just at the products or services,” he says. In his recent book Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis: A Strategic Design Approach, Godelnik advocates for “awakened sustainability,” not simply “sustainability as usual.” He explains the need for companies to emphasize environmental and social concerns, rather than profit, in order to ensure a future for humanity.
Social resilience is a critical factor in the equation. Godelnik puts it plainly: “The right way to look at the climate crisis is through the lens of social justice. There’s a clear need to connect them; otherwise, we’re designing solutions today that will become tomorrow’s problems.” A synthesis of the sociological and environmental might entail, for instance, “thinking about the people on the supply chain who are working with the raw materials, not just thinking about the raw materials,” Godelnik explains.
For Parsons alumnus Fas Lebbie ’20, who earned a master’s in Strategic Design and Management and was an Impact Entrepreneurship Fellow at the university, connecting the social and environmental pieces is an ever-evolving goal. His start-up, Root Diamonds, which is based in his native Sierra Leone, aims to be a diamond firm that puts ethics first. Lebbie’s business plan invests in human capital by keeping the entirety of the jewelry-making process local while reinvesting profits in education for the local population. When Lebbie began studying at Parsons, he was already an entrepreneur and designer developing products for financial technology, “the right way to look at the cliMate criSiS iS throughthelenS of Social juStice.” was what aligned with Capri’s mission. “Since the very beginning of Capri, I’ve had two very specific goals. One is external and involves giving women the tools and education they need to cultivate a lifetime of financial wellness. And second, I set out to build a company with an internal structure that honors our humanity and doesn’t undermine it,” she says. “Failing to raise institutional capital pushed me to ensure that the latter part of that vision stays intact for the long haul. I’m proud to say that Capri is on a sustainable path now, one that allows both the company and me to weather storms, flex with life, and grow over time.”
“I love independent studies because they allow for deep exploration,” says Godelnik, whose work centers on sustainable business models that put environmental concerns first. But he is quick to note that the —Raz Godelnik, diRectoR, BBa StRateGic deSiGn and ManaGeMent pRoGRaM
Root Diamonds started as “a very site-specific project in a very specific industry with a specific mineral,” he notes. “By the end of my Impact Entrepreneurship fellowship, I realized the integrity gaps in this specific context were too big. So I thought, ‘Let’s open the aperture.’” His studies at Parsons led him to pursue a PhD in transition design at Carnegie Mellon, where he is focusing on natural resource management. His work entails designing sustainable and ethical systems applicable throughout Africa and underpinned with Indigenous knowledge and technological capacities. “As I engage in resource extractions on a system level,” Lebbie says, “I’m thinking about the consequences of sacrifice zones, what happens at extraction sites, and what happens at consumption sites, and how do we talk to each other on a global level and a local level.”
19 big data, and nonprofit and government agencies and consulting with clients in healthcare and the social sciences. “What stood out to me at Parsons was the ideas about ethics and finding integrity gaps in business,” he says.
For him, addressing these questions requires a constant zooming in and out. “In my research, I look at how place-based solutions can influence a blueprint for the global context of sustainable minerals extraction, but in doing that, it’s important to understand that even if there is a blueprint, it needs to be localized and specified for different cultures and different landscapes.”
Sarah Fensom is a writer living in Los Angeles. She is the West Coast bureau chief of brutjournal and the former associate editor of Art & Antiques magazine.
In 2020, Hartwig Landau returned to Parsons with Capri to participate in ELab, an entrepreneurship program directed by assistant professor of strategic design and management Rhea Alexander and available to New School students and recent graduates. “It was great to reconnect with the people and the Parsons environment during my time in ELab,” she says about the experience. “It’s easy to feel isolated as a founder. Getting in community with fellow entrepreneurs, brainstorming together, and learning alongside one another helped me continue refining the vision forGodelnikCapri.” also brought Hartwig Landau back into his classroom.
“I ask my students, ‘How do we create businesses that put values first?’ Bringing Nicole in to speak was a way to show them, ‘OK, here’s how it’s done,’” Godelnik says. He acknowledges that although at Parsons a focus on social justice and environmental sustainability is the norm, the world outside “has its own priorities and business-as-usual mindset.” Still, forging contact with alumni often shows students myriad possibilities for developing their own ventures and making things better. Bringing alumni back to share their real-world experience also helps to clarify and advance the program’s purpose. In Godelnik’s words, “Bringing together students and alumni in effective ways enables and inspires students to take what they learn at Parsons and define what social justice in business means for them. Because it doesn’t stop when you graduate; the conversation keeps going on.”
