Students wear paper-bag masks in a fundamentals of design class in 1972. (Photograph courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
NC State’s Special Collections Research Center has thousands of images in its online database that you can view.
Do you have an NC State photo you think might make a good photo of the day? Send it to us at alumniblog@gw.ncsu.edu!
College of Design dean Marvin Malecha, who’s also president of the American Institute of Architects, spoke last Friday at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design in San Diego, Calif., where he talked about the future of architecture, the dearth of art and design classes in some high schools and his own experience in a downturn:
“In the early 1970s, we went through a down cycle, and I was not able to get a job as an architect,” said Malecha, 60, who received his architectural degree at Harvard.
Instead, he worked for a company that supplied buildings with devices to protect against lightning strikes.
“It was a valuable skill, and I learned something about a component that goes into a building you have to think about,” he said. “My advice is to stay focused on your dreams, be persistent and find a job like lightning protection that keeps you close to the profession. We need housing, hospitals, schools, research labs; cities are going to need attention. All that comes from people trained in design — architects.”
(Photograph courtesy of NC State News Services)
I grew up in a textile town and had a grandmother and other family members who worked in the mills for decades. Knowing the beating apparel manufacturing has taken, I always smile a little when I see businesses like Raleigh Denim thriving (even if I can’t afford a pair of the jeans). It’s run by the husband-and-wife team of Viktor ’04 and Sarah Lytvinenko ’09. From today’s N&O:
Their passion is a large part of their success. Theirs is an ideal husband-and-wife business partnership, each bringing experience and a different style of energy and enthusiasm. She was studying at N.C. State University’s College of Design and was involved as a designer in the popular Art to Wear fashion show. He was an NCSU business major who taught himself to sew so he could make himself a pair of jeans that fit him the way he wanted them to.
They’re sourcing local, too, getting most of the cotton from the Carolinas and using shuttle looms that ran 60 years ago in Cone Mills’ White Oak plant in Greensboro:
Almost every part of Raleigh Denim is from North Carolina. The jeans are cut and hand-sewn by a crew in a production space in Stewart’s building on Bloodworth Street in Southeast Raleigh. The denim and labels come from Greensboro, the zippers from Oxford, the thread from Mount Holly, and the screen-printed pockets from Raleigh.
In the Autumn issue of NC State, we talked with David Evans ’84, a Washington, D.C.-based photographer who travels the world looking to shoot the unseen, to document life in far-off cultures and to find the familiar in the foreign. Evans started in advertising but migrated to photography. Along the way, he helped to direct the creation of the National Geographic Channel. His work has appeared in National Geographic magazine, and he shoots often for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We have posted a PDF of our photo feature to our Web site. You can see additional images in the slideshow above and read more from Evans below.
Did you feel in danger when you were documenting the possession cult in Venezuela? (Editor’s note: see photo 12 in the slideshow)
Yes and no. They don’t like journalists or photographs. When I first found the violent stuff going on in the mountains — it was a very remote, isolated place — I was chased away several times and threatened with my life. I just kept going back, trying to explain who I was until I was accepted into the inner circle. And then people were used to us and let us work. There were people very opposed to us being there, and because it’s Venezuela’s more poverty-prone population, there’s also a more violence-prone people involved. These are people who after throwing corn on the ground to make these symbols and thrashing around and bleeding and screaming and sweating and stepping all over this stuff were picking up the kernels of corn to cook for dinner. That’s how poor they were. Me walking around with $30,000 of camera equipment strapped to my back, it’s pitch dark in the middle of the jungle with thousands of people in various states of possession. It’s a little worrisome. (more…)
This is Christopher Downey ’84. He’s an architect in San Francisco, Calif., and last year he lost his sight after surgery to remove a brain tumor. In the Autumn issue of NC State, we talked to Downey about his work. We also asked California photographer Tony Deifell to photograph him. Deifell runs a project called Why Do You Do What You Do. For about 10 years, he has been asking people to write on a piece of paper their response to the question “Why do you do what you do?” He then photographs them holding the sheet. While shooting for us, Deifell got the above picture of Downey for his project.
