Diseñar con luz y sentido

Patiño Santa, Luis Fernando

Diseñar con luz y sentido: un proyecto de diseño de luminarias inspirado en El principito, de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry / Luis Fernando Patiño Santa, Nathalia Franco Pérez – Medellín: Editorial EAFIT, 2018.

248 p.; 22 cm. -- (Colección Académica)

ISBN 978-958-720-540-4

1. Lámparas – Diseño y construcción. 2. Diseño de productos – Metodología. 3. Diseño – Enseñanza. I. Franco Pérez, Nathalia. II. Tít. III. Serie.

749.63 cd 23 ed.

P298

Universidad EAFIT – Centro Cultural Biblioteca Luis Echavarría Villegas

Designing with Light and Meaning

A Design Project for Luminaries Inspired by The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

First edition: september, 2018

© Luis Fernando Patiño Santa, Nathalia Franco Pérez

© Editorial EAFIT

Carrera 49 No. 7 sur - 50

Tel.: 261 95 23, Medellín

http://www.eafit.edu.co/fondoeditorial

Email: fonedit@eafit.edu.co

ISBN: 978-958-720-540-4

Editor: Marcel René Gutiérrez

Layout and cover design: Maria Luisa Eslava

Cover luminaire: Tomás Loaiza Jiménez

Photography: Robinson Henao

Translation: Jeffrey Winchell

Universidad EAFIT | Supervised by The Ministry of Education of Colombia. Recognized as a University by Decree Number 759, May 6, 1971, enacted by the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia. Recognition of legal personhood: Number 75, June 28, 1960, issued by the Government of Antioquia. Institutionally accredited by the Ministry of National Education until 2026, through Resolution 2158 issued February 13, 2018.

Total or partial reproduction of this publication, by whatever means or procedure, without the editorial’s written permission is prohibited

Diseño epub: Hipertexto — Netizen Digital Solutions

We dedicate this book to the students and professors who participated in this lamp design project inspired by The Little Prince and in particular to the student Sofía Cortés Alzate, who left behind a glimmer of light as lovely and delicate as the stars and confirmed with her parting that “what is essential is invisible to the eye”

Content

Prologue

Introduction

Product Design Engineering

Center for Integrity

Department of Artistic Development

Chapter 1: Designing with Meaning

Teaching Design: A Challenge in This Era

Planning the Pedagogical Strategy: Designing with the Intangible

A Passionate Leitmotif: Choosing a Universal Inspiration

Chapter 2: The Methodology: A Step by Step Inner Journey

Week 1. Presentation of the Brief and Introduction to the Exercise

Week 2. Defining the Concept: Bonding with What Is Essential

Week 3. Development of Ideas: Relying on Techniques and Materials

Origami Workshop: The Folding and Translucency of Paper

Jewelry Workshop: Exploration of the Properties of Metal

Wood Workshop: Unions, Aesthetics and Resistance

Week 4. Embodiment: Light as a Design Tool

Types of Luminous Sources

Types of Light

The Effects of Light on Materials

Week 5. Detailed Design: Scale and Proportion

Week 6. Materialization: Building, Verifying and Evaluating

Week 7. Staging: The Light Is On, Version IV

Conclusions: What the Exercise Taught Us

The Motivation Thermometer

What Did the Luminaire Exercise Mean to the Student?

What Did It Mean to the Professors Who Participated in the Exercise and in the Event?

