This is an excerpt from Joseph Nally’s larger thesis portfolio titled “Post-Elegance: Experimental Aesthetics in Tabletop Game Design.” It is a part of the Class of 2020’s graduate thesis presentation “Statements from Isolation.” Nineteen eighty-six was an important year in the development of games. Two obscure things happened: the mass publication of Heimlich & Co. by […]

This is an excerpt from Alicia Olushola Ajayi’s larger thesis portfolio titled “We Call It Freedom Village: Brooklyn, Illinois’ Radical Tactics of Black Place-making.” It is a part of the Class of 2020’s graduate thesis presentation “Statements from Isolation.” Introduction Brooklyn, Illinois, sits directly across from St. Louis, Missouri, on the east bank of the Mississippi […]

This is an excerpt from Ridhima Sharma’s larger thesis portfolio titled “Tha: From Preserving Sites to Self.” It is a part of the Class of 2020’s graduate thesis presentation “Statements from Isolation.” What is this India, apart from her physical and geographical aspects? [. . . ]How did she lose that old strength, and has she […]

This is an excerpt from Galina Yordanov’s larger thesis portfolio titled “Driving Through Division: The Car as Actor in Lebanese Society.” It is a part of the Class of 2020’s graduate thesis presentation “Statements from Isolation.” The Intimate Space The average passenger vehicle fits four or five people, and is furnished to accomodate the needs […]

This is an excerpt from Deena Denaro’s larger thesis portfolio titled “The Rise of the Design Procedural: Exploring Design’s Narrative Agency in Serial Television.” It is a part of the Class of 2020’s graduate thesis presentation “Statements from Isolation.” Is that a fish tank? A distressed Texas twang is punctuated by the well-timed bell of an […]

This is an excerpt from Polly Adams’s larger thesis portfolio titled “Enter Through the Gift Shop: Designed Objects, Images, and Identity in New York City’s Art Museums.” It is a part of the Class of 2020’s graduate thesis presentation “Statements from Isolation.” A Brave New World While most of the world has screeched to a halt […]

This is the introduction to the Class of 2019 publication, Everything That Rises: Thinking about Design in Precarious Times. The publication contains essays and excerpts from the students’ thesis research and was an accompaniment to Precarious: The 2019 Graduate Symposium held on May 13, 2019 at the SVA Theatre.

Within an American penal system intending to remove individuality through the enforcement of uniformity, incarcerated individuals’ clothing in fact functions as a site of negotiation, on which articulations of identity and institution combat, push-pull, and give-take symbolic ownership of the body.

Experts agree that civic engagement is receding across the globe. To improve civic discourse and sustain democratic societies, active interventions are required. But these interventions cannot be expected to come from governments, who rather prefer less scrutiny from a highly engaged citizenry. Instead, interventions need to be pursued by civilians vying to protect democracy.

As an object, it is subtle. It is made of porcelain and hand-painted with a delicate pink floral motif. It is shaped like a small tea saucer with an attached pedestal, featuring three tiers of tiny, hollow cylinders jutting upwards, waiting to be filled, like vases for microscopic roses.

Codename: “What if something had appeared that you had never known, but only imagined?” Context: There is no time. There is no space. When will we talk—face to face? Keywords: un/consciousness, fiction, love, cosmos, relationship, humanity, distance 

One in five American adults use at least one psychiatric medication. In 2010, 11 percent of adult men and 21 percent of adult women revealed they were taking antidepressants. Aldous Huxley, the early 20th century English writer and philosopher, foresaw that we seem to be entering the age of mockery; one example being that medical research has “advanced” to the point where few people are considered healthy.

What does it mean to be Kuwaiti? A seemingly straightforward question—yet, one of present urgency. In only 14 years, the population of Kuwait exploded, doubling in size from 2.1 million people to its current population of over 4 million people, of whom 70% are not Kuwaiti.

Wayfinding is not just a beautiful map and well-designed signs. It’s a practice that should aim to encourage humans’ abilities to find their paths and promote urban mobility. This feels especially imperative since 55 percent of the world’s population is thought to be living in an urban area or city, with that figure set to rise to 68 percent over the coming decades.

The Classic Norwegian Roasted Salmon (or CNRS for brevity’s sake) – of the “Changing Seas: Responsible Seafood” line of products from the “Blue Circle” organization, which serves its commodities exclusively through Whole Foods Market, a subsidiary of a corporation known as Amazon – is a sophisticated truth.

There is really only one word in the English language to describe the top enclosure of a building: roof. No synonyms of “roof” are directly equivalent, but they are revealing. Some, like “ceiling” or “parapet,” describe parts of a roof. But others, like “house,” “shelter,” or “crown,” point to the essentiality of the element. To put a roof over your head means to be housed, to have shelter. This is arguably the fundamental purpose of architecture.

As I walk through the city of New York, I pass by a multitude of flags which conjure up a sense of intensity. Their movements caused by the wind, their reverberating aura, embody my thoughts. I gaze at these moving images. I touch them with my eyes, I hear their waving sounds with my gaze. 4,600 miles away from my homeland, the presence of the American flag is constantly animating my memory, my identity, and reminding me where I am located geographically, emotionally, and culturally.

At the front of Mrs. Balliett’s second-grade classroom at The Buckley School, an independent all-boys school in Upper Manhattan, is a colorful, wall-to-wall rug. It is deep blue with multicolored polka dots woven into 100% Invista type 6.6. Continuous Filament Nylon. 

How does physical space impact the people in a coworking space? What is the experience that coworking spaces try to create? Coworking space proprietors use the space as a strategic marketing tool, as a community-based experience. Great, this is exactly what the isolated individual who works all day from home, feels they are missing. The […]

Revenue at The Container Store (TCS) was $820 million in 2016, a healthy 5.1% slice of the $16 billion US retail home organization industry, making it the category leader.  While total revenue did shrink slightly from the previous year, a development the company attributes to challenges faced by all US brick-and-mortar retailers, TCS predicts that […]