Averi Owens puts the block of carved, cut and pencil-marked wood against the sander, slowly shaving away the surface to release the spoon within the wood.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sleepy spoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got the word \u2018sleepy,\u2019 and I kind of thought of the spoon like a body,\u201d she said before donning safety gear and heading into the Fabrication Lab at the University of Virginia\u2019s School of Architecture. \u201cI made the bowl like the head, and the shape like someone sleeping. I\u2019m going to put a thumbhole here so it will be comfortable to hold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Owens, a high school junior from Aldie, is among 40 high school students attending the Design Discovery Youth Summer Program at the Architecture School. The program is divided into two six-day sessions, each with 20 students. It includes design-and-build workshops featuring spoons and inflatable sculpture, tours of active construction sites and lunch-and-learn sessions with professionals.<\/p>\n
The first session was held this week, and the second is slated for June 22-27. UVA architecture students and staff, alumni and professors design and lead the workshops.<\/p>\n
The program\u2019s main goal is to demystify design. So why design a spoon?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful opportunity to take a known object and embed it with a character and attitude,\u201d said Kyle Sturgeon, associate dean of strategic initiatives for the Architecture School and the director of the summer program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn architecture, we bring our own creative voice, but you\u2019re also given a site to steward and a prompt to inform the design of a structure. Here, you\u2019re given a bowl geometry and an attitude to design and make a spoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The block of wood is the site, but no site is exactly the same. Different-shaped spoon bowls are carved into each piece: some are wide but shallow, while others are small but deep. The prompt is a word.<\/p>\n
The spoon\u2019s design is all in the student.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy prompt is \u2018shy,\u2019 and I feel like shy is kind of small, so my spoon is going to be pretty small and kind of narrow,\u201d said Ava Ahaghotu, a high school junior from Bethesda, Maryland. \u201cI thought, if you\u2019re shy, you might not have hard edges, so I\u2019m designing it curvy and kind of delicate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Design, for Sturgeon, is a superpower.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s hugely important in our future. I also think it\u2019s important who wields that power and who gains access and exposure to it,\u201d he said. \u201cFor students, it\u2019s often a matter of exposing them to the ideas. It\u2019s like there\u2019s something within them for them to discover about themselves, something that will ignite them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The word \u201cclumsy\u201d ignited a whole range of thoughts for Dorothy Streit, from Crozet, who had several sketches for her spoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first idea was making it curvy and all over the place, but then I translated the curves into something that became more structured \u2013 which is fine, but it\u2019s not as clumsy, I guess,\u201d she said. \u201cI like coming up with an idea and creating a physical version of it. I do ceramics and stuff, and I\u2019ve always enjoyed the whole design process. I\u2019ve been looking at colleges \u2013 UVA has always been one of my top choices \u2013 and I found this program.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program introduces students to the ideas, skills and language of architecture. Half of the participants are from out of state, many are local, and they come from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds.<\/p>\n
For some, the program is part of the path they choose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m between civil engineering and architecture, so this is definitely going to be one of the factors that play into my final decision. I\u2019m also coming back here for an engineering program,\u201d said Julian Zelaya, from Montgomery County, Maryland. \u201cIt gives me a very well-rounded idea of what to expect from architecture in general, and also at UVA specifically.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Averi Owens puts the block of carved, cut and pencil-marked wood against the sander, slowly shaving away the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-698829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}