Catalogue

Alejandra María Martínez Ocampo – Lil Prin

Alejandro Toro Rico – Unique Paper

Ana Sofía Victoria Galán – Eleven

Andrea Juliana Cely Almeyda – Eodem

Andrés Fernández Gómez – Amiblé

Camila Builes Bernal – Hariq

Camila Martínez Arias – Lamp

Camilo González Pérez – Devermont

Carolina Ríos Botero – Ortu

Catalina Restrepo Betancur – Pagsuporta

Daniel Pérez Paredes – Nord

Daniel Vega Botero – Mariposa

Daniela Restrepo Montoya – Vendimia

Elisa Estrada Londoño – Hamal

Estefanía Barreneche Molina – Oprimida

Estefanía Suárez Arango – Fleur de Lis

Isaac David Jaraba García – Friendship Lamp

Isabella Castro Sáenz – Liens

Juan Camilo Ospina Piedrahíta – Zapo

Juan Pablo Jaramillo Maya – Tomodashikitsune

Juanita Arbeláez Castaño – Cross Lamp

Julián Andrés Mora Salamanca – Au Delà

Laura Bustamante Restrepo – Star Light

Luis Guillermo Osorio Rodríguez – Attaché

Luz María Bustamante Ossa – Nauj Lamp

Manuela Jaramillo Correa – Amicitia

Marcela Ossaba Restrepo – Bream

María Antonia Granada Granada – KUP

Maria Fernanda Pérez Hernández – Fierté

María Isabel Gómez Ramírez – The Last Trip

María José Foronda Campuzano – Exvoto

María Paula Murillo Loaiza – Cosmos

Maria Valentina Salas Vargas – Renard

Mariana Sierra Saldarriaga – Deserto

Natalia Correa Machado – Vios

Natalia Franco Gutiérrez – Tala

Nicolás Caycedo Toro – Ser

Paulina Giraldo Zuluaga – Amitié

Ricardo Alberto Camargo Piedrahíta – Lien

Rosario Álvarez Bermúdez – Cristal Rose

Santiago Henao Agudelo – Deld

Santiago Montoya Arbeláez – Tomrêve

Sara María Hincapié Restrepo – Racines

Sarah Rodríguez Gómez – Dolly

Sebastián Gómez Ramírez – Ster Lag

Sofía Betancur Silva – Eolo

Sofía Cortés Alzate – Stella

Sonia Flórez López – Espoir

Tomás Loaiza Jiménez – Beam Desert

Valentina Giraldo Ramírez – Aian

Valentina González Sánchez – Aspid Lamp

Valentina Marín Sánchez – Volar

Valentina Mesa Giraldo – Ledgrud

Valentina Simmonds Tamayo – Fleur

Zarina Andrea Ayala Castro – Reflet

Bibliography

Notes

Prologue

When an atom is observed, it appears in space as a particle, and when the observer moves away, it disappears. It is a matter of quantum physics. This is what good projects are like: they appear when several people begin to think about them and dedicate their energy and motivation to them and continue if there is perseverance and profound dedication. In this case, the luminaires inspired by The Little Prince presented in this book and created through a design exercise in the Project 2 course, are imbued with values, knowledge, techniques and the love of one’s work. It is an unexpected, fresh and creative exercise for new generations who want to learn in a different way.

This book is the materialization of an encounter between two ideas: the first is how to teach design by motivating the students to learn, and the other is how to reflect on integrity in classrooms by designing with meaning. It is the testimony of an unforgettable exercise because it was engraved into hearts of those who participated in it. It reached our core, it pierced our hearts and will always be remembered as a great challenge for the Product Design Engineering (PDE) professors, the students, and the people who collaborated. It was essential to tell this story, so that it would remain as an academic testimony of how to innovate in the classroom and how to unite product design and integrity in a freshman year course in a challenging major such as PDE.

Thus, this book is a travel log that narrates how the exercise began, how it was developed and what the results were. The introduction explains which departments at Universidad EAFIT participated in the project and why they coordinated their efforts to give it life. Chapter 1 describes what is meant by designing with meaning, from a universal inspiration and with something as immaterial as light. Chapter 2 narrates the development of the exercise, its pedagogical strategy, and the most important findings. Finally, the conclusions reflect on the process from the standpoint of integrity and results presented by the students. The book concludes with photographs of the luminaries as a catalog.

The design process is infinite, and you can always innovate by proposing new challenges. We hope that this book will be a source of inspiration to anyone who holds and examines it, skims through it, or reads it carefully. It is an invitation to enter the world of creativity, design and humanity. It is a point of inflection to return to the understanding that “what is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

Introduction

Uniting efforts, building a team, and developing projects with an interdisciplinary approach is –clearly– a winning bet that can yield much fruit. This notion gave birth to the joint work between the Project 2 course, a subject that is part of the freshman year of PDE, the Center for Integrity and the Department of Artistic Development. In this spirit of cooperation, these three departments joined together to accompany the students in the design of a floor lamp, inspired by the book The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The role of each department within the University and its role in the project is explained below.

Product Design Engineering

Product design engineering is the term used to define the profession of the people who design and develop products from the standpoint of the end user and industrial production. In addition to the technical and economic performance of the products, they must be novel, easy to understand and operate, and capable of generating a visual and aesthetic appeal to successfully compete in the market (see Figure 1). In this respect, product design engineering merges design factors, which make a product desired by users; engineering factors, which guarantee its technological feasibility and; finally, market factors, which support the product’s viability as a business.

