DESIGNlife News

University Students Take Honors for Innovation in Disney Imagineering’s ImagiNations Competition

June 11, 2009 - Glendale, CA – From among the three university student finalist teams, the winners of the annual Walt Disney Imagineering ImagiNations Design Competition were announced on Thursday, June 11 at Imagineering headquarters in Glendale California.  The ImagiNations Design Competition is a program designed and sponsored by Walt Disney Imagineering to encourage university students to consider careers in creative and technical fields including digital arts, engineering, and architecture.

First Place and “Best in Show” was awarded to students Raymond Scanlon, Vincent J. Logozio, Elissa Hogan and David Lester.  While sponsored by Rowan University, team participants came together from Rowan University, Rutgers University and The College of New Jersey.  Their project, “Disney’s Spaceport,” is a complete and highly interactive theme park set in the mid 28th century, with an entirely original storyline and characters. Vincent J. Logozio was also awarded the Marty Sklar Award, for overall outstanding achievement in creativity, innovation, and leadership. In addition, all four of the students have been offered internships.

Second Place was awarded to North Carolina State University’s “Mickey’s Quest To Magma Mountain,” a motion simulator thrill ride that features a circular seating arrangement for an immersive 360-degree, 3D experience. The four members of the North Carolina State University team are Steven Varela, Corban Prim, Ashley Wagner and Morgan McCormick.

California State University at Fullerton garnered Third Place with students Benjamin Matsuya, Calixto Ortiz and Natalie Berger’s “Operation SNAP: Destination Dragon.” This attraction is an action/adventure ride utilizing mounted cameras that follows the story of an absent-minded professor in search of a legendary Chinese dragon.

(PDF of release)

• Ashley Wagoner’s hometown article.
• Corban Prim’s hometown article.
• Elena Page, master’s student studying Art + Design (animation), advised the NC State team. She was the first winner of the ImagiNations competition while a student in engineering. Page worked as an Imagineer for nearly a decade before returning to NC State.

The Alumni Association’s blog lists interesting news about a new online publication of NCSU Libraries, Special Collections.

Adjunct professor of architecture and author Catherine Bishir is the project coordinator for the N.C. Architects & Builders site. This biographical dictionary highlights architects and builders who have produced North Carolina’s architecture for more than 300 years. A brief biography plus a building list traces each person’s work in the state. This is a growing Web site, with many more entries still to be added.

Dr. Kristen Schaffer, associate professor of architecture, was interviewed by Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) on June 24, 2009. The topic was Daniel H. Burnham and the Plan of Chicago.

Design Guild Board member Frank Werner with Adams Products forwarded an excerpt of the May 2009 Concrete Masonry News that highlights masonry competitions held at NC State, University of Southern California and Georgia Tech. The winners from each school’s NCMA Student Unit Design Competition will compete at the National Concrete Masonry Association’s midyear meeting in Chicago this August. NC State’s event includes a drystack build competition, as well.

NC State’s program was developed almost 15 years ago by the university, Carolinas Concrete Masonry Association (CCMA), and local producers Adams Products Oldcastle and Johnson Concrete Products. For more than 20 years this was a project in Patrick Rand’s ARC 232, Structures and Materials class. About 15 years ago it attracted sponsorship from CCMA (Paul Lavene), and for many years included a lot of effort by Frank Werner at Adams, also David McQueen. Johnson Concrete Products became a sponsor several years ago also.

This year’s judges at the NC State/CCMA Blockfest were:

• Architect: Robert Carmac-The Smith Sinnett Associates, PA
• Mason Contractor: Chet Armlin-Armlin Masonry
• Manufacturing Representative Butch Hardy-Oldcastle Adams Products

Until 2009 the event always took place next to Rand’s masonry research facility on campus. This past Spring it took place at the entry to the Southern Home Show, which was a great venue for the event.

Department Head Gene Bressler, FASLA, has been appointed by Governor Bev Perdue to serve on the North Carolina Board of Landscape Architecture.

