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As a part of my time in the Design Apprenticeship Program at the Smithsonian National Building Museum, our final project was to design, develop, and present unique, modular seating that would be used by museum visitors.
Throughout this project I was mentored by graphic designers, engineers, residential planners, and a large variety of other industry professionals.
ABOUT
TIME SPAN
MY ROLE
3 months
Apprentice​
Furniture Designer
Graphic Designer
​
At the beginning of the eight week long program, I was a assigned to a group of five other apprentices.
These other four, like me, were chosen from group of over 80 applicants to be one of the 24 students in the program.
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We dubbed ourselves, "Turtle Troop".
ABOUT TURTLE TROOP
Presentational Board.
Left Twix & Right Twix.
LEFT & RIGHT TWIX
We developed a pair of rocking chairs as our final project, with nursing mothers and mothers with young children in mind as our target audience of museum visitors. The board pictured, designed and illustrated by myself with the addition of my technical drawing, details our process of creating our seating. Additionally, we chose to place our project in front of the museum's dollhouse exhibit, as we figured small children would tend to gravitate to that area.
Constructing with power tools.
Creating prototypes.
Planning faces of the seating.
PROCESS SHOTS
Binding glue and wooden biscuits together.
Overall, this project allowed me to explore an aspect of design that I had never dived into before, which was carpentry, but most importantly taught me the importance of developing physical projects in consideration of human-centered design versus things centered on a digital platform.
The experiences that I gained through this apprenticeship are still used in my design work now, and I will always cherish Studio231 and the Design Apprenticeship Program family.
CONCLUSION
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