They tried to offer solid models that not only lend themselves to rapid prototyping but can also be candidates for mass manufacturing. Drew and Keith received the award for Fabrication.

Although I missed the chance to meet Sophia Chan and Lauren Segapeli who could not break away from the rigors of graduate school and mid term exams, their projects speak for themselves. Lauren Segapeli attended Texas Tech University at Lubbock and was instructed by Bennett Neiman, a professor who is no stranger at the Joint Study Awards ceremonies, having put through a few winning projects by now. Professor Neiman’s class was instructed to design “The Transformer box... an idea that fosters the process of design playfulness. This game of ‘Transformer’ promotes the creation of something new and unknown through the alternation of design decisions between two individuals. Each mover inspires the next. Each decision poses a question. Design conversation is established. Through the reassembly of formal elements, based on fictitious means, spatial reality is created. This play between what was and what can be is carried throughout the design process. With each decision come new rules, inspiration, and reality.

Lauren chose to “transcode, rearrange, manipulate, and transform a vintage typewriter into a space visualization fantasy."

As an exercise in Visualization and Illustration, for which she won the award of distinction, the design achieves a level of complexity that emerges from pure fantasy and the use of 3D software to create an elegant spatial investigation and visual effects that capture one’s attention in a space that comes to existence out of literally non-existence.

The toughest category to depict in print is Animation, the category for which Sophia Chan won the award of distinction. Her project in a class for Interior Architecture taught by Andrzej Zarzycki, at the Rhode Island School of Design, dealt with the high-end retail store for European brand Bruce. “Developing a store based on playing opposites with their clothing design esthetics.

A move is made and a space is created. A space that is as permanent as its ability to inspire. The kinetic character of such space is the nature of transformers. With each decision, a question. With each question, a new space. Let’s play.”