A Sustainable Train of Thought

IDII at Salone del Mobile 2006

Thursday, March 16, 2006

We’re always up to something interesting here at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea!

In a few weeks we’ll be exhibiting work during the Salone del Mobile, the biggest furniture exhibition in the world. Over the years, Salone has turned into an opportunity for young designers to show their work after-hours throughout the city of Milan. Known as the “fuori salone” these small exhibitions are where the really exciting stuff happens. Last year we exhibited work alongside Tecno as part of Strangely Familiar Future.

This year we are part of a joint exhibition with Domus Academy. Our working prototypes will be shown alongside a selection of production pieces by Domus Academy graduates. This is the last year of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea’s existence, and it should prove to be an interesting and stimulating event.

Please find the official invitation attached. I’ll be showing three pieces, two of which were made in collaboration with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and one which was made in collaboration with Haiyan Zhang and Alexandra. We are currently very very busy prepping the projects for the exhibition, writing our thesis reports, documenting the last Applied Dreams project (which just finished last week), and working on our thesis projects. In other words, business as usual.

For photos and updates, check out the following resources…

I’ll be posting photos on Flickr.

Keep an eye on my thesis blog for more updates.

and check out http://milano.interaction-ivrea.it for more information as the event draws nearer.

After Salone, the next big event will be our graduation in June…

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal, Professional | Comments (1) | Permalink

New IDII Site Up (again)

Friday, February 17, 2006

After a server change and the holidays, the new IDII site is up (again). You can check things out at: Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Milano

Not much is going on with the site right now because our energies are directed towards thesis work. But you should definitely check out IDII Live, which is a live collection of the latest blog posts by IDII students.

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Dilemma

Sunday, February 12, 2006

I was shopping online for some flowers the other day, and during the ordering process I encountered the following dilemma:

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal, Professional | Comments (1) | Permalink

Postcard Aesthetic

Sunday, February 5, 2006

Just checked out the new SPONGE lifestyle website. Seems the postcard project that Alex and I developed for them had a distinct design influence. Sydney’s lightbulb, sink faucet, and kitchen towel are all repesented, as is my late school iBook (the hard drive died over the summer).

What I first noticed, however, were the faux double-punched holes. Pretty cool!

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal, Professional | Comments (1) | Permalink

New Pics

Friday, December 30, 2005

Photos from my excursion to Trieste with Syd are now up on Flickr.

I’ll add the Venice ones soon…

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Priorities and Propaganda

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

I’ve been trying to catch up on my newsreader, which at time seems a superhuman task (2,257 more entries to go), but I ran across this older post from Grist which talks about the Green Gauge Report, a “poll on environmental attitudes, based on the results of 2,000 face-to-face interviews”. The results of the poll attempt to reveal public opinion on a variety of environmental issues.

One thing that struck me while reading the review on Grist is that the questions of environmental issues are too often abstract. While we may decry the fact that Global Warming was last on a list of concerns, what exactly are people supposed to be concerned about with Global Warming? As a concept, it’s too abstract, too broad in scope. The name says it all: global warming. (Continued)

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Research, Personal, Thesis | Comments Off | Permalink

New Website for IDII in Milano

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

To better record and communicate our work this year while we’re in Milano, and to help remind the world that IDII still exists and that we’re still doing interesting and cool things, we’ve created a new microsite: Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Milano.

One particularly cool feature on the front page is the idii live section, which displays the most recent posts IDII students have made to their thesis blogs. The idii live page has a more thorough listing, and even an RSS feed.

Although my name is on the front page for the milog entries, Didier Hilhorst, Nicholas Zambetti, Tristam Sparks, Victor Szilagyi, and Aram Armstrong have been doing the heavy lifting to get the site up and running. Thanks guys!

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Harold Pinter’s Noble Prize Acceptance Speech

Friday, December 9, 2005

I’ll be honest. I’m not sure if it’s the stress before the second thesis crit on Monday or a reflection of my feelings towards the general state of affairs with my country, but the Pablo Neruda poem “I’m Explaining a Few Things:” which Harold Pinter quotes in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech almost made me start crying.