The process van der Meer outlines is very much like the one Lauren Neman, a fourth-year BBA student, has used in her senior thesis project. Neman’s passion for food culture led her to engage in an intensive investigation of broader social issues surrounding food: food apartheid and scarcity. “I looked at a wide array of things like accessibility in terms of education and proximity to a good grocery store and the transportation, public or private, required to get food. And I considered cross-cultural exchange between people while sitting at a table and sharing a dish or dining experience,” Neman says. She concluded that food serves as both a nonverbal means of communication and a multisensory experience and that taste is shaped culturally but controlled socially. But despite food’s broad capacity to communicate and connect, Neman noticed that recipes found online are often ill suited to home cooks, owing to the skill, time commitment, and cost involved.
“Now the way I co-create with students is like this: ‘You’re going to deeply engage with your community and imagine how we’re going to live, how we are going to move forward together as humans on this planet in a way that’s optimistic and not dystopian and figure out how to work back,’’’ van der Meer says. “From there it’s, ‘What’s the next best step we can take that is equitable and draws on fewer resources in a regenerative way?’”
What’s more, the rigidity of a recipe-focused approach to home cooking often leads to food waste, an immediate climate issue. Addressing these concerns, Neman devised a design prototype for a digital product—titled Colligo—that works as a flexible, interactive “reverse cookbook.”
Engaging with communities and local needs is a bedrock principle for Jen van der Meer, an assistant professor in the Strategic Design and Management programs and a leader of the Venture Lab course in the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative, a university-wide program of which she’s a co-director. (Lebbie, who studied with van der Meer in the Venture Lab, still refers to her lecture slides on occasion—“I’ll say, ‘Ah, let me see what Jen said about this.’”) Van der Meer, a former Wall Street analyst and economist, is also the founder and CEO of Reason Street, a consulting firm that develops business models that protect human health and minimize social and environmental impact. “It used to be, ‘Tell me how your concept is sustainable,’” van der Meer says, referring to her work in the classroom. But she began to notice an oversight: “I saw sustainability-oriented approaches that didn’t account for folks in the community and the people on the ground.” She calls this “playing God with systems design.” Today, the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative recruits include fellows having extensive experience and deep relationships with their communities, which makes co-creation especially rich and productive.
“The user can look in their pantry or select ingredients they have or want to use and find different options for preparing food using them. A sharing feature enables users to build on one another’s recipes and make easy substitutions,” Neman says. Colligo dispenses with strict measurements in favor of a casual approach that takes into account tastes, locally or seasonally available ingredients, budgets, and other needs. “The goal is to encourage people to cook new things, use up their ingredients as best they can, and find accessible ways to do both,” she explains. Like Hartwig Landau, Neman found her New School path taking her into new terrain. She began with a focus on liberal arts at Eugene Lang College but then discovered that the BBA program’s designoriented approach to business served her best. Neman appreciated the program’s flexibility, which led her to what she “really wanted to do”— entrepreneurship with positive social and environmental impact.
Shown at top is a still from Bibliobandido: Story Eater, a film that documents Jahn’s imaginative literacy-fostering social intervention. Jahn served as collaborating artist on an installation at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, titled Open Collectives (above), which immerses visitors in dialogue about how design can promote resource sharing and the solidarity economy. The inaugural Carehaus building in Baltimore represents a new model of intergenerational care-based co-housing. Set to open in 2024, the residence (right) offers senior and disabled adults an environmentally responsible and sensitively designed center for living, socializing, and cultivating wellness and creativity. Its plan accommodates special needs and fosters connections with the surrounding community.
20 Parsons re:D Meet our changemaking alumni, students, and faculty and discover the work that is making the world more beautiful, just, and sustainable profiles
“The exciting thing about Parsons and NYC is that you don’t have to play a singular role; you have the opportunity to be many things.”
Jahn’s work on Carehaus informs her role as a collaborating artist on Open Collectives, an immersive installation initiated by Segal at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale that explores the relationship between emerging collectives and design. The project invites viewers to imagine new forms of co-living and resource sharing, a topic Jahn and Segal are examining in their forthcoming book, Design & Solidarity
profiles 21
faculty JahnMoránMarisa
Among her current projects is Bibliobandido: Story Eater, a Sundancesupported documentary film about an art and literacy movement that Jahn launched in 2010. In that year, she traveled to a rural Honduran community whose residents have a high rate of illiteracy and rely on subsistence agriculture. She worked with local children and adults to create the fictitious character Bibliobandido, a masked bandit who eats stories— and whom kids believed was real. Since that time, the ongoing project has spurred young people to write tales to satisfy Bibliobandido’s ravenous appetite as he roams the jungles. Local youth continue to create stories, and the legend has reached more than 20,000 young people in Honduras and North America. Bibliobandido sparks young imaginations and inspires a joy in reading and writing while strengthening social bonds. As Jahn explains, “Storytelling not only empowers but also transforms both the teller and listener.”
