Emily Carr grad design show highlights

Every year, Emily Carr University of Art, Design & Media presents the work of the year’s graduates in early May. It’s a huge party as the city converges on Granville Island for the night. If you need an excuse to visit Vancouver, BC, this is a good one.

Generally, the work from this year’s graduating Industrial Design students leads me to believe that the department is finally owning it’s strong conceptual tendencies. The standout projects were Corners by Misha Olynyk, Nice Fit by Tobias Ottahal & Jeff Werner, Fahem / Modular Tile by Hamza Vora & Raneen Nosh, and The Bathroom by Lydia Cambron & Michelle Fu. Other work worth mentioning: Is this Spoon (?) by Joshua Doherty is an expansive exploration of spoons crossing forms and materials; and the Door Knob Rediscovery project by Jennifer Lee which rethinks door knob shapes to accommodate how we actually use them (sorry, no photos).

Corners explored a series of objects that use two walls or corners as an integral part of the piece. We should all keep an eye on this guy because his work is very good. That’s Misha Olynyk, got it?

Fahem, is a lovely object abstracted from an Arabic character meaning “to understand”, and it made neat shadows. Unfortunately it isn’t a super useful object. Hopefully this team will resolve the project further because I’d love to find a way to have it around.

The other two projects that caught my eye were about objects that encourage interaction. Both very different from each other, but seem to be unified by a style that reminds me of the work done by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby of RCA’s Design Interactions program. I love Dunne and Raby’s work.

Ok, let’s talk about Nice Fit. It’s reason for being is an keen interest in why some products have a nice fit, making them a joy to use. The team developed some principles for what makes a nice fit and produced a table that shows you where objects should fit by actively revealing a place for the objects on the surface –using a vacuum and sensors. Somehow this project felt like it was trying too hard, getting a bit caught up presenting the project -which is a tough balance to strike when product design is presented in an art exhibit format. Regardless, I’m sure these two will be worth checking in on.

The Bathroom was a particularly well resolved project. The prototype was incredible, a full scale material specked bathroom including sink and stool, a stepping stool, a toilet, bath tub and bathmat –shown here with someone crying on it. The forms fit together and for the most part were simple, easy to live with objects.