Figure 1. Profile of a Product Design Engineer

Profile of a Product Design Engineer

To achieve this level of professional training, PDE has an integrated factor area of study. The objective of this area is the integration of all the program’s study areas through their practical application in the development of a product design project. Consequently, using current theoretical and practical training principles of the university, this area seeks to integrate engineering, design, marketing and contextual factors, while favoring learning methods and employing them within a methodology to solve problems.

Project 2 is a design course that is part of the integrated factor area of the major’s second semester. It is meant to be the focal point of the semester. The course has a common structure based on three fundamental elements that define its themes, scope and methodological strategies: the pedagogical objective of the project, the context, and the design and construction of artifacts, which are described below.

• The pedagogical objective of the project: the project is the focal point and the ultimate aim of all the design exercises that are developed during the course. In this case, the pedagogical objective of Project 2 is for the students to become metacognitive, that is to say, to reflect on their own design processes. The goal is to train the students in technical and aesthetic elements and user needs.

• The context: is the environment in which the project is framed, and which allows the student to understand the problems that arise in the various segments of design in general. In this case, the work is carried out in the context of a home, in a category of artifacts that are characteristic to the major: furniture.

• The design and construction of artifacts: the purpose of this element is for the students to acquire and apply technical and formal knowledge in solving problems related to the design context that has been defined for the exercise. Two exercises are developed in the course: a standing luminaire and a piece of furniture for a specific user.

Center for Integrity

In 2011, Universidad EAFIT started to develop a program of academic integrity with the idea of reducing academic fraud and promoting a culture of integrity. The program did not only seek to promote the culture of integrity in the classroom, but also in several spheres of life of those who were part of the EAFIT community. The project –called, “Atreverse a Pensar,” (Dare to Think in English)– designed a strong communicational component which effectively gave visibility to issue of integrity at the University. Additionally, an educational component was created with the idea of taking ethical reflection into the classroom. However, despite multiple efforts such as: conferences with experts, talks, film forums and studies, which served as a thermometer for academic honesty within the institution, the project directors understood that changing behavior is very complex and implied a longer-term program.

From the beginning, the members of the program have believed that communication plays an important role when it comes to highlighting integrity, being the controversial issue that it is. It was essential that the entire university community knew about the institution’s commitment to academic integrity. In this vein, they were aware that powerful and provocative messages on billboards, posters and virtual cards would be of great help to achieve that goal. Likewise, they intuited that the space and conditions for a genuine, profound reflection to be made, only existed within the singularity that emerged in each of the courses taught at the university, where a very special professor-student relationship could be built.

Over time, there were cases in which professors from EAFIT’s six schools (Administration, Engineering, Law, Humanities, Economics and Finance, and Sciences) effectively included the question of integrity at some point during the course and invited the students to question their decisions in moral terms. The students were invited to analyze business case studies in the light of ethics and to reflect on corruption as daily practice which has taken root in Colombian politics and – to some extent – the sphere of private enterprises.

The overall result after six years of the implementation of Dare to Think was positive. On one hand, there was a joy that this genuine desire to lead a project of applied ethics had been carried out at Universidad EAFIT. On the other hand, the deeper knowledge of the phenomenon of academic integrity – thanks to the lessons from all the years of work – required a position of greater commitment to continue the efforts, which would need a thought process with a more strategic look and a long-term horizon.

Thus, in July of 2016, the Center for Integrity was born and officially inaugurated on February 23, 2017. The ceremony was honored by the presence of the Spanish philosopher, Adela Cortina, who keynoted a conference called, “Education from Being: The Sense of Ethics in the Construction of a Fair and Inclusive Society. Having been established as a Center, working with professors and students began to take on a special relevance. For this reason, the Center’s founding principles include three lines of action: The Educational line, the Research line, and the Social Projection line.

In the educational line, the main purpose is to provide support to professors and students so that the teaching and learning experience is significant and transcendent in terms of being, knowledge and know-how. From this educational perspective, the Center for Integrity linked up with the Project 2 course at the beginning of the second semester of 2017. This was done with the aim of accompanying the luminaire design exercise during seven academic weeks, through a reflection on ethics based on The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Department of Artistic Development

The Department of Artistic Development, an area assigned to the Department of Human Development and University Wellbeing, is a place to discover oneself, to express cultural and artistic skills in a fun way, and to participate in an introspection oriented to personal knowledge. The Department provides a place where it is possible to involve oneself in the creation and appreciation of art. (Universidad EAFIT, N.d).