Jahn’s facility with exploring new ideas, crossing disciplines, and building networks makes her ideally suited to lead Parsons’ BFA Integrated Design program (IDP) this fall. She explains that the program’s approach resonates strongly with students today: “IDP is not about mastering a single domain. It cultivates agility across media and promotes resiliency and collaboration.
Marisa Morán Jahn, assistant professor of design strategies, works across scales and sectors. But whether she is writing a book, designing a space, or collaborating with an organization, one element unifies her projects: “I always start with people,” says Jahn, whose career focuses on underserved individuals, including immigrants, women, and low-wage and other precarious workers.
In addition to teaching at Parsons, Jahn is the founder and creative director of Studio REV, a senior fellow at MIT, an artist-in-residence at the Brooklyn Public Library, and a member of the inaugural cohort of the Sundance Institute’s Art of Practice Fellowship.
In chronicling Bibliobandido’s impact, the film explores the effects of climate change on vulnerable communities, cultural preservation, infrastructure, and education as well as the resilience of marginalized peoples. Jahn is writing an interactive book about Bibliobandido to bring the experience to a wider audience. Jahn is developing another changemaking project, Carehaus, focused on a different underserved community: seniors. As the project’s initiator and co-founder, she challenges us to reimagine housing for aging in place. “What if we had a senior center that was beautiful and sexy instead of cold, institutional, and hidden from public view?” she asks. With Carehaus— the first intergenerational care-focused co-housing venture in the United States—Jahn offers a solution of uncommon empathy and creativity. Designed with architect Rafi Segal, the pilot in Baltimore consists of 20 units designed to house older and disabled adults along with caregivers and caregivers’ families. The facility will employ experts in nutrition, wellness, and fitness to holistically serve residents’ needs. Drawing on studies documenting the benefits of art for older adults, Carehaus will partner with local organizations to offer integrative arts programming. When it is completed in the next year or so, Carehaus will demonstrate how design can foster creativity and well-being while strengthening community ties.
The exciting thing about Parsons and NYC is that you don’t have to play a singular role; you have the opportunity to be many things.”
Artist-ActivistInterdisciplinary marisajahn.com
Inspired by airlines’ use of carbon offsets, they wondered if a similar concept could be applied to fashion.
“We wanted to deconstruct the notion that it takes considerable amounts of money and resources to make a difference,” says Johnston. While recognizing that the cost of sustainable fashion is beyond the reach of most consumers, she adds, “Our app makes online shopping in an environmentally conscious way accessible to everyone.”
After 18 months of development, they launched CarbonCart in spring 2022. First released on the global commerce site Shopify, the CarbonCart app is available free of charge to online shopping platforms. At checkout, with the click of a button, shoppers can pay a nominal fee to offset the carbon footprint of their purchases. The offsets are based on an extensive hand-picked database of products and the environmental costs associated with their materials and production, calculated from original research by the CarbonCart team. Proceeds from the offset fees are sent to climate organizations whose work is confirmed by the global nonprofit Gold Standard to support the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
alumni Clarabeth sMith eMMa shouse Johnston Entrepreneurs
alumni Clarabeth Smith, Emma Shouse, and Olivia Johnston realized they needed a creative outlet and began brainstorming ideas for bringing more environmental awareness to the fashion industry, which is responsible for an enormous amount of waste and carbon emissions.
Environmental
The three Parsons Paris alums behind CarbonCart drew on their extensive research skills to create an app that e-commerce vendors can add to their sites, giving shoppers an easy way to offset the carbon impact of products when buying them online.
The trio credit their Parsons Paris experience with laying the groundwork for their endeavor. Faculty encouraged them to think critically about the fashion industry—particularly fast fashion—and the environmental damage it continues to cause. “Our instructors empowered us to pursue what we’re passionate about and apply that passion out in the world,” saysSmith,Smith.Shouse, and Johnston hope their product will spur consumers to think more about the choices they make. “Everyone can make a difference, and all the little differences add up,” says Shouse.
“Our instructors empowered us to pursue what we’re passionate about and apply that passion out in the world.”
