My design work varies from the poetic to the pragmatic. With self-initiated projects, I tend to design for the domestic sphere, at the scale of the individual, and often without a lot of technology. My academic projects involve greater ethnographic research and participatory methods and tend toward systems-, service-, and strategic-design. The images below represents the "making" aspect of my design practice, often in collaboration with Stephanie M. Tharp and our studio, materious.
This project is an exploration of the relationship between beauty and vileness—with respect to human waste (excrement) and wastefulness. Scrap PVC sewage and drainage pipes salvaged from a construction site become the raw material for the production of an aesthetic (and functional) domestic object. Inspired by the structural efficiency of bird bones, which must be both strong and light, the form of this lamp visually reflects nature’s logic.
BONE LAMP
Accent lighting
PVC sewage pipe, lamp components
2005
Conceptually, this lamp draws upon bones as residual markers of life, to remind the consumer of the enduring material aspects of products at the end of their useful existence and after they enter into the waste stream.


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