STUDIO SESSION: Project H: Design for Education at the California College of Arts
San Francisco
June 2- August 2, 2008
Instructor: Emily Pilloton

Industrial design has traditionally been seen as a profession that creates everyday consumer objects. This course provides the unique opportunity to learn about industrial design while working on a real-life project that exemplifies how industrial design can be used to change the world. Based on two school case studies—a local Northern California public school district and a school for HIV/AIDS orphans in Southern Uganda, this course applies industrial design as a tool to address social issues and improve lives.

Project H: Design for Education is a studio-based collaboration between students, designers, educators, and elementary school children to design a globally-applicable educational product. Through individual, team, and class projects, students will research and frame a design problem in an elementary educational context, conceptualize potential solutions, review each others’ work, present ideas to guests and the public, and solidify a concept as a produceable and marketable product for the case study and wider-scale implementation.

Over the course of the project and beyond, students may have the opportunity to consult with actual manufacturers and retailers to explore the potential production and distribution of viable design solutions. Project H Design, as an organization, champions product design initiatives for Humanity, Habitats, Health, and Happiness, and will provide the umbrella for discussions and juried reviews with local product designers, teachers, children, and manufacturers. Design can change the world, and the Project H: Design for Education studio will work with that mantra in mind.

Check out the full course description on the CCA site here, and get information on how to register through CCA here.

EVENT: HauteGreen exhibition and moderated panel
New York
May 16-18, 2008
Panel moderated by Emily Pilloton (Project H): May 17th, 2pm

HauteGreen, New York design week’s green design exhibition, will focus on humanitarian design this year, produced by Project H Design and Inhabitat.HauteGREEN is back with an exhibition of the best in sustainable design for the contemporary home, showcasing furniture, lighting, and accessories that are both aesthetically pleasing and eco-friendly. Held in Manhattan during the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, HauteGREEN 2008 will feature a curated collection of over 70 pieces, selected from a pool of 241 submissions from across the US and 20 other countries around the world. Spotlighting design that is beautiful, functional, and sustainable, HauteGREEN 2008 promises to be one of the highlights of New York Design Week.

LECTURE: International Contemporary Furniture Fair, New York Design Week
New York
May 19, 2008

Design Entrepreneurs: Make Good and Prosper

For its annual, exceptionally stimulating design think tank, Metropolis explores the fundamental human concern for Doing Well and Doing Good within the parameters of political, social, and personal values. A dazzling roster of speakers and moderator Susan S. Szenasy, Metropolis editor in chief, explore the many and varied ways that successful business ventures can be good for the environment and society, as well as the individual’s body and soul.

Keynote speaker Fritz Haeg, the architect, educator, provocateur and author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, newly released by Metropolis Books, delivers the first ever Horace Havemeyer III Education Legacy Fund lecture. Established by the New York Metropolitan Chapter of ASID, the Legacy Fund recognizes Havemeyer’s abiding contributions to design, architecture, and sustainability as Metropolis’s founder and publisher.

Conference speakers have professional and personal agendas for both doing well and doing good and individual insights to share. In addition to Haeg, the line-up includes the always innovative Yves Béhar, founder of fuseprojects; Ron Sheldon, vice president, Development & Construction/Technical Services, of the imaginative and design-centric Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group; Nina Smith, executive director of RugMark USA, an international nonprofit devoted to building schools, programs, and opportunities for children by ending child labor in South Asia’s handmade carpet industry; Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H Design, a charitable organization that supports, inspires, and delivers life-improving humanitarian product design solutions to global communities in need; and Tanu Kumar, director of business services for the New York Industrial Retention Network, a citywide not-for-profit with principles of social and environmental justice that’s devoted to strengthening Gotham’s manufacturing sector, and researching and advocating on behalf of New York City’s manufacturing community.