22 Parsons re:D During the COVID-19 pandemic, Parsons Paris MA Fashion Studies ’19
apps.shopify.com/carbon-cart
olivia
Elizarrarás Acitores has documented climate actions including the Climate Strike NYC (above center and above right). She used screen grabs and quotations from Zoom conversations with 21 global climate advocates to create layered portraits (top left), which were shown at the 2021 UN Climate Conference (COP26). Of the project Elizarrarás Acitores says, “The words the youth shared with me reflect their optimism and agency. We need more of that at this moment.”
profiles 23
alumni aCePaMelalizarrarásitores Climate Documentarian pamelaea.com
Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores, BFA Product Design ’20, still remembers the day she “was swimming in the ocean in Mexico and noticed more plastic than fish.” When she arrived at Parsons and began studying issues involving social justice and environmental waste, it struck her that hers is the first generation to grow up at a time when the effects of climate change have begun to dramatically manifest themselves. “Parsons helped wake me up,” Elizarrarás Acitores says. So did New York City. Elizarrarás Acitores discovered a community of young climate activists—many in high school—fighting for a better future. She wondered why they weren’t getting more media attention. “Kids were striking every Friday, and no one seemed to care,” says Elizarrarás Acitores. So she began showing up with her camera at their protests at the UN or City Hall. She was becoming a climate activist herself. She was also gravitating toward photojournalism, her minor at Parsons. Each semester, she would travel to Mexico and Bolivia to assist Argentinian photographer Sebastián Suki Beláustegui as he photographed Indigenous people. Upon graduation, Elizarrarás Acitores enrolled in a master’s program in photojournalism at the London College of “TheCommunication.pandemichad just hit, and London was paralyzed,” says Elizarrarás Acitores. That was when she was given the opportunity to project-manage an awareness campaign for the UN Climate Conference (COP26). She also spent three weeks documenting young climate activists from 18 countries over Zoom, something she could never have done in person. Her portrait series was exhibited at COP26 in Glasgow and viewed by world leaders. Elizarrarás Acitores’ activities inspired her to co-found Latinas for Climate. She believes designers and photographers are well suited to turning ideas into action. “It’s like creating a mood board,” she says. “If you can imagine it, you can do it.”
That’s how jazsalyn began her journey as a curator and connector as well as an artist in her own right. While at Parsons, she dedicated her thesis to a group show titled _assembly, alchemy, ascension [a^3]. Inviting artists to participate, curating the work, and organizing the show opened up a whole new world for jazsalyn. When the pandemic ruled out an inperson exhibition, she developed a creative team to bring the show online and extend the research through a multidimensional XR experience.
Upon arriving in New York City from North Carolina, jazsalyn, MFA Design and Technology ’21, was excited to explore the intersection of art and technology and forge new friendships with other artists. “Starting from humble beginnings, I realized what a privilege it was to be at The New School and Parsons,” she says. But reflecting on her own experience and first impressions of the university, “I also noticed there were far too many Black aspiring artists struggling and lacking institutional access.” She found herself wondering, “How can I make opportunities for others?”
MFA Design and Technology graduate jazsalyn is the creative and founding director of black beyond, an experimental art and design platform creating Black-centered experiences. Shown at top is the installed exhibition, curated by jazsalyn, with Shameekia Shantel Johnson and Yvonne Mpwo, based on a curatorial concept by jazsalyn and Neta Bomani. The Web platform, shown above, takes inspiration from the visionary science fiction of Octavia Butler, known as the godmother of Afrofuturism.
alumni Jazsalyn Artist and Technologist blackbeyond.xyz
The XR experience was installed at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery in the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center this past spring. (For a full list of credits and acknowledgments, visit blackbeyond.xyz.) “When there’s a fork in the road, I rarely give up,” jazsalyn says. The experience taught jazsalyn that she loved curating and building community—and that she was good at it. This discovery led her to establish black beyond, a platform that jazsalyn describes as “a space for artists to define alternate realities for Blackness.” The femme-led group gives agency and visibility to artists who might otherwise have been overlooked while setting an example for other cultural institutions seeking to upend the status quo. When jazsalyn describes herself as an “antidisciplinary artist,” it’s clear she’s all about breaking down walls. “There’s something amazing about seeing your power be exponential through others.”
24 Parsons re:D
Chen’s awareness of fashion’s environmental and social impact extends to his label, Khaore. Khaore was launched in 2017 with the aim of offering a different perspective on everyday, mundane accessories.
In researching the environmental impact of the clothing industry, Wei Hung Chen, BFA Fashion Design ’16, began to rethink what sustainable fashion could be. Rather than recycling and upcycling, Chen asks, “How do we change the conversation so that we are designing sustainably from the beginning?”
