#idsaaustin14

“The Exchange” is the name of the annual convention held by IDSA, the Industrial Designers Society of America. The 2014 version is wrapping up today at the Austin Hilton.

IDSA’s directive is to advance the profession of industrial design. It educates, it advocates, it brings people in the business together and it disseminates information, among members and to the public.

IDSA has over 3,200 members. The breakdown: US-based design consultants, corporate designers and designer educators (66 percent); students (28 percent); affiliates (4 percent) and international members (2 percent).

IDSA members are present in every major design office in the country. According to the organization’s website, its “membership shapes the human experience of products through their work in diverse product categories such as computers (Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM), consumer electronics (Nokia, Motorola, Bose, Garmin, T-Mobile, Samsung), transportation (Volvo, Honda, Cessna), medical equipment (Bayer, GE Healthcare, Ethicon Endosurgery, Philips), furniture (Steelcase, Herman Miller, Hayworth), housewares and home goods (Whirlpool, Tupperware, Kohler), toys (Radio Flyer, Mattel, Hasbro, Fisher-Price) and industrial equipment (Black + Decker, Crown, CCI, TTI).”

  Mike and Sheri Gillett found their dream house Kent, Ohio. It was on a lakefront. It had a dock. It was designed by architecture students from Kent State University. It was, and is, gorgeous.

Mike is a product-development engineer and a compliance specialist. Sheri, a designer whose specialty is toys and kids’ products, is a sought-after consultant in her field. They have moved, for job reasons, more times than they can count. They saw this house on a lake in Northeastern Ohio and they said, “This is it. We made it.”

The feeling did not last.

Eventually, they found that they were not enjoying the house as much as filling it up.

Mike: “After a while, I was saying: ‘What do I do here? I mow the lawn. I rake the leaves. I replace shingles and aluminum siding.”

Sheri: “I started feeling like we were slaves to our possessions. We were just buying stuff to fill the rooms.”

There is so much time we have here on Earth. The Gillets began thinking about how they wanted to live – and they began to doubt that it was inside their dream house.

Sheri: “I began feeling tethered to stuff. Stuff. After moving so many times, I started to feel like I didn’t want to leave my stuff behind. I didn’t like that feeling. I thought we were missing opportunities, and adventure, because of stuff.”

Their life picture had always been pixilated. They are human. Yet, beyond their consciousness, the picture began to sharpen. Things happened. Like: Mike, on a business trip home from China, sat next to a woman who had done well in business, then sold her house, gave away her possessions and took a job with a non-profit dedicated to teaching countries how to lower their greenhouse gasses. The Gilletts started thinking more about what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives. It changed their focus.

They had a growing desire to simplify. Their jobs required them to move around, and they started thinking about mobile living. They looked at recreational vehicles and found them hideous. They are, after all, designers. They did research on companies that converted buses (like, Greyhounds) into living spaces. They walked through these buses and found them garish. They are, after all, designers.

Sheri: “The buses had no design sensibility whatsoever. We haven’t found one yet that we wouldn’t completely gut and redo – until we saw this.”

THIS is the Airstream Pursuit, donated by the iconic American trailer company to the Columbus College of Art & Design. CCAD students took an empty interior and built a mobile living-working space for people who think like the Gilletts.

The Pursuit is parked outside the Austin Hilton, site of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s annual convention. The Gilletts are IDSA members. They wandered into this particular Airstream two days ago, and they were enthralled. They are, after all, designers.

Sheri: “It’s so clean and simple. It is high-tech capable. It is a workable living space. It is designed beautifully.”

Mike: “A house is so constraining. We were thinking, ‘What do we have to sacrifice?’ But everything we’ve read, and from everyone who we’ve talked to, the people who take the leap have found they’ve gained much more than they’ve lost.”

Matthew McConaughey is one high-profile person who downsized to live in an Airstream. Here’s a link to a slideshow in Architectural Digest: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/celebrity-homes/2008/matthew-mcconaughey-airstream-slideshow

Sheri: “From what we’ve found, the advantages will enrich our lives. Having a mobile design office can do so many things. One thing is, it can free us to give back. I don’t want to be dramatic or anything, but if there is a natural disaster somewhere, we can have the mobility to be there and help.”

