William Speakman, who trained at the Akademie St.Joost, is currently exhibiting some of his recent lighting at the 2X2 Projects Gallery in Amsterdam. The lighting makes use of LEDs, wood, paint and tape in a series entitled Experience and Logic Structure.
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- Tags: Design, Led, Lighting, Product Design, Project, Structure, William Speakman
La Tour Awful: The Truth Is Rendered, by Alissa Walker
6 May 2008 Author: zenon In: Design & Products
David Serero wants you to know, first of all, that it was not a hoax. It was not, as many claim, a publicity stunt. And it was certainly not an April Fool’s joke. “We do have this tradition also,” the Paris-based architect told me in an email. “But our project was released three weeks before. Isn’t that a little early?”
For those three weeks, whatever it was unfurled through the design world like gigantic Kevlar petals rippling open atop one of the most iconic structures on the planet. By late March it was common knowledge that Serero Architects’ winning idea had claimed victory in an open competition to temporarily remodel the public reception and access areas for the 120th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower.
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- Tags: Construction, Design, Light, Paris, Project
Where La Laptop Hits El Camino: The OLPC Roll-Out in Peru
6 May 2008 Author: zenon In: Design & Products
After months–nay years–of anticipation, criticism, setbacks and praise, the One Laptop Per Child program is finally taking the diminutive slab of highly-designed tech to its intended audience in a large way. Peru, one of the earliest and strongest supporters of the OLPC, is beginning to ship them in large numbers to some very poor school districts, and MIT Technology Review has a well-researched tale of how it’s all going. The findings are cautiously encouraging.
First and most gladdening, it appears that the laptops are truly ending up in the hands of the students who need them most; several references are made to communities and schools that are poor, but “not poor enough” to participate in the program. Secondly, the point about the raw economic effectiveness of the program is driven home by Oscar Becerra, head educational technologist at Peru’s Ministry of Education:
These tools will land in the hands of first through sixth graders who in many cases never even had books–at home or elsewhere–and whose teachers themselves had little education. They will not come cheap; Peru is spending about $80 million on the laptops–nearly a third of the education budget normally available for capital expenditures–plus about $2 million for teacher training. Becerra characterized the sum as a special appropriation meant to bring schools up to date. “To distribute all these books would cost five times the cost of the machines,” he estimates. “We are reaching the poorest schools in Peru for the first time in history.”
Scrutiny on Peru’s program will be high, but if it works the way the Ministry (and the teachers) are hoping, the delays, price hikes, and exasperation over the “give one, get one” program will become footnotes in one of socially-engaged design’s great success stories.