Chen’s ideas for eliminating fashion waste earned him a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. He has also been featured in Vogue, Milk, and METAL magazines and was a finalist in the Parsons X Kering Empowering Imagination
profiles 25
“Atcompetition.Parsons,wewere constantly encouraged to find sustainable or ecological methods to produce garments,” says Chen. His approach involves creating modular apparel such as the pieces shown above, which can be reconfigured with the addition of a multipurpose ruffle or sleeve to extend the garments’ use and lifespan.
alumni Chungweihen Sustainable Fashion Futurist khaore.comweihchen.com
This question led Chen to create a modular clothing system, with interchangeable pieces that maximize versatility. He took inspiration from furniture and product design. “I started to look into how things could be put together and taken apart,” Chen explains. “For example, you could have a shirt with detachable sleeves. If the trend becomes oversized sleeves, you could replace the sleeves rather than the entire shirt.”
“How do we change the conversation so that we are designing sustainably from the beginning?”
Chen expanded on this concept with his modular dress 2.0, which was prominently featured in both the Museum of Modern Art’s secondever fashion exhibition, Items: Is Fashion Modern?, and the New York Times’ review of the show. The dress represents a new type of maternity wear, with a series of fasteners that enable the user to expand the dress as pregnancy progresses and take it in after giving birth. It also unfastens at the bust to allow for breastfeeding. These features enhance the garment’s usefulness and extend its lifespan—offering a practical alternative to today’s fast fashion.
Chen is creating a line of handbags with artisans around the world— particularly Southeast and East Asia. Chen cites the acquisition of creative problem-solving skills as one of the main benefits of a Parsons education. “Design thinking is one of the biggest assets of the program,” says Chen, who credits his professors with encouraging him to pursue innovative and imaginative approaches.
“Sourcing local products builds relationships with neighboring businesses and artisans while strengthening the community and reducing environmental impact.”
“Anyone can design a beautiful space. The goal is for people to remember the experience,” says Regina Galvanduque, BFA Architectural Design ’09.
MYT+GLVDK’s work has been covered in a range of outlets—Architectural Digest , Vogue, Forbes , Wallpaper*, Food & Wine, and Elle Decor, to name a few. The interior Galvanduque created for Niddo, a popular Mexico City restaurant (shown at left), incorporates a color scheme that reflects the cuisine and silhouettes that complement the building’s Art Deco style.
Approaching projects from a collaborative point of view is a skill she acquired at Parsons. “Studying with graphic designers, environmentalists, and lighting designers in the same class challenges you to think about things from different perspectives—and make things better,” she says.
26 Parsons re:D
galvanreginaDuQue
Collaborative Architect mytglvdk.com
alumni
The common thread running through Galvanduque’s projects is the ability to reflect the surrounding community and culture while bringing her clients’ brands to life. “The more we work within the context of the environment and with local resources, the stronger and more harmonious the result is going to be,” says Galvanduque. Take, for example, her acclaimed scheme for the eatery Niddo in Mexico City. Before she even began designing, Galvanduque learned about the chef’s cooking methods and ingredients and the type of food that would be served. Drawing on the colors of chocolate, coffee, paprika, and chilies, she came up with a warm palette of deep reds and earthy browns to serve as the basis for her design. The curved lines of the tables, chairs, and pendant lights complement the Art Deco architecture of the building and neighborhood. The integrative approach embodies her 360-degree methodology, whereby the branding and the design are created simultaneously and all elements work together to create a narrative. As in all of her projects, Galvanduque used only local materials in her design of Niddo, including Mexican marble and tile and native tzalam wood. “I don’t want to import anything, because of the carbon footprint,” she explains. “Sourcing local products builds relationships with neighboring businesses and artisans while strengthening the community and reducing environmental impact.”
It’s a philosophy that has brought the work of the Mexico City–based designer to a broad public through interiors that invite people to gather to share food, ideas, and cultures. Galvanduque is a founder of MYT+GLVDK, an award-winning multidisciplinary firm that integrates architecture, interior design, furniture design, and brand identity in spaces that feel contemporary yet warm, familiar but always surprising.
Shown above is the Victorian Silky Pussybow Shirt under a striped suit from the Bloodroot collection, which takes its name from a medicinal plant given to Shabaka by her Louisianan grandmother. At right is the La Siréne Bodycon Maxi Dress, which features an original House of Aama print. House of Aama founders Shabaka and Henry (far right) have built their direct-toconsumer business in deliberate and sustainable ways. House of Aama’s aesthetic has evolved to delve deeper into the Black American diaspora. alumni sakuahabaka Style Alchemist houseofaama.cominstagram.com/shabakaaa
profiles 27 Akua Shabaka, BBA Strategic Design and Management ’19, has always had her own style. Even as a young person, “I felt confined in my school uniform,” she says. “Colorful socks, leg warmers, and dreadlocks with hairpieces were my form of self-expression.”
