Our family’s story told through design

Posted: March 4th, 2010 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: DesignCulture, DesignThinking, DesignWork, Personal, Typography | Tags: , , , , , , , | No Comments »

This past February 7th, Magacín, El Nuevo Día’s Sunday magazine asked my father to write about one of the most important design traditions in our family: the design of wedding anniversary commemorative bracelets. Read the rest of this entry »


From sketch to completion through a collaborative design process

Posted: February 14th, 2010 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: Architecture, DesignCulture, DesignProfession, DesignThinking, DesignWork, Personal | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »


Sketch for a residential garage door.


Completed design, worked in conjunction with architect in training, Celina Bocanegra.

I spent most of the last two years at the NC State College of Design thinking, talking and ideating about the design process. As a student, most of my efforts, be it the look into Elemental’s intervention at Iquique, or the speculation over the future of our digital identities, among others, were all framed to dissect design process. On a class-level, the explorations surrounding the issues of collaboration or a social problem such as water consumption also pursued similar ends. Today, as a working designer, I find myself re-learning my ways of working, and how these relate to my design process, and that of others.
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Spaces that don’t exist, yet they really do

Posted: February 2nd, 2010 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: Architecture, DesignThinking, Personal, Photography | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

This past week, via Jason Alejandro of Made by Archetype, I was made aware of this wonderful creation which, in more than one instance, made me question the truthfulness of the reality that it presented. It is remarkable to see the work of someone who can manipulate softwares to generate such great work. If you have not seen it, give yourself 10mins of peaceful watching…


An unexpected moment in experience design

Posted: January 29th, 2010 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: ContemporaryCulture, DesignThinking, Personal | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »


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Yesterday I placed an order off Film Baby, an online independent film distributor. Like in any other seller, I chose what I wanted to purchase, added to a cart, checked out, and within minutes I received an order confirmation email. A few hours later, I was alerted that my movie was already under way. Upon review of the shipment confirmation, I found an unexpected surprise in the text: humor and personality.

Please rest assured that we’ve taken great care in the shipping of your DVD.

We hold true to an ancient DVD shipping tradition passed down for over 5000 years. This very intensive practice is only achieved after years of training, meditation, purity of mind, and deep breathing exercises.

After a rigorous 17 step process of verifying the authenticity of your DVD, we donned silk gloves and placed it into a sacred box made of magic and lined with Unicorn fur, tied the box with a strand of Gypsy hair, and wrapped the whole thing in a snazzy looking faux gold leaf paper, with elm leaf inlay from Costco. Unfortunately, by the time it gets to you, all of that fancy stuff will likely have been picked clean by the greedy postal service employees. Please don’t be surprised to see just a plain cardboard box.

It’s surprising to see how my opinion of a seller can be so suddenly shaped but such a small detail. I now only wonder if this is the only message, or if there is more than one. I guess I will have to order another movie to find out…


13 Years of Architecture Research Projects

Posted: December 4th, 2009 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: Architecture, DesignResearch, DesignThinking, DesignWriting, Personal | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »
Cover | Indice Anotado, 13 years of Mid-Career research investigations from architecture students of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.

Cover | Indice Anotado, 13 years of Mid-Career research investigations from architecture students of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.

Jorge Rigau, FAIA, founding dean of the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico; Miguel Rodríguez, current dean; and funds from the Historic Preservation Office of Puerto Rico have made it possible to publish the Índice Anotado (Anotated Index). This publication documents the Mid-Career research investigations completed by students at the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.

These texts were completed between 1996 and 2009 and executed by students at the end of the 3rd year of study. Their topical range is extensive, and most are complemented by photographs, drawings and inventories that will be useful to others following similar lines of research. While the collection is mainly about Puerto Rico, some projects look at Cuba, Dominican Republic and Panamá.

The index is organized by themes, and while some overlap, researchers will have to asses the focus areas of each of their topics to find relevant investigations. The documents are written in Spanish, but the the index provides a blurb about each of them in English to expand the ideas to a larger audience.

Copies of the full writings will be available for public consult at the library of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and at the library of the Historic Preservation Office. The Índice Anotado has been designed by Alberto Rigau and published by Editorial Revés.


Post-its as writing

Posted: October 11th, 2009 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: DesignThinking, Personal, Photography | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments »

This past thursday 3M Company of Puerto Rico held a fashion show to promote some of their Post-it products. For the event, I was commissioned by my friend Lorna Ramos to execute the event’s decoration… all of it made out of Post-its.

This video documents, in under 2 mins, the 15 hours spent playing with squares of colored paper. For photos of the setup, see here.

I want to point out that frame after frame you will consistently notice the collaboration of Miguel Ortiz, a young architect with whom I am currently working on a series of projects. I also want to thank Lorna, Juan Carlos Rubayo, Denisse Rodríguez and Sofía Acevedo who came out to help.

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To make the video more interesting, I used the music track Again and Again by The Bird and the Bee. As of October 11, 2009, the official website of the band is offline and the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine was not useful in accessing its contact information. I will keep trying so that I can ask for a formal permit to keep the song in the video. If it is not granted, the song will be removed immediately.


::] Schemas confused by a failure in design thinking [::

Posted: June 28th, 2009 | Author: ajrigau | Filed under: DesignCulture, DesignThinking, Personal, Teaching | 2 Comments »

Last semester I taught a seminar course at NC State University’s College of Design where I asked the students to identify, as part of a weekly assignment, two instances: one where design thinking had thrived and another where it had failed. Towards the end of the course, students had collected a series moments that proved that only a simple nudge was required, many times at no extra cost to anyone, to set a series of problems right. Recently, I came across one such example.

Last week, due to the birth of my nephew Gonzalo, I got to spend some time in the maternity wing of the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital. It was indeed a short time, yet most of it was spent waiting for the baby to make its appearance. I had time to look around. A few things came to my attention, but this particular emergency door stood out the most out of anything else that caught my eye.

An <del>Emergency</del> Door in the Maternity Wing of the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

An Emergency Door in the Maternity Wing of the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The subject in question is located on a hallway directly across from the nursery of newborns. As you can imagine, a lot of people congregate in this area. Upon further investigation, four things were of interest to me:

foto-3c

1) The standard, internationally used emergency exit sign;
2) An ink-jet printed sign which informs that this door does not provide access to the ground floor;
3) The familiar red sign that indicates to use this exit in case of an emergency; and
4) A photocopy which explains, in paragraphs, what to do in case of a problem.

Can you imagine what would happen, God forbid, if there was an emergency in this space?
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