The Guardian has a copy as well: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1661516,00.html

And here’s a video of Harold Pinter reading his speech: http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

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Thesis Blog

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I’ve been spending the last couple of weeks working on a my thesis presentation, which is due tomorrow. Afterwards, hopefully I’ll have a chance to catch my breath and write some more…

In the meantime, I’ve got a thesis blog (A Sustainable Train of Thought) up and running here: http://www.d4v3.net/blog

It’s partly a brain dump, but also partly a way to externalize and expose my work and progress to the rest of the world. Nothing ground-breaking just yet, but some cool stuff (Thesis Proposal! Background Research Chapter! Thesis Presentation!) will be going up in the next week or so.

The thesis blog is running under WordPress, which, after some initial concern, was actually pretty easy to set up. The only tricky part involved a problematic .htaccess file and general permissions funkiness, but I worked around it and everything seems to be working fine right now. Editing the style-sheets and getting everything together was all-in-all pretty painless.

I’m actually considering shifting everything from this blog (hosted on Blogger.com) over to a WordPress platform—doing so would put everything under my control, and the customization aspects are much more user-friendly and robust than what I’ve found so far in Blogger (rebuilding the blog each time can get painful, but in WordPress there is no rebuilding, as changes are available immediately). Plus there’s cool stuff with trackback and searching. Hopefully I can use it for content management (I have WAY too many bookmarks, for example) as well as a platform for displaying my work and progress.

OK, back to the thesis presentation…

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Summer Update

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Yeah, it’s been a while. =)

What I’ve been up to:

Came back from Italy and helped my parents with their move. I’m currently living in Brooklyn with Syd for the summer. We entered a Habitat for Humanity competition with some friends, and together we designed a recycling receptacle for a competition run by the AIA Chicago. I will add them in my portfolio at some point. Neither entry won, but they were fun to work on—it’s always good to hone process and design skills, and competitions provide a deadline and goal to work towards.

I’ve been doing lots of reading (and thinking) for my thesis and working to further our service project (yeah, still can’t talk about it). My thesis work will revolve around sustainability, and within this area there is just so much information…

We’ve gone to a couple of architecture lectures, one about Korean architecture and another about air conditioning systems (very interesting, actually). And Syd’s name is in the new MoMA—she helped out on a project for the PS1 competition. I thought the entry she helped work on was way better than the winning entry, which is currently falling apart, or so I hear. The main problem is that the winning entry was designed and modeled on the computer, where it looks cool. The built object, however, looks pretty bad (as a comparison of photos in the previous links reveals).

The postcard competition entry I designed with Alex earlier this year…it won! What’s pictured in the press release and elsewhere are what we submitted to Sponge: we’re currently working on some revisions which will make it into the print run slated for sometime in September. Press release and one link so far…

I’m also currently doing research and blogging for the Energy Project run by the RED unit at the Design Council in London. You can find my posts here: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/mt/red/

I’ve got some cool photos to post from my trip to Storm King with Syd, and I’ve been exploring the wonders of basecamp. Oh, and I put my money where my mouth is regarding service design and ordered a pair of shoes from adidas at the NYC flagship store using the mi adidas system. I’m working on a post about my experience…

Phew! That’s a lot to say in one breath!

Now…back to blogging…

A Sustainable Train of Thought

Interaction design, service design, and a little bit of green

IDII at Salone del Mobile 2006

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal, Professional | Comments (1) | Permalink

New IDII Site Up (again)

Friday, February 17, 2006

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal | Comments Off | Permalink

Dilemma

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal, Professional | Comments (1) | Permalink

Postcard Aesthetic

Sunday, February 5, 2006

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal, Professional | Comments (1) | Permalink

New Pics

Friday, December 30, 2005

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal | Comments Off | Permalink

Priorities and Propaganda

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Research, Personal, Thesis | Comments Off | Permalink

New Website for IDII in Milano

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal | Comments (2) | Permalink

Harold Pinter’s Noble Prize Acceptance Speech

Friday, December 9, 2005

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal | Comments Off | Permalink

Thesis Blog

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal | Comments Off | Permalink

Summer Update

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Written by Dave Chiu | Filed in Personal | Comments Off | Permalink

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