Shabaka’s family in Los Angeles encouraged that creativity. Her mother and muse, Rebecca Henry, is an attorney and trained seamstress with a love of handicrafts and vintage clothing. At 16, Shabaka was posting her own upcycled vintage outfits on Instagram. “People would ask, ‘Where can I buy that?’” says Shabaka. So mother and daughter opened an Etsy shop, filling orders from their living room. They called their line of upcycled clothing, based on traditional African fabrics, House of Aama. When it was time for college, Shabaka chose Parsons and a major in Strategic Design and Management, which enabled her to acquire skills to complement her existing competencies and her mother’s design role. She was in the thick of her studies when House of Aama was selected to be part of New York Fashion Week. Shabaka launched the collection between classes. House of Aama’s aesthetic has evolved to delve deeper into the Black American diaspora experience. Its celebrated Bloodroot collection, named for an herb used by women in the postbellum South, featured “vintage Southern Victorian vibes, but through a modern lens,” says Shabaka. The new Saltwater Collection was inspired by the culture of Black American resort towns of the early 1900s. Textile patterns incorporate sea deities, vintage maps, and tattoos. In 2021, House of Aama received the prestigious CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award, which, Shabaka says, “put us on the map.” Shabaka also had the honor of being named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. Shabaka’s achievements testify to the power of fashion to bolster cultural resilience.
Flower Kay’s thesis project, lack of memory is nothing, weightless, expands on this work and similarly uses food and film to explore ideas around family and culture. It centers on Flower Kay’s great-grandfather, who was born in India (in an area that is now Pakistan) and emigrated to Thailand, and his annual ritual of reuniting with family and friends and sharing a meal. In this story Flower Kay sees parallels to the experience of his grandparents, who emigrated from Thailand to the United States in the 1960s. “There are overlapping stories about adapting to a new culture and deciding what parts of your identity you change and what parts you still hold on to,” says Flower Kay. By studying old family photos and learning about his family history, Amal noticed how the generations before him would modify traditional recipes in their adoptive countries— preserving their culture but adapting it to a new context.
In the new Design History and Practice program at Parsons, Flower Kay had the opportunity to explore and experiment with different means of creative expression, which helped him hone his studio skills and reconsider what is important in his work. Parsons also taught Flower Kay that he didn’t have to choose between his creative passions. “In my program, I could combine interests in art and food and create something that I was really excited about.”
amalflowerkay.com
kFloweraMalay Multisensorial
28 Parsons re:D
For the last several years, Amal Flower Kay, BFA Design History and Practice ’22, has explored and combined two interests close to his heart: family history and using food as a medium to tell stories.
Flower Kay’s relatives operated a Thai restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska, and he himself continues the tradition by cooking professionally at celebrated NYC establishments. His creative work brings together food, aromas, and audio recordings to evoke the memory of family members and explore identity. Shown at left is a video titled for nina; the installation piece shown below is titled there is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen students Storyteller
In his interactive project there is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen, Flower Kay uses videography and sensory experiences to evoke memories of his grandfather, who died when Flower Kay was eight years old. Participants in this live performance are invited to smell his grandfather’s ashtray and taste salad dressing made from his recipe, to the accompaniment of video clips of Flower Kay’s mother and grandmother talking about their memories of him. “I wanted to use this approach to create a piece that in a very broad context plays into this idea of reincarnating my grandfather,” explains Flower Kay.
Hsieh currently holds an artist residency with the community-based organization Art on the Ave NYC, at Fulton Center in lower Manhattan.
profiles 29
Growing up on his grandparents’ farm in Taiwan, James Hsieh, MFA Fine Arts ’17, was surrounded and inspired by nature. “Moving to New York City was a culture shock,” he explains. Navigating those two disparate environments helped shape his vision as an artist. In 2018, Hsieh was commissioned to create his first public art installation, celebrating Christmas at Queens Crossing, a busy plaza in downtown Flushing, New York. He was excited at the opportunity to create art for one of the most culturally diverse places in the world. “The installation needed to speak to all of the diverse communities in Queens,” saysTheHsieh.centerpiece of Hsieh’s Pentagram Invasion installation was a sculpture of a star, a symbol he identified with Christmas in his native Taiwan. But Hsieh saw his star not as an emblem representing one religion or one holiday but as something that everyone could relate to. “We’re all living under the same sky,” he says. “And we all make wishes on the same star.” The star sat atop a pedestal mural depicting a whimsical, otherworldly landscape of shapes, colors, and fantastical characters representing the diverse experiences and people in Queens, particularly immigrants. An immigrant himself, Hsieh is aware that “people see you differently sometimes.” The botanical elements of the mural suggest the human connection to the natural world and reflect Hsieh’s nostalgia for the lush green environment of his home in Taiwan.
