F.A.R. Faculty in Residence Project
In 2018, I was invited to be the Visiting Faculty in Residence at The Facility for Arts Research at Florida State University. The main mission at FAR is to encourage collaboration in the arts and beyond and to help facilitate these interactions I took on re-imagining the functionality of the shared common space that exists between FAR’s three project spaces of Commabox, Small Craft Advisory Press, and REBOOT. The room’s new design provided a comfortable seating area to host talks by visiting artists and view presentations by current faculty, providing a hub for creative exchange.
The main focus of my project in residency was to transform the common space in a variety of ways. Utilizing aquaponic plant propagation systems I created design features within the room that incorporated live fish and houseplants to change the air quality. Gathering a variety of up-cycled materials I designed and built seating and collaboration-pods to change the way bodies performed in the space and through outreach programing, I generated a series of events and graduate student workshops, which worked to shift the social dynamic away from the corporate model the space was originally designed to host. I drew inspiration from a DIY ethos and my research of artists Hélio Oiticica, Fritz Haeg as well as designers Victor Papanek and James Hennessy and their popular 1973 book, “Nomadic Furniture - how to build and where to buy lightweight furniture that folds, inflates, knocks down, stacks, or is disposable and can be recycled.”