Thursday, September 9, 2010

You got time to click on links, right?!

Oh thank you all so much for the sympathy comments! Its just what I needed! Really, I don't know what it is about comments but they really add so much to the blogging experience! ;) Especially those of you coming out of lurker status. . .

Class today was ... hmmmm.... long. exhausting. overwhelming. eye-openning. interesting. exciting. motivating.

I could go on and on about how great my new instructor is. She's the head of the 2nd year of Interior Design at BCIT. She teaches, I think, 5 of my classes, so the 22 of us in full time will get to know her well, and I can tell, it will be a relationship worth having! I don't even know where to start... she has stopped designing as a career and focused on teaching now, but she also always has her head planning something else as well. Like this summer she organized a design tour of London with a group of 8; she invited  "huge, internationally known, Interior Designers" and all showed up except one. They gave seminars and toured the city from a design perspective. She also has taken on the task of introducing BCIT students to the concept of Biomimicry; this year will be the second year with it in our course content. She's taken seminars on it through Janine Benyus - and you need to take twenty minutes to go watch her talk about it - and is convinced that this is the way to design, to solve every problem, and will be HUGE (instead of "eco-efficiency") in a good, big way. She also foresees biologists being present at the table of designers, architects, clients, engineers, etc. in the initial planning stages of a built project. So she is also developing a 2-year diploma program in Biomimcry to begin at BCIT (currently only available at the Toronto College of Art and Design, as far as Canada goes). We are so lucky to get to learn more about this as it is still somewhat in its infancy, and will be such a valuable asset for us.

She also has extended education in lighting design and so is able to teach us a lot - so valuable, as in this field, the lighting aspect really needs more course room than it gets! She has made sure that BCIT gets 95% more education in lighting than any other Interior Design courses available in Western Canada. What else...she set up a program where students went and studied in Italy a few years ago, in a remote area that didn't even have so much as a postcard available to buy. She then decided to buy a little cottage there because she fell so in love (the photo of the view she showed us was amazing). Today she was wearing a necklace made of bycicle inner tubes and old wire. It was all spiky and scary, and was pretty awesome. She is not the type of instructor who teaches the curriculum the same over and over and over again, she likes to change it up and keep herself interested, therefore, new stuff is always coming up. Cool. So now that you have a little picture of her...

Today in the morning we had Materials2. We learned lots about "efficiency" as taught in "Cradle to Cradle" (get yourself a copy! Or watch him talk on Ted) and then Biomimicry. We watched a video on landfills in the US, which was pretty insightful. It made me think: how many things do I touch in a day that I will throw "away". "Away" really is quite the concept, as it really can't go too far!
I challenge you to count yours! Every paper towel. Coffee cup. Tissue. Cheese wrapper. Napkin. Razor. Soap bottle.

I am super excited about this class because we will really analyse what "green" is and which building materials actually are, and which ones just tout the "chlorine free" or "green" or "natural" or "pesticide-free" horns. . . not to be cynical, but find out what they DO have in them, where they DO come from, how they ARE made... that means a lot more. The other assignment we have for that class is to recycle a found object or piece of garbage, make it desireable and new again, and they will be auctioned off at the 2nd annual BCIT Farmers & Artisan Market on October 8th. All proceeds will go to charity. We're also going on a tour of the Vancouver Landfill in a couple of weeks. We'll be goin to the Gaining Ground Conference (we get to pick which seminars we attend), HOK offices, participating in the Canadian IDEC competition, and we will also go to a green roof seminar.
(yes, all this just for materials class!)

Sooo much to think about, all buzzing around in my brain. And thats not to mention the Lighting class that was this afternoon (lots of review and new knowledge) and AutoCAD (the 2011 progam seems to be giving me lots of trouble. ugh.).

I think I am going to start a blog where I share my Interior Design projects, assignments, inspiration and ideas more. I feel like it needs to be a bit seperate, and less personal, so I will post that here soon.

Thanks for reading on! Sorry, I didn't mean to make this go on forever, but think how crowded it must be in my brain right now! Now go get educated by Ted!

5 comments:

Wade and Tara said...

wow sooo much reading!! haha but sounds like FUN!! please keep the updates a comin'!

Terrylynne said...

Phew - I'm exhausted just reading your blog!! I can't wait to hear more....will go to all the links tonight when I have more time!! Sounds like you are one lucky lady to have that instructer - enjoy!!

☼Shanna said...

Wow... fascinating! I can't wait for future updates:)

Leif and Laura said...

A great teacher makes ALL the difference. Lucky you! I'd love to keep hearing about the new things you're learning!

Unknown said...

I need help with my lighting....give me your top 5 tips when thinking about lighting in the home!!??