Queens Crossing is both a traffic and cultural crossroads for the many residents of NYC’s Flushing, Queens, neighborhood. Hsieh’s installation there, Pentagram Invasion, employs a star motif to represent the shared dreams of the largely immigrant local population and diverse design elements that hint at the multiethnic composition of the community.
“We’re all living under the same sky, and we all make wishes on the same star.”
There he maintains a studio space, where he has begun experimenting with recycled materials, which enable him to incorporate sustainability into his work. “It’s new for me,” says Hsieh, “but it’s very exciting.”
alumni JaMeshsieh Environmental Imagineer jameshsieh.com
McMahon had already been running LikeMindedObjects for seven years when she arrived at Parsons. “The approach to industrial design thinking at Parsons helped me imagine the potential impact of doing positive production at scale,” she says. Her education expanded her knowledge of sustainable materials, the circular economy, and the importance of storytelling. Today, from its Hudson, New York, storefront and Web store, LikeMindedObjects offers upcycled clothing, while sister company CRCL.EARTH offers pillow inserts and cushions made with shredded recycled denim in place of petroleum-based stuffing. A T-SHIRT WASTE LOOM and Edu Toolkit enables people to weave their own creations. As McMahon says, “We don’t need to solve everything as individuals. We can choose one seemingly small, particular problem and chip away at it.”
alumni Dream Weaver likemindedobjects.com
30 Parsons re:D “The U.S. throws out over 11 millions tons of clothing every year,” says Elise McMahon, MFA Industrial Design ’20. “Typically, an American wears a garment for two years, then discards it through donation. Too often, it ends up in landfills, whether locally or abroad.”
While McMahon’s Parsons thesis focused on designing with waste streams, her interest in what she calls “the American landscape of waste” began many years before. Since 2012, McMahon has operated the design studio LikeMindedObjects to create furniture and interiors from found materials. She became increasingly alarmed at how fast fashion affects the rest of the world and wondered what an American designer could do locally to divest from these unsustainable systems. When she learned (from the OR Foundation) that 15 million discarded T-shirts are sent monthly to Ghana—the world’s largest secondhand clothing market— the alarming statistic set wheels in motion. McMahon began sourcing 100-pound bales of discarded T-shirts and brainstorming with weaver and designer Francesca Capone on how to reuse this material. Capone discovered that because T-shirts are knit on the round, the garments could be cut into looped strips and woven into fabric using a traditional potholder loom weaving method. The collaborators began experimenting and developing products.
MCMeliseahon
McMahon’s LikeMindedObjects produces items including the chair shown at top and apparel made from bundles of discarded T-shirts (above) that are woven on an oversized loom (at left). McMahon and her team have also created an easy-to-follow tool kit (far left) enabling others to upcycle their own castoffs.
Students’ sustainably produced designs won praise at New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair in 2000.
31 Iconic work from Parsons’ archives re��in�
Understanding raw materials and respecting their place of origin are essential to designing sustainably. So is an awareness that traditional making methods offer time-tested creative approaches to problem solving. With that mindset, a group of BFA Product Design students embarked on an international co-design research project in 2000.
Co-creation in the Rainforest
Partnered Student Project, 2000
After the group returned to New York, their prototypes made a strong showing at New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). It was the culmination of an unforgettable learning experience built around collaboration and respect. Students worked alongside Liana Cane factory workers in Guyana to make prototypes using renewable materials. Project lead and director of Parsons’ BFA Product Design program Tony Whitfield appears in the top left photo.
By this time, Parsons already had a reputation for employing progressive co-design practices with industry partners, such as using less-extractive production methods and sharing economic benefits with designers and sellers. So when Liana Cane Interiors, a furniture manufacturer based in Guyana, invited the Product Design department to help develop high-end furnishings made with local renewable materials in ways that would protect the rainforest, the community was prepared for the challenge. And in Liana Cane Interiors Parsons found an ideal partner for its United Nations–supported Center for New Design, an initiative aimed at fostering innovation in materials, technologies, and collaboration. The project began over spring break with intensive research by the Parsons cohort—14 students, 2 faculty members, and 3 production assistants—who traveled from New York to Georgetown, Guyana. They trekked to the rainforest, where they became acquainted with liana, a woody vine that attaches itself to the forest canopy and competes with trees for sunlight, water, and soil nutrients. Amerindian guides showed students how the vine grows and is harvested for furniture. With their newfound knowledge about liana, the Parsons team brainstormed ways to use it in a line of ecofriendly children’s furniture. They brought their drawings to a local factory and worked alongside employees skilled in traditional manufacturing techniques using the vines. In just five days, the collaborators completed 12 furniture prototypes that could sustainably employ artisans.
