Design expert to critique students’ resources for homeless

How would you design a resource for homeless people? A sort of village? A drop-in shelter? A network of temporary residences provided by individual families?

What are the most important considerations you would need to take into account in your design?

Particularly important to Bradley Quinn, an international author and analyst of design issues, are the ability of the resource to address practical needs, the sustainability of the design and its potential to increase community awareness of homelessness in a community.

Quinn will deliver the School of Human Ecology‘s 2005 Ruth Ketterer Harris Memorial Lecture on Thursday, March 31, on campus. An expert on fashion history and theory, textile design and technology and architecture, Quinn will speak on campus about the intersection of those subjects in “Fashioning Architecture: Fabric, Form and Textile Technology.”

His lecture, free and open to the public, will begin at 5:30 p.m. in L160 Elvehjem Museum, 800 University Ave.

Quinn also has asked UW–Madison students from a number of disciplines to design a resource for homeless people. When he arrives, he will work with the students at a charrette, an intense brainstorming session, to develop a sense of home and place for the homeless in Madison.

One of those students will be Kaleen Enke, a junior majoring in art.

“I’m very interested in how art and design can create positive changes in society,” she says. “Right now I’m thinking about dealing specifically with homeless children and the loss of permanence that comes with the loss of a physical shelter.”

Virginia Boyd, UW–Madison professor of environment, textiles and design and one of the faculty involved in the project, says it’s already having a profound impact on her.

“I have been incredibly moved in observing students’ responses as they prepare to participate,” she says. “They internalize the profound bleakness of families and children in this community whose only sense of home is a box of their things that is moved every week to a different anonymous place.

“Design students are unusually sensitive to the power of the physical environment on people,” she adds. “This project focuses them on how to bring that power in even a small way to people around them who have virtually no power to manage their daily lives. They seem to have made it a mission to do this right – not to get a good grade, but to do the right thing. I think the experience is going to be life-transforming for some students.”

Enke could not agree more. “This project is a great enhancement to my education. We are provided with the opportunity to work collectively with other students on a project stimulated by a real problem affecting the community we live in. It’s exciting to be able to use the creative design skills that we’ve learned on something that actually can have an influence,” she says.

Quinn’s critique of the students’ solutions also will afford an exceptional in a one-of-a-kind educational interface, says Boyd.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to work with an internationally renowned designer on such a personal basis,” she says.

The students will work in small groups, and Quinn will critique their designs on such dimensions as a proposal’s ability to address the practical needs of the homeless, its sustainability and its capacity to increase awareness of the homeless in other segments of society, he says.

Quinn has authored “Mid Century Modern” (2004), “The Fashion of Architecture” (2003), “Techno Fashion” (2003), “Chinese Style” (2003) and more.

For more information, contact Molly Greenfield, (608) 262-1162 or mgreenfield@wisc.edu.