re:D

Regarding Design (re:D) 2023

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Anne Adriance

EDITORIAL BOARD

Cecilia Cammisa, Natalia Dare, Dustin Liebenow, Lisa Sarma, Alex Tapnio, Craig Tiede

PARSONS ADVISORY BOARD

Shana Agid, Ben Barry, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, David J. Lewis, Sarah Lichtman, John Roach, Yvonne Watson

MANAGING EDITORS

Kyle Hansen, Audrey Singer

EDITOR AND LEAD WRITER

John Haffner Layden

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Hannah R. Brion, Carissa Chesanek, Sarah Fensom, Tory Mast, Julia Lynn Rubin, David Sokol

LEAD DESIGNER

Grace Hopkins

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR

Sung Baik

COPY EDITOR

Leora Harris

LETTERS AND SUBMISSIONS re:D welcomes letters and submissions. Include your year of graduation, the degree completed, and your major or program. Unsolicited materials will not be returned.

CONTACT US/ADDRESS CHANGES re:D, Attn.: Marketing and Communication, 79 Fifth Avenue, 17th floor, New York, NY 10003; red@newschool.edu

REGARDING DESIGN, SEPTEMBER 2023

POSTMASTER

Send address changes to Regarding Design (re:D), 55 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011.

CREDITS

Cover—Grace Hopkins; News—Sherwin Banfield; Amie Brockway-Metcalf; Monique Carboni; Photograph courtesy of Micaiah Carter and Sarah Hasted (International Art Advisory LLC), New York; Columbia University Press; Danielle Lair Ferrari, BFA Communication Design ’22; Yibo Fu; Getty Images; Emil Hernon; Marisa Morán Jahn; Arielle Jovellanos; Tuomas Laitinen; Yuqing Liang; Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy of American Ballet Theatre; Olivia Pecini; Ines Pottier (Girl Management); Daniel Sauter; Martin Seck; Eshita Sharma, BBA Strategic Design and Management ’22; Joe Steele, MS Data Visualization ’18; Studio Albert Romagosa; Chris Vidal Tenomaa; Claudia Tomateo; Rewriting—Billion Oyster Project; Cadmapper NYC; ChatGPT; David Goddard; Bob Gruen; Daniel Kons for Studio189; Mark Kurlansky; Chenxiao (Nini) Li/Midjourney/Cinema 4D; Life After People fan wiki; Bruke Marew; Midjourney; Juno Morrow; NYC Open Data—Citywide Outfalls; Riffusion; Hedi Slimane; Granamour Weems Collection/Alamy Stock Photo; Alan Weisman; WikiMedia Commons; New Models—Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; Andrea Estrada; Lauro Rocha Fotografía; Marcelo Lerner; Aiyo O’Connor; Co-designing—Lisa Deurer; Hester Street; Drishti Jaggi; MacKenna Lewis Photography, Maki Huang Ozowa; Nicole Schwarze; Brooke Singer; Isabella Yu; Profiles—(Tracy Reese) Courtney Blackett, Karen Sanders; (Elizabeth Sanders) Danny Perez, Courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; (Aucher Serr) Aucher Serr, TWO-N, Inc.; (Ben Chase) Child Poverty Action Lab, Health Equity Collective, IDEO.org; (Alvaro Velosa) BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), BIG + Atchain, BIG + Synoesis; (Nora Krug) Hanna Hrabarska; (Sabrina Dorsainvil) Julianne Jensen, Stephen Walter; (Vