Goals and To-do lists when I get back to RISD

Goals for my senior year at RISD

1. first of all, my goal is to graduate with good grades and a good portfolio (and possibly with a dope job haha).

2. I want to sell my design at the market day. I think the market day is the equivalent of a festival that other normal schools get. We don't get a festival, but we get a market day.

3. Curating a student show. Since I have been seeing and experiencing countless galleries and museums in Europe that I have this passion and ideas for curating a show myself. I've been working for RISD museum and galleries and I think it's the time to maybe try to curate a show instead of always monitoring one.

4. Winning a design award. I met this design intern in Munich and he inspired me so much about winning a design award. He won numerous design awards, Korean and also international awards, that he now is an intern in Munich. He told me that it is a very rare case for a Korean student to intern outside of Korea especially when one does not speak fluent English (for his case, also German). One of the reasons why he was noticed by his company was because he had a solid portfolio with good presentation skills and resume with award winning experiences. According to him, winning awards is not too difficult. He would commit 3 days of time for a project with a concept. I think it would be great not to only focus in school work but also look into what other projects there are that the design community is working on.

Trend spotting in 2009 Salone del Mobile

MATERIAL

1. Sustainable material
2. Unexpected material
3. Plastic, resin, and everything synthetic.
4. Ply wood, ply wood, ply wood!

DESIGN

1. humorous
2. representational
3. poetic
4. luxurious

SHAPE

1. geometric
2. organic
3. ergonomic
4. anthropomorphic

Trend spotting in 2009 Salone del Mobile in Milan (Design week 09)

At the end of every April, Milan gets busy preparing for a design week (Salone del Mobile). During this week, countless events happen including trade shows, gallery and museum openings, concerts, and parties(!). The whole city turns into an excitement and there's something happening in every block. Also, around this time, people from all over the world concentrate in Milan hence the city is bursting with interesting people. I enjoyed watching people as much as watching designs this week.

The three districts I visited were

1. Zona Tortona

2. Triennale

3. Rho Fiera

The design week finally ended as of yesterday (Salone del Mobile lasted from April 22nd till 27th), and I want to report on trend in design in 2009.

BAUHAUS

*Berlin's BAUHAUS archive wasn't allowing photographs, so I only have pictures of bauhaus building in Dessau.

Us design geeks wanted to explore all about Bauhaus, so while we were touring Berlin we went to Bauhaus archive. It was very small and there was nothing much there to be called an archive, but it was still interesting to see the history of Bauhaus. One thing I realized while looking through the archive was that I felt like RISD was the modern version of Bauhaus school (or the other way around- maybe, Bauhaus is the model school for RISD). Bauhaus students were required to go through a course that's equivalent of Foundation studies at RISD. They studied drawing, color studies, material studies, and 3D studies. Their 3D models and color studies looked hella like ours.

When Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus, first built the school in 1919, he had a motto for the school: Unity of art and technology. Basically, Bauhaus was the starting point when designers were created instead of craftmen or artists. Every object that was designed was meant to be manufactured in industrial scaleused and used in everyday life. Even though all the lamps and tea cups may look too stereotypical, but that was when the vocabulary of designs that are manufactured still in these days.

Amsterdam: Venice of northern Europe

stedelijk museum

shopping mall

(a part of) van gogh museum



raw herrings! (Jordaan area)

beautiful canals

entrance of Jordaan area

dutch wooden shoes

rembrandt house

entrance of vondel park

rijksmuseum (currently closed under construction)

"I amsterdam"

red light district at night

???

cool recycling bins around the city. I like the color and type on it.

colorful pulic art

amsterdam makes a good model for post-card pictures. b-e-a-utiful

red light district art gallery. we never got to go inside, but what kind of art would they have? hmmm I'm curious

red light district by day

So I got a short break from school for an Easter week, so I decided to travel Amsterdam, Berlin, Weimar(eventually switched to Dessau), Prague, and Munich. My budget was to spend under 560 Euros for 10 days, but as always, I went over-budgeted a little bit. One tip to travel cheap is to use hostels (there are pretty decent hostels that might even be better than hotels for cheaper price), and to use supermakets! Eating warm meals everyday costs A LOT. I would just go for grocery shopping everyday and that would cover me for the whole day. That way you can also take a look at what local people eat at a glance.

So, when I got to Amsterdam for the first time, I was amazed how beautiful the city was. Of course where I stayed was the old part of Amsterdam, and the city was very well kept. Here is the list of places I've been to...

1. Van Gogh Museum
2. Rembrandt House
3. Red Light district
4. Jordaan
5. Anne Frank's house (I didn't go inside)
6. ... basically the whold city

When you go to Amsterdam, you MUST bike around. The city is very bike-friendly- there are streets for bikers, and bikes are the type of transportation that is used the most in Amsterdam. Also, try raw herrings! It's called Harring in Dutch, and you can get a little plate of herrings with diced onions and pickles for 2.50 Euros. We got them in Jordaan area, so it was extra delicious since Jordaan area is a beautiful district where small galleries are. (By the way, herrings are fish)

Bikes come in handy in Amsterdam because the city is not too big and it's so much easier to go to places than learning which public transportation at where. My only pair of jeans I brought eventually ripped (in a very embarrassing spot) from biking all day long.

Also about red light district... I don't know how to start this. Well first of all, red light district is a neighborhood in amsterdam where prostitution can take place legally. This district is lit with red lights at night to make brothels look even more sensual. Also this district is deeply connected to sex industry such as sex shops, adult theaters, and strip clubs. In the beginning, it was definitely a big cultural shock for me to be walking down in that street and watching almost naked women seducing customers. But at the same time, it was a wake-up call for me to realize that "I AM IN AMSTERDAM!", because otherwise, where would I ever see these prostitutes hailing with their tiny underwear?

So enough about prostitutes and brothels talk... let's get educational! Van Gogh Museum at the time was having a temporary show called "Van Gogh and the colors of the night" ("Van Gogh en de kleuren van de nacht"). The show had Van Gogh's hand written letters to his brother Theo, and I just wanted to be able to read it! Also, the show had a very romantic quote of Van Gogh extracted from his letters to Theo.

"Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter's life. . . Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."

It was such a romantic interpretation of death, and I just sat in the corner of van gogh museum gazing at van gogh's starry night and pondering at the same time about death.

Trip to Venice

My two good friends, Miles and Frank, were traveling Europe for about 5 weeks and they also visitied Italy! They were coming to Milan on March 23th, so we decided to meet up on March 22nd to hang out together in Venice. Here are some pictures from Venice :)

We went to...

1. Murano Island

2. Lido Island

Murado Island is where a big community of glass craftmen are. They make very sophisticated glass arts and products. Even though the island looked empty because we went on Sunday, we got to see a master blowing hot glass in front of us.

Lido was also very nice; but it was wayyyyy too cold to be having a picnic. We went for a grocery shopping and decided to eat some fresh Italian mozzarella, tomatoes, bread, prosciuto crudo (raw ham), and some tuscan wine on the beach. Although it sounds very romantic, in fact our food was all covered in sand eventually. But it was still special playing soccer on the beach together...

Hope they had a good and safe trip for the rest of the time in Europe.

p.s. I'll be traveling Amsterdam, Berlin, Weimar, Prague, and Munich from tomorrow for about 10 days. I'll be post those pictures in 2 weeks! Ciao