Within a framework of informal education, the department has facilitators and quality programs, coordinates activities directed to society, and offers training designed to complement the human being’s integral development.

In addition, having taken into consideration that skills can be developed, the Department promotes the stimulation of manual and physical aptitudes, training in different plastic art techniques, and the promotion of artistic appreciation.

This work is achieved thanks to the places adapted especially for the different expressions of culture and the arts. These hands-on experiences are carried out close enough for the participants to be actively involved – as artists or spectators. In this way, they can be trained as an audience that exercises critical thinking, has a high expectation of the future, and respects itsef and all artistic expression.

Thus, the Department of Artistic Development, directed by Elsa Vásquez, was invited to participate in the project of luminaries based on The Little Prince with origami and jewelry workshops. The goal was to enrich the language of the luminaries with paper folding and metal sheeting techniques and, in turn, for students to develop artistic skills and materialize them in their projects.

What follows is an explanation of what the exercise entailed from the pedagogical point of view and a discussion about the methodology.

Chapter 1

Designing with Meaning

The day to day tasks faced by students in universities are: to discover the passion necessary to design, to understand and develop the engineer’s and designer’s own skills, to go inside and understand the meaning of the profession.

Teaching Design: A Challenge in This Era

The disciplines of design and engineering have never been so necessary as they are in today’s world. Design, innovation and design thinking are the main themes of the best design schools in the world. These schools have risen in crescendo the last fifty years in universities of long standing tradition. They include these topics in their students’ education with the objective of giving them the ability to develop the products or services that current and future companies demand. Likewise, there is a need for professors at these universities to help students find their creative strengths (Robinson and Aronica, 2009) when studying design careers. It is the educator’s job to cultivate and potentiate these strengths.

Challenges such as: launching innovative products into the market, cleaning up the environment or preventing pollution from happening, recycling, desalinating water, supplying new transport, housing, food or communication needs with alternative systems, as well as innovating in existing products to improve them; are not easy to solve. However, it seems that the discipline of the design engineer is increasingly attractive and the supply and demand of young people who want to be more creative, innovative and smart in this career or similar ones, is growing around the world.

However, not everyone who chooses this challenging profession is passionate about what they do, nor are they in their element, precisely because they do not find their “element” as Ken Robinson (2009) says. Those who insist on this career, need a stimulus, a trigger that awakens them, so they realize that designing is a demanding and exacting task. It requires extreme altruism, because true design takes others and their needs into account. This is how students can measure their passion for product design engineering. They need a reality check; they need to put their feet on the ground and understand what it means to be a design engineer and develop that awareness.

The day to day tasks faced by students in universities are: to discover the passion necessary to design, to understand and develop the engineer’s and designer’s own skills, to go inside and understand the meaning of the profession. The way to ease this situation is not found in an instruction manual. The newcomers must be accompanied as they find their way, and it cannot be assumed that the professors are enthusiastic about helping them. It is a challenge for both professors and students. When he did not understand a topic in his undergraduate calculus course, the son of Juan Diego Ramos, the great professor and founder of PDE in EAFIT said, “Dad, I don’t have a problem with calculus, calculus is cool; what really is terrible is when a bad professor interferes between calculus and me.” This is where professors must leave their comfort zone and understand that they must take a step forward and propose strategies to teach design, so that students are motivated to learn from something more than the rules and the methods of design when creating a new product. Teaching design is not only transmitting methodologies and steps. We must also discover what moves professors to educate in design. Why do they do it? What does it mean? They need an inspiring starting point for themselves and for their students. The bait needs to be put out for the mouse, but ordinary cheese will not suffice. The most refined and most exquisite cheese must be found: a cheese worthy of a Ratatouille.

In design and engineering products should be created in light of an inner reflection, their raison d’etre, the reason they are truly necessary for human beings. Therefore, a proposal for design exercise should balance aspects such as level of complexity, motivation, capacity to carry it out, integration of disciplines and self-reflection when designing. In this way, professors in this area face the biggest design problem of all: creating strategies for students to learn to design by giving the best of themselves or at least facing their weaknesses and improving each time they try. Adequate reading, the precise tool, and the correct intervention allow the students to transform themselves in the midst of what they do and think. In this vein, as José Antonio Marina says, we are helping to define the human species. How is this accomplished? How can students connect with a design problem and ask themselves questions about the meaning of their profession and their life? How can they become critical, self-critical, reflective, and make their learning imbued with meaning?