Head of the Center for Universal Design and Adjunct Architecture Faculty Member Sean Vance, AIA, has been appointed by the Governor to serve on the North Carolina Board of Architecture.

Both begin their terms effective July 1, 2009.

In countries such as Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, playwork is well established as a profession… working directly with children in an open-ended, creative way in community settings such as parks, schools, museums, urban farms, etc. Playwork is not established in the United States as a profession. The Natural Learning Initiative is working towards this end. Resulting from a collaboration between NC State University and the University of Gloucestershire, UK, the aim is to bring playwork into the nature education programs of botanical gardens zoos, nature centers, parks, children’s museums, after school programs, and other organizations.

Playwork IN Nature Training Program
June 4-6, 2009
The Playwork IN Nature Training Program trained individuals in basic playwork approaches for working with children in institutional and public settings where engagement with nature is the primary vehicle for creative enjoyment and healthy child development. A certificate program with intermediate and advanced training levels is under development.

Playwork IN Nature Symposium
June 6 | 1-5pm
The Playwork IN Nature Symposium included presentations about playwork as a creative, open-ended method of working with children and youth. Training program participants will share their experience.

NC State alumni Will Lambeth and Tim Martin, architectural interns at Frank Harmon Architect PA in Raleigh, were on hand at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science’s Prairie Ridge Eco-Station in Raleigh on Thursday, May 14, to help the middle- and high-school members of the Citizen Science Investigators Club discover what makes a building “green.”

Prairie Ridge is a hands-on teaching and extension project located on a diverse 38-acre site on the edge of Raleigh. Its mission is to educating North Carolinians of all ages about the natural sciences and the importance of environmental stewardship.  and demonstrate how architecture can enhance the natural environment.

Photo by: Allen Weiss

Lambeth and Martin discussed the many sustainable features of Prairie Ridge’s award-winning “Outdoor Classroom,” which was designed by Frank Harmon’s firm not only to provide a learning space at the eco-station but also to demonstrate environmental sustainability through its design and construction.

Photo by: Allen Weiss

The interns helped the club’s students understand how architecture can tread lightly on the natural environment and conserve energy in the process. (Above, Martin - center - is leading discussion)

Among the many “green” features of the classroom, including construction materials, Lambeth and Martin discussed Harmon’s decision about site orientation and how that impacted the classroom’s eco-friendly design. They noted that the wooden building’s heavy, south-facing overhang maximizes sun exposure in winter and creates shade in summer. Along with the screened walls, this orientation catches year-round southwesterly breezes. Together, these design elements conserve an enormous amount of energy normally used for lighting and HVAC systems.

Prairie Ridge sponsors the Citizen Science Investigators Club with middle and high school students. According to Brian F. Hahn, a natural resource specialist at Prairie Ridge, the students are very interested in green technology so that was the total focus of the May 14 session. The architectural interns’ presence “also exposes the students to other career opportunities they may be interested in,” he added.

For more information on the Prairie Ridge Eco-Station, go to www.naturalsciences.org/prairie-ridge-ecostation.

The Outdoor Classroom has received two design awards and has been featured in two national architectural journals. For more information on the project and on Frank Harmon Architect PA, visit www.frankharmon.com.

The second edition of Architectural Materials; Function, Constructibility, Aesthetics by Professor of Architecture Patrick Rand and Edward Allen is being translated into French for distribution in French-speaking Canada, France, and other French-language countries. It is also being translated into Portuguese for distribution in Brazil and presumably Portugal.

AIAT 2009 Summer Lecture No. 1 features NC State Architecture faculty Associate Professor Wendy Redfield & Assistant Professor David Hill, AIA. They will present “Grounded Prototypes: Relating Site and Prototype in the Work of Jean Prouve and Le Corbusier” on July 1, 2009, from 7-9 p.m. at the BBH Design, 8208 Brownleigh Drive in Raleigh. The event is free, but registration is required. (note…this is new location)

The 2010 Design Guild Award Dinner, sponsored by the NC State Foundation, will be held on Saturday, April 10, at the American Tobacco Campus, Bay 7, in Durham. Become a member today.

