Green Studio

This program is for people who are drawn to the challenges and the satisfactions of creating and building - designers and artists - who want to do so with sustainable means. Can you make objects and environments that are expressive and compelling, purposeful and beautiful, using ways that respect both natural cycles and living communities? How do you justify your choices and measure your success? How do these things and places you make fit into sustaining and sustainable ways of living, for you and others? Sustainable design is emerging as a holistic problem solving methodology, inclusive rather than exclusive, that requires visual, verbal, and quantitative skills, creativity, flexibility, and a commitment to finding and implementing more integral and meaningful ways of inhabiting our world.

Green Studio will combine intensive 2D and 3D studio work with supporting reading, research, and writing on philosophies of sustainability, materials and construction science, landscape studies. environmental art and design history, and community dynamics - plus field trips, seminars and critiques. We will engage our work as art, science, expression and service, challenging such distinctions and looking for commonalities of approach and meaning. Fall quarter work will address drawing and design skills, thinking in three dimensions, wood and metal shop skills, site survey and mapping skills, ecologies of landscapes and materials, historical and philosophical contexts for the work, and the question of a sustainable life. Projects will include joinery prototypes with mixed materials, a site survey project and an indoor-scaled lighting, furnishing or sculpture project. Winter quarter we will expand our skills and knowledge base, and address larger scaled works - indoor or outdoor furnishings, construction system prototypes, site specific sculpture, or small-scale shelter. We will also begin identifying and preparing for Spring quarter work - small-group or individual projects that are grounded in real-world site and community contexts, carefully researched and realized. Project possibilities include improving particular social spaces on campus, water front park and streetscape planning in Olympia, master planning for the campus Organic Farm or proposed Sculpture Walk, assistance on low-cost housing, progress on "zero-runoff" for campus storm water, or restoration of brown field sites in Thurston County. These projects will involve students in real-world processes, constraints, and trade-offs - essential experience for those who wish to make a difference.

Winter quarter recommendations: At least one quarter of college level drawing, graphics, or 2D art; at least one quarter of college level environmental science. Winter quarter prerequisites: Read the fall quarter texts listed.

Steele, James. Ecological Architecture: A Critical History. Thames & Hudson, 2005. 0500342105

McHarg, Ian. Design with Nature. New York: Wiley, 1995. 047111460X

Dramstad, Wenche; Olson, James; and Forman, Richard. Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1996. 1559635142

Ching, Frank. Design Drawing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998. 0471286540

Students with no drawing background should complete the following drawing exercises from Ching for Week 1 of Winter quarter, using 18"x24" sheets of good quality drawing paper: Exercises 1.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.9, 4.20, 12.4.

Spring Quarter Program Work: In the Spring Quarter, students' primary work will be ongoing and new small group, community-based design and construction projects. (Current projects include a classroom/lab building for the Organic Farm, benches for the Evergreen Gallery, a wood drying shed, and others). New students may join established project groups or propose new sustainable design or environmental art-related, small group projects (new projects will be subject to approval by faculty prior to the start of the quarter). Whole group activities will include a weekly Work Review (group project check-ins), a Recycle Studio (a small-scale functional design project using only recycled materials) and a ReThink session (unpacking a reading or film, or taking a field trip). Students will be expected to keep work logs, write project and research reports, and make regular journal and sketchbook entries.

Serious students will leave Green Studio with new design and building skills, a deeper understanding of sites and materials, and a fuller sense of the social, environmental and personal implications of "sustainability" in designing our place in the world. We'll aim to have "serious fun" in the studio, and to make works that are expressive arguments for positive awareness and change.