Outside Institute
Poster for a one-week workshop at UCLA
My concerns about the state of design education prompted me to begin an organization called the Outside Institute. The Outside Institute’s core belief is that “not knowing” is a healthy precondition for discovery and that making is a physical process that involves drawing and working directly with materials.
The primary function of the institute is to provide workshops that function as a laboratory for experimentation without fear of producing results that may appear to have no immediate practical application. Students are encouraged to expand their frames of reference and to identify intersections between design, art, architecture, science, music, dance, biology, linguistics, and philosophy.
The workshops consist of exercises that focus on how to “see” visually rather than “recognize” things and categorize them by name. This process reinforces the unique symbiotic relationship between creativity and being human. Learning how to “see” establishes a new awareness that builds self-confidence and enables participants to evaluate their work with more objective criteria than like and dislike—becoming creators rather than consumers.
The puzzle that appears on the home page of this web site is called a tangram, and is the perfect metaphor for the Outside Institute. The tangram is a unique Chinese toy in which a square is divided into this particular geometric configuration. It consists of seven pieces, called “tans”: five triangles, one square, and one rhombus. The game is played by rearranging the shapes to make any kind of figure or pattern. It is presented here to suggest the raw potential, through limited means, to discover unique abstract relationships between geometry and nature.
Buckminster Fuller provides a wonderful poetic summary of my goal with the Outside Institute:
“I did not set out to design a house on a pole, a three-wheeled car, or geodesic structures. My objective has been humanity’s comprehensive welfare in the Universe. I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
“Thinking Out Loud”
You can view the film documenting the one-week workshop we held at UCLA on our web site with the “see the video” link:
http://www.outsideinstitute.org
My concerns about the state of design education prompted me to begin an organization called the Outside Institute. The Outside Institute’s core belief is that “not knowing” is a healthy precondition for discovery and that making is a physical process that involves drawing and working directly with materials.
The primary function of the institute is to provide workshops that function as a laboratory for experimentation without fear of producing results that may appear to have no immediate practical application. Students are encouraged to expand their frames of reference and to identify intersections between design, art, architecture, science, music, dance, biology, linguistics, and philosophy.
The workshops consist of exercises that focus on how to “see” visually rather than “recognize” things and categorize them by name. This process reinforces the unique symbiotic relationship between creativity and being human. Learning how to “see” establishes a new awareness that builds self-confidence and enables participants to evaluate their work with more objective criteria than like and dislike—becoming creators rather than consumers.
The puzzle that appears on the home page of this web site is called a tangram, and is the perfect metaphor for the Outside Institute. The tangram is a unique Chinese toy in which a square is divided into this particular geometric configuration. It consists of seven pieces, called “tans”: five triangles, one square, and one rhombus. The game is played by rearranging the shapes to make any kind of figure or pattern. It is presented here to suggest the raw potential, through limited means, to discover unique abstract relationships between geometry and nature.
Buckminster Fuller provides a wonderful poetic summary of my goal with the Outside Institute:
“I did not set out to design a house on a pole, a three-wheeled car, or geodesic structures. My objective has been humanity’s comprehensive welfare in the Universe. I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
“Thinking Out Loud”
You can view the film documenting the one-week workshop we held at UCLA on our web site with the “see the video” link:
http://www.outsideinstitute.org