Raw Spaces

A great adventure awaits, and the search for the great unknown.

Post-MBA, I’ve decided to devote my young adult life to travel, getting gigs here and there for support. Wanting to get away from the stress my classmates have - packing, moving, marrying, breaking up, having babies, entering new corporate jobs, gaining weight, anxiously pining for job interviews… That’s not for me, and it never was.

Some people say I have no professional goals, with travel and people being my passions. Quite the contrary. But being quite young, I can spend the time to figure it out. I’ll play it by ear until I’m happy. I’ll hone my skills until I can use them.

Uprooting from Champaign and landing somewhere out West to start. The dream is to complete my first major project in South and Southeast Asia.

"Tout peut être dessiné, modelé et fabriqué."

No one who can pick up a book and read can be uninspired, and everyone looking for inspiration can find it in Taschen's Designing the 21st Century. This book explains how the seemingly impossible is possible in design, and that we live in a time where, in Ron Arad's words, "There are virtually no limits." It explores the breadth of perspective in modern artists as well as the ideas and technologies already out there, therefore preparing a playground for the reader to begin creating. Everytime I see haters who speak exclusively in the language of constraints, I just want to throw this book in their faces. Below are some precious lessons that are beautifully conveyed in Designing the 21st Century:

"I have a feeling many products are designed in steps by people who don't talk to each other - specialists blinkered by their own speciality. Basic issues are rarely discussed. I am sure a new breed of thinkers will become relevant to industry. They will not be designers but people capable of connecting different disciplines to bring a new relevance to products whether ecological or social. I am looking forward to the day when my relationship with industry will be participating in such thinking."

- James Irvine

"A good designer has to be part artist, part engineer, psychologist, sociologist, planner, marketing man and communicator: part everything, and part nothing! ... Think in dynamic terms, do not take the easy way out by following the rules and approved solutions, act in the perspective of continuous research, find the courage to make unexpected proposals, and, in addition to your pencil, use that quintessential quality of designers - curiosity."

- Roberto Pezzetta

"Objects designed by trial and error have more soul."

- Hella Jongerius

"Anything can be drawn, modelled, and made... There are virtually no limits. Smart materials, sharp tools, sci-fi production, it's all here. Now. The present is too fascinating to stop and worry too much about the future. If you look at the present deeply enough, the future will become discernible."

"Unless you build it, it doesn't matter." - Design Like You Give a Damn