This past summer I spent a few weeks in the Design Dialogues Workshop. I posted a ton about this back in June, but it was not till today that I realized that a video had been made of the experience. I had kinda forgotten that Roger Remington had been video recording most of the time. A bit long for a blog video, but it is a good look into what the experience was all about.
I am one of those rare graduate students who still makes a bit of time to watch some television. I know… I know… Honestly though, I learn from a good show, story, or plot. Battlestar Galactica, the early Gray’s Anatomy, and the initial seasons of Prison Break, Lost, and 24, are some of the contemporary visual narratives that go beyond the mere entertainment they are meant to provide… and there’s plenty to gain from watching them if you are conscious of this. There are other not so good narratives out there, but it’s harder to admit and share what I see in them in a public manner… ;)
Recently, while watching some of these shows, I noted a change in the commercial advertising landscape: the automotive industry is trying to harness the power of typography and verbal communications to make its pitch to us.
At the end of the fall semester I made a presentation to publicly share with classmates and professors my thoughts, process, and ideas of what I will make my final project to be.
What follows are the slides of such presentation, and the text after each slide are the notes of what I said on each one. This represents my moving forward on this final project, which I hope to conclude by the end of the semester. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which I will call… the final semester.1
Last December, in preparation for the work of the next few months, I prepared an end of semester presentation which I used to share thoughts and ideas about my final project. This presentation, in a way a rite of passage for my graduate growth, provided a stage to externalize some of the ideas, thoughts, and possibilities of my immediate present, while simultaneously opening a moment to reflect about my time in graduate school.
In my original application to graduate school, I questioned if propinquity to my father’s practice and friends had influenced me by injecting an architectural way of thinking, one way or another dependant upon formal, stylistic or structural considerations. At the time I was afraid that was a bad thing, thinking there was a particular way that graphic designers had to think. Today, three semesters into the most immersive design experience of my life so far, I highly value this multidisciplinary background from which I come from. Having been surrounded by an intense and competitive group of people committed to culture and the arts, I now marvel at the common thread that binds them all constantly, whether in conversations or debate: a relentless search for an eloquent expression of order within the reaffirmation of each individual’s particular outlook of the world.
Not deluded by any belief of being able to find my own answers on the subject at such an early stage in my career, my sojourn at NC State has granted me the opportunity to meet, challenge, and be challenged by my peers to elucidate better what I must make the future to be. Here at NC State I have enjoyed the company of a few key people that have had something to say about the world around them, and I have embraced an all-encompassing understanding of the culture of design.
I now have the responsibility of reaching closure to this experience at NC State through my work of a final project, which may prove to be an unthreaded path to venture into at a later stage in life.
1 Text adapted from the original narration of the opening credits in Season 1 of The Twilight Zone television series.
Armando Rigau holds a degree in Philosophy from Georgetown University. Currently he studies at the M.Arch. 1 program at the School of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. Alberto Rigau recently completed his graduate studies in Design at the College of Design in NC State University. Currently he runs a multidisciplinary design studio in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
On Thursday October 8 2009 3M Company of Puerto Rico held a fashion show to promote some of their Post-it products. For the event, estudio interlínea was commissioned to design and execute the event’s visual language… of course, all of it made out of Post-its. —— To make the video more interesting, I used the music track [...] […]
Alberto Rigau designed the commemorative object that was given to the recipients of the 2009 medals in architecture. Puerto Rico’s professional college of architects and landscape architects honors individuals and/or entities who are not directly related to the discipline of architecture but who have contributed to the field in a way that can be evidenced [. […]
Alberto Rigau was recognized by Marvin J Malecha, FAIA and Denise Gonzales Crisp for his contributions to the NC State University College of Design community. He was recognized for his roles as a T.A., a teacher at the College’s Design Camp for aspiring design students, as a designer for the Student Publication and for the [...] […]
