fully into school mode

I decided to share pictures through a blog since sending of pictures will take forever to send over e-mail. For those of you who don't know, this quarter in Australia we are focusing on sustainable aspects of design, not only on the ecological front, but perhaps more importantly, on the human civilization front. We are concerned with our footprint on this earth both ecologically but also how we treat each other as human beings. More conversations from that to come. Our design project is to design a mobile and demountable art gallery space for these Artist Run Initiatives (ARI's) here in Sydney. The idea is that these ARI's can rent the mobile gallery for a period of time and display their art anywhere in the city, bucking the system of the bureaucratic system of art museums and galleries. The structures would be up for maybe a day or two, which means they don't need to follow code or anything. They will be in protest the incredibly commercialized and commodified art Museums and Galleries. More to come on that as well. School's been going great so far. We have had so many AMAZING opportunities to meet people who are leading figures in both the art and architecture world. Perhaps one of the most influential people in my eyes that we have met is a man named Paul Pholeros. He's an architect by trade but has created this initiative called Health Habitat where he goes around to aboriginal housing, employs the aboriginals to fix simple household problems like running water, electricity, and hot water. These homes don't have something as simple as running water and the government dismisses the problem as "unruly aboriginals" when really the root of the problem was poor government housing. It makes me sick. Paul has helped over 6,000 homes as of now re-institute electricity and running water but employing the aboriginal people, empowering them and giving them a sense of being and hope. It was like an a-ha moment for me because I finally had tangible evidence of what I have been looking for in the design community. More updates and pictures to come later