Two houses designed by Frank Harmon Architect PA of Raleigh, NC, have received 2009 Custom Home Design Awards in the “less than 3000 square feet” category. The awards are presented by Custom Home Magazine.

The 1800-square-foot Strickland-Ferris house in Raleigh received the coveted Grand Award. Completed in 2004, the house perches on a steep, wooded hillside above Crabtree Creek on broad-shouldered wood trusses for minimal site disturbance. The northern elevation features a glass and steel façade from floor to ceiling. A butterfly-shaped roof seems to hover above it.

The house is entered at a balcony. The master bedroom suite is located on this level. From the balcony, an open staircase descends past the glass (in essence, through the trees) to the two-story-clear main living floor. Deep roof overhangs extend a visual link to the natural environment, which is visible throughout the house. Laminated wood columns and beams, plainly bracketed, impart warmth to the sleek, modern interior.

This is the third design award the Strickland-Ferris house has received. [Read more →]

According to a release on the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources’s Web site, the video game completed by a collaboration of engineering and design students has been made available to teachers and students in N.C. middle schools as part of the celebration of Blackbeard. The game, now called Blackbeard’s Escape, was a big success during the video game showcase held at the end of the spring semester.

Reporter J.J. Wood spends 36 hours in the Triangle and reports there is more to life here than the major universities! Read The New York Times article.

Sandi Sullivan, administrative assistant for the departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, has been nominated for a Cantey Award in the Best Actress in a Leading Role category. Sullivan played Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at Raleigh Little Theatre in February and March, 2009. The awards ceremony will be held June 30, 2009. Good luck, Sandi!

The ID 315 students’ work from the Spring 2009 semester, taught by Spencer Barnes, has been featured on Autodesk’s AliasDesign Web site. The story surveys the final project that he assigned to students pertaining to digital prototyping, a design visualization and engineering process that Autodesk has significantly elaborated upon. Digital prototyping is the process of designing a product beginning with one’s initial design concept and ending with the engineering of that product; it is a process that drastically decreases the overhead and effort associated with physically modeling, simulating, and communicating a design idea. For the project each of the students had to select a product featured in an “Industrial Design Excellence Yearbook” issue of Innovation and redesign the product and digitally prototype their redesign. Innovation is a journal published by IDSA. The students ended up with sketches, technical drawings, renderings, and interactive panoramas of their redesigns. The project served as a means for the students to learn the digital prototyping methodology as well as to understand how to refine and justify their design process.

Photo by: Grif Friedman

Grif Friedman, one of the students who directs The Fish Market, sent in this photo of the Weight of the Ribbon exhibition featured on first Friday, June 5.

On Saturday, June 13, Triangle Modernist Houses was honored with the 2009 Paul E. Buchanan Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum. The award was established in 1993 to recognize contributions to the study and preservation of vernacular architecture and the cultural landscape that do not take the form of books or published work. Hundreds of studies, reports, documentation projects, restoration plans, National Register nominations, exhibits, video/digital media productions and public programs are completed each year without the benefit of distribution or recognition beyond the limited audience for which they were commissioned. Nonetheless, many of these efforts can serve to inform and inspire us all.

The award is named for Paul E. Buchanan who served for over thirty years as the Director of Architectural Research at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Buchanan set the standard for architectural fieldwork in America and inspired many VAF members in the rewards of fieldwork.

Photo by: Roger Winstead, Creative Services

During the ceremony welcoming Dr. Jim Woodward as NC State’s 14th chancellor, architecture graduate student Matt Robbins presented him with a Finish the [Bell} Tower t-shirt (graphic design by Alex Ford) while Student Body President Jim Ceresnak looks on. Here is a link to the WolfBytes interview with Robbins about his efforts.