Planning the Pedagogical Strategy: Designing with the Intangible

In Project 2 the students develop two furniture projects during the semester. This is done in order to start using design tools in the process and strengthen concepts such as utility, firmness and beauty, based on Vitruvio’s maxims: Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas. In the initial six-week project, the students are faced with a lighting challenge: they must design a 1.60 m high standing luminaire.

What is a luminaire? A luminaire is a set of elements that transform the source of light, which can include lamps or light bulbs. In our case, it goes beyond designing a floor lamp.¹ A standing luminaire is designed because it transforms the source of light that is used (LED tape) and is made up of a base, a body and a finial.

The parts of a standing luminaire

Why are the students faced with designing a standing luminaire? Because it is an object that requires the student to demonstrate knowledge about materials, structures, assemblies, manufacturing processes and functionality. Its difficulty can be addressed in a freshman year semester and thus involves different areas of learning such as visual representation, the development of models, the application of physical principles, and a design methodology to reach a final result. But it does not end there; the exercise requires addressing immateriality. In the book, How to Design a Lamp? (2016), by the London Design Museum, this concept is explained: “Light occupies a space and exists as a medium that discovers and describes that space. The lamp produces light, which cannot be touched but has a deeply emotional presence.”

In this vein, the product permeates the students’ imaginations as a project with the perfect balance between the advanced and the basic, between design and engineering, between the rational and the emotional. It is used as an initial exercise to train product design engineers. This individual exercise has been present since 2016 and at the end of each semester the results are displayed in an event called, The Light Is On. The event integrates music, visual experience and the staging of the works developed by the students. The event was created with the idea of motivating the students to have the university community participate in their design proposals.

Posters of the 2016 and 2017 events

First The Light Is On event in 2015

Additionally, in six weeks the exercise allows the students to create a functional model that entails an implicit challenge: the luminaire must turn on and the students will have to test the final result. It is one thing to create the lamp and quite another to make it, which is a process that constitutes the basic principle of innovation (Robinson and Aronica, 2009). But why is it so motivating to design a lamp?

Well, we have to start by saying that the brief poses a difficult exercise to copy because there are very few examples in search engines like Google or Pinterest for the category “floor lamp + light source with LED tape”. Students must design the luminaire from scratch. The first time the challenge was proposed in 2016, they had to be inspired by nature, and in the second and third versions the architects of the world were their source of inspiration. Each one worked in a particular language or style that allowed them to reach different results. In addition, the light source with LED tape implies a greater challenge, because most of the existing lamps on the market use spherical or tubular bulbs.

The budget limit and the use of materials such as pine, steel and paper also make it possible for the project to be built in a week, once the entire design is complete. These conditions force the students to use the available resources in the best way, while they advance in the exercise and decide what factors will allow the lamp to be stable, firm, useful and beautiful. The students become witnesses to what happens when following the methodology.

But the most important thing is motivation: it makes learning and reaching a final result easier for a student who has never designed a complete product or has not had the experience of creating an object. If the student sees the progress and finishes a first product, he will naturally be motivated to continue. In addition, if he exhibits his product as part of an event and you recognize himself as a design engineer along with others, he will see the finished product of all his effort. It can be said that up to this point, the students have experienced a metacognitive process. However, the meaning of the exercise understood from a human level, could be deeper and more reflective. How can it be taken to that next level?

A Passionate Leitmotif: Choosing a Universal Inspiration

The starting point of a design exercise in the freshman year can be as varied and diverse as nature, art, film, music, literature or architecture. In the case of the lamp exercise, the theme of light is aligned with the emotions. One can talk about inner light and how it allows us to edify ourselves as human beings: “The lamp is an inner mirror, it invites them to look at an object again, in light of what they have not been conscious of.”(Ramos, 2017).

The Little Prince as a source of inspiration. Week 1

In this regard, the starting point of the exercise in its fourth version is based on reflection, ethics and virtues. We decided to work with these issues as the DNA of the exercise and sought a universal work of literature that allowed us to achieve our goal. Thus, in Project 2 a strategic alliance was developed between EAFIT’s Center for Integrity to address the virtue of integrity in the classroom and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. The reason for this, is the fact that it is a timeless book, which addresses the virtues and miseries of humanity and the reader is invited to reflect upon the meaning of life. Its visual richness, metaphors, characters and meditations became the focal point in the design of the luminaire and allowed a connection between the design apprentice’s inner journey (the emotional) and the materialization of the intangible, which is the very act of designing.