Open Design @ VCUQatar — paolocardini

Is Open Design the new frontier in products development or is it just one more utopia too far from the current socio-economic system?
That’s the question we asked to our MFA-Design students at VCUQatar. The workshop has been divided into 2 main phases. In the first part the groups of students have developed various creative ideas. Design for sharing has been here the center of the debate, letting ideas running freely and speeding up the innovative process. During the second part of the course the students has been pushed to leave their ideas and projects in the hands of another group. Following up with a new challenge each team could upgrade, modify, implement or simply steal part of the given original proposal and create their own interpretation of it. Abandoning therefore the archaic constraints of ideas’ private property, the students experienced design following a totally new approach, a game with multiplayers and no limitations or boundaries.
Fab Lab has been the environment where the projects grew; laser cutters, 3d printers, Arduino boards and traditional handicraft have been their production tools.

Can be a shoe an open-source-shoe?
Blueprints to realize our own simple shoes; four different layers -out-sole, middle-sole, insole, vamp- to be personalized and modified according to our personal needs.
Materials: felt, cork, cardboard, plastic
Technic: 2d drawings, laser cutting
Students: Corby Elford, Aisha Al-Suwaidi, Sameh Ibrahim

Is Open Design for fashion victims?
The idea is to bring Open Design out from a tech geek’s dusty room. Digital printing and laser cutting allow every posh girl to design and realize their own vertiginous heels.
Materials: leather, ABS
Technics: laser cutting, 3d modeling, 3d printing
Students: Patricia Duignan, Lina Mahusain, Dana Rohani, Rania Chamsine

Can Open Design match with traditional handicraft?
Laser cut synthetic fabric has been joined with leather traditional qatari sandals; Fab Lab come back to the past mixing digital fabrication and hand made production.
Materials: leather, synthetic fabric, foam, plastic
Technics: laser cutting, hand made shoes production
Students: Patricia Duignan, Lina Mahusain, Dana Rohani, Rania Chamsine

Digital Vs. Analog. Are digital camera really appealing?
Download this file, pass the datas into your laser cutter or bring it to the nearest Fab lab, fold the paper , insert the film, do a little little hole in the front of the box and wait for your pinhole camera picture. That’s all.
Materials: black paper, pin, black tape
Technics: 2d drawings, laser cutting
Students: Patricia Duignan, Lina Mahusain, Dana Rohani, Rania Chamsine

Do you think easy taking pictures in Middle-East?
A coffee cup transformed into a pinhole camera, as the best spy story ever, to steal some clicks. Moving up and down the brown cylinder you catch the picture and turning the tap you let the film run. Remember: take your time...is about slow art!
Materials: Cardboard, ABC, film
Technics: 3d printing-Makerbot, laser cutting
Students: Robert Canak, Noora Al-Maadeed, Hussain Ahmed Wanas

Is Open design for Open Ideas?
Through generative graphics different sensible topics has been explained creating a creative visual memory. The Arab spring and the power of public opinion has been the input ; an on-line survey has been the process to get datas, digital code has been the laguage to translate these datas into graphics. from this point everything is possible, from T-shirt to wallpaper.
Materials: datas
Technics: Survey Monkeys, Processing
Students: Robert Canak, Noora Al-Maadeed, Hussain Ahmed Wanas

Since your family has your best interest, would you trust them to choose your life partner for you?
From here started the making of a piece of crowd sourced art. Different colors underlined different point of view on an ever hot middle east debate. At the end of the survey the piece has been scanned and uploaded on a dedicate web site from where the participants could download the file and use it for different purposes, from posters to sculptures.
Materials: Acrylics colors, plastic sheet
Technics: Color dropping, Laser cutting, image scanning
Students: Imad Fadel, Esra Kazem, Maryam Al-Semaitt

Is Time made by numbers or by actions?
Think about a new perception of time, a new way to live, far from the everyday constrains. NowClock is a sincere object, it suggests you what to do depending on the outside temperature, great issue in Doha. Have you never thought to go running in the middle of the night? Well, may be the only spot with the perfect temperature.
Materials: plexiglass, Arduino board
Technics: Laser cutting, processing
Students: Corby Elford, Aisha Al-Suwaidi, Sameh Ibrahim