MADWORKSHOP Confirms Five Fellows for 2017
The Martin Architecture and Design Workshop (MADWORKSHOP) has announced its 2017 design fellows. The nonprofit foundation operates like a design incubator, which endows innovative designers with the opportunity to freely explore their ideas from concept to reality.
Belinda Pak, Heeje Yang, Jeremy Carman, Joseph Chang, and Jayson Champlain are the new fellows who are all currently fourth-year students at the University of Southern California in the Bachelor of Architecture program. Each fellow will work over the course of this year on projects that address MADWORKSHOP’s design theme for 2017, Emergency Architecture.
Heeje Yang, from South Korea, will work on one of MADWORKSHOP’s furniture projects, the foldable Chair Six, to create a more operable design through a study of origami folding and kinetic motion. Jayson Champlain, from Torrance, CA and Jeremy Carman, from Shingle Springs, CA will be focusing on issues of safety and privacy in their designs that will reimagine temporary shelters inside stadiums, a solution that aims to avoid problems experienced when large public arenas like the Louisiana Superdome are converted into emergency housing. Belinda Pak, a Colorado native, is designing and prototyping a wristband with built-in features that can aid a victim in an emergency, such as a beacon and internal storage for contacts and medical information. Joseph Chang, from Northern California, will be designing a backpack that deploys into a stretcher that can be carried by a single person during emergency situations.
“We’re honored to have these talented young designers join our team and we’re confident in their ability to make an impact through their work. We’ve had enormous success with our past fellows, such as Sanke, a multi-leveled communal seating system and permanent installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA by Sonia Lui; and Caress of the Gaze, a 3D, gaze actuated wearable by Behnaz Ferahi that won Fast Company’s Innovation By Design Linda Tischler Award,” says David C. Martin, co-founder of MADWORKSHOP.
About MADWORKSHOP
The MADWORKSHOP Foundation (501c3), based in Santa Monica, CA, was founded by David C. Martin and Mary Klaus Martin in 2015 to identify and support the next generation of inventors and designers with a focus on technological craftsmanship. The foundation serves as an incubator to foster innovative design with an underlying social value. Merging a contemporary aesthetic agenda, ambitious fabrication techniques, and the mentorship of MADWORKSHOP’s experienced Board of Directors, the foundation offers emerging designers at college level and beyond the opportunity to take their ideas from concept to reality. Through thriving fellowship and education programs, the foundation nurtures young talent who will make radical, sustainable, and impactful contributions to the design discourse and society at large.
With vital partnerships at leading academic institutions including the University of Southern California and ArtCenter College of Design, MADWORKSHOP sponsors one studio course per year focused on design and fabrication. Fellows are chosen from these courses and through open calls for proposals announced at the beginning of each year. Spanning from smaller scale furniture, product, and fashion design to space making and architectural investigations, MADWORKSHOP projects bring education and artistic innovation to the forefront of the creative design process.
For more information about the MADWORKSHOP Foundation please visit www.madworkshop.org.