You can read our chat with Downey after the jump. You also can read more about him in Architectural Record, AIA Architect and The San Francisco Chronicle and hear an interview with him from the National Federation of the Blind’s Slam News. And check out Downey’s Web site. (more…)
Seven North Carolina State College School of Design students created the Mini-Camp lightweight camping trailer, seen above, and received a 1964 Alcoa Student Design Merit Award from the Aluminum Company of America. (Photographs courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
NC State’s Special Collections Research Center has thousands of images in its online database that you can view.
Do you have an NC State photo you think might make a good photo of the day? Send it to us at alumniblog@gw.ncsu.edu!
An overhead view of a model and students in an art class in the College of Design in November 1961. (Photograph courtesy of Special Collections, NCSU Libraries)
NC State’s Special Collections Research Center has thousands of images in its online database that you can view.
Do you have an NC State photo you think might make a good photo of the day? Send it to us!
Congratulations to the folks behind The Bain Project, which received one of Independent Weekly’s Indie Arts Award and was featured in the newspaper this week. Daniel Kelly ’03 and Tracy Spencer ’04 organized the project, an exhibit that brought together the work of 12 artists (many NC State alumni) who worked collaboratively for 9 months to build the site-specific art show in the abandoned E.B. Bain Water Treatment Plan.
What made The Bain Project so marvelous wasn’t the building itself, as cool as it is, or what any single person did in it, or even two or three. It was that a dozen artists assembled by Kelly and Spencer, working as a team and subordinating their specific efforts to a shared expression, were able to bring the building to life—”to activate it,” as they often said as they puzzled over how to do it—in ways that were completely authentic and utterly imagined.
Go to our posting in May on The Bain Project to find interviews with Kelly and to get the complete back-story on the show.
(Image courtesy of NC State College of Design)
In May we provided a link to a story in The San Francisco Chronicle about Chris Downey ’84, an architect who suddenly went blind last year because of a benign tumor near his optic nerves. Since then, Downey has sat down with Architectural Record for a Q&A:
What defines good design for blind people? What are some of the ways you reach the other senses?
Blind people can perceive quality design; they know if things are well organized. Sense of light, daylight coming through a window, it’s a nice thing if you’re sighted. If you’re blind, you can understand a space based on the movement of the sun. Tactile quality of materials—you might pick a material that looks great, but so what? [That doesn’t matter] if it doesn’t feel good. If it feels cheap, that’s not necessarily feeling like a very endearing place.
Sometimes it seems like we don’t talk enough about the great work NC State faculty members do and have done. On Sunday, The News & Observer highlighted the work of Will Hooker ’79 MLA, a professor of horticulture. The New York native has taught here for about 30 years and has seen a lot change in that time:
Now environmentalism is all the rage. The green movement on campus is in full swing, with student organizations dedicated to the environment, departments focused on being more eco-friendly and an office assigned to organize environmental projects.
And as if some cruel joke is being played on him, it comes as Hooker is too tired to lead the push.
At 65, after 30 years of teaching landscape horticulture and pushing environmental causes for the university, Hooker could retire whenever he wants. But he can’t. Not yet.
“Apparently I didn’t make a reasonable argument back then,” he said. “But now the students are pushing it.”
And this morning, I found an article in The Beacon-News out of Aurora, Ill., that described an effort to preserve a mural painted by Manuel Bromberg in a post office in Geneva, Ill. Bromberg taught in the College of Design during its early years. As a young man during World War II, he was a member of the U.S. War Artist’s Unit and took photos of the aftermath of the storming of Omaha Beach. Design Observer has an analysis and a collection of his Normandy photos. It’s powerful work. A picture of Bromberg instructing an NC State student is after the jump.
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