We have so much time here on Earth. What do we want to do? The Gilletts are giving it a lot of thought. They are still researching. They are going to make a leap into a different lifestyle.

Their tour of CCAD’s Airstream was an “aha” moment for them. They need something bigger, and they will continue to hunt for something that fits them. Now, though, they know what they want.

Coming down an elevator at the Austin Hilton, where the Industrial Design Society of America is convened, a man looked at a T-Shirt and asked, "What is CCAD." It was explained to him. He said, "Oh, yes, the Airstream. I've got to get out and see that."

The Pursuit has created a buzz at the convention, which the IDSA calls "The Exchange." Industrial Arts teachers professions pictured above came in from Auburn, Penn State and N.C. State. They represent a mere sampling of the design educators who were impressed with the Airstream. They wanted to know how CCAD students (and faculty) worked with a major manufacturer -- and an iconic one, at that -- and pulled off such an ambitious project.

Lauren Purkhiser is the lucky one. Of the 120 students from every artistic discipline who worked on the Airstream Pursuit project, she is the one who got to show the finished product at the International Designers Society of America convention in Austin this week.

Lauren, a rising senior, understands her good fortune. She happened to be interning at Mary Kay in Dallas this summer. She was on hand. She made the drive down from Dallas, joined the faculty team and took the lead in providing tours of the Airstream.

Lauren has been busy, too. Over the past two days, some of America's top industrial designers and design educators have stopped to see the gleaming trailer they have heard about. A legion of curious pedestrians has also been drawn into the Pursuit.

"It's so crazy I happened to be in-state when this was happening," Lauren said yesterday. She was sitting on a park bench on the corner of East 4th and Neches Streets. The Hilton was in front of her, the Austin Convention Center was behind her and the Airstream was by her side.

“Of the design team, there were 12 of us – two interior designers and 10 industrial designers,” she said. “We spent a lot of Saturdays and Sundays – a lot of every day – working on this project. We built team relationships, and we grew very close. It was really cool.

“You don’t usually get that in a normal college environment. We’ll have these bonds for the rest of our lives.”

Lauren, 21, is from Akron. She once thought she would become an engineer or a doctor or a chemist. She once thought she wanted to go out-of-state and have “a normal college environment.” The lure of an arts education was strong, however, and she considered SCAD and the Cleveland Institute of Art before she decided Columbus was the place for her.

“My first visit, I said, ‘No way,” she said. “Then I realized the community within the school really had an impact, and that it was unique to CCAD. I immersed myself in that community.”

Sixteen months ago, the Tad Jeffrey FabLab was dedicated. The studio includes state-of-the-art three-dimensional printers, large-scale plotters, computer-driven laser and vinyl cutters, along with a CNC machine. It is part of CCAD’s expansion of its Industrial Design, and it provides students in students with training on the most advanced equipment and software they will use in the workplace.

Lauren was one of the dignitaries to give a speech at the dedication.

“She did a beautiful job,” said Dave Stockwell, CCAD’s chief of special projects. “She was so young, yet her passion and poise came right through.”

Yesterday, Tom Gattis, the Dean of the School of Designed Arts, beamed as Lauren paced up and down the sidewalk next to the Airstream while conducting an animated telephone conversation with a newspaper reporter.

“This is the best part of the job,” Gattis said. “Look at her. She probably has that reporter eating right out of her hand.”

Lauren is doing her work-study under the umbrella of the MindMarket Lab, a student design service aimed at giving under- and post-graduates exposure to real-world skills they will need upon graduation. MindMarket marries the college with the private sector.

The Pursuit project is a MindMarket production. For a year, it has been Lauren’s passion – and the passion of more than a hundred other students, not to mention faculty.

“For the designers, each of us was in charge of one section – but in the end, all of us are a part of all of it,” she said. “Everything has to fit – and has to fit that iconic, Airstream curvature. The whole project was a giant overalapping of designers. I learned so much from all of them.”