32 Parsons re:D Regarding Design (re:D) 2022 EXECUTIVE EDITOR Anne Adriance EDITORIAL BOARD Cecilia Cammisa, Natalia Dare, Lisa Sarma, Alex Tapnio, Craig Tiede, Simone Varadian PARSONS ADVISORY BOARD Shana Agid, Ben Barry, Rhonda Garelick, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, David Lewis, Sarah Lichtman, Lisa Sarma, Rachel Schreiber, Yvonne Watson MANAGING EDITORS Kyle Hansen, Audrey Singer EDITOR AND LEAD WRITER John Haffner Layden CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Hannah R. Brion, Michael Fensom, Sarah Fensom, Tory Mast, David Sokol LEAD DESIGNER Jamie Ficker PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Sung Baik COPY EDITOR Leora Harris LETTERS AND SUBMISSIONS re:D welcomes letters and submissions. Include your year of graduation, the degree completed, and your major or program. Unsolicited materials will not be returned. CONTACT US/ADDRESS CHANGES re:D, Attn.: Marketing and Communication, 79 Fifth Avenue, 17th floor, New York, NY 10003; red@newschool.edu REGARDING DESIGN, SEPTEMBER 2022 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Regarding Design (re:D), 55 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011. CREDITS Cover—Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores, BFA Product Design ’20; News—Aléa Work, courtesy of Mariana Amatullo, Andrew Shea, Bryan Boyer, Jennifer May, and TwoPoints.net, courtesy of black beyond, Craig Barritt/ Getty Images, @Ivan Bilibin, Kaelan Burkett, Chris Eckert Photography, courtesy of the Communication Design department at Parsons School of Design, courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Emil Hernon (@emilpierreleo), E Roon Kang, Nora Krug, @KsushaFineArt/Shutterstock, Anya Ku, Andrew LeClair, Loisse Ledres, MacKenna Lewis, Renald Louissaint, Taiye Marriott, courtesy of Emmanuel Sanchez Monsalve, Khoa Nguyen, ORO Editions, Spencer Ostrander, @Rawpixel, Christine Rivera, Joe Schildhorn and Jason Crowley/BFA Agency, Michael Skinner, Killian Son, Jerry Speier, courtesy of The Trust for Governors Island, Kelly Walters, François Xavier Watine; Stepping MacKenna Lewis, Kai Mbayo, Madhurya Putrevu; Material—Circular Economy Manufacturing, Nelson De Jesus Ubri and Alek Tomich, Stephen Finney, Google and Paul Warchol, David J. Lewis, D. Michalik/Studio DMFD, Sarah Templin Studio, Marla Tomorug; Modeling—Vicky Bartel Photography, Sage Bennett & Parker Gibbons, courtesy Palgrave Macmillan, Zachary Pattridge, Teddy Wolff; Profiles—(Chen) Jennifer Wei, Fu Zhong; (Elizarrarás Acitores) Rebecca Binda, Pamela Elizarrarás Acitores, Mike Ruane; (Galvanduque) Isa Arjona (@ isaarjona) for MYT+GLVDK (@mytglvdk); (Hsieh) Jun Liu; (Jahn) Jill Greenberg, Rafi Segal A+U, Marisa Morán Jahn; (jazsalyn) courtesy of black beyond, Christine Rivera; (Kay) Amal Flower Kay; (McMahon) Franny Capone, Angelina Dreem, Kyle Knodell, LikeMindedObjects, Caroline Tompkins/Vogue; (Shabaka) Ricardo Enmanuel, Akua Shabaka, Jordan Tiberio; re:WIND—The New School Archives and Special Collections (PC.02.03.02), Julia Staples, BFA Product Design ’02; We’re Parsons Matthew Mathews, Martin Seck, Michael Kirby Smith. The New School is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution. Published 2022 by The New School. Produced by Marketing and Communication, The New School. Limited global paper supplies required us to print on new paper, whose carbon footprint we’re offsetting through reforestation managed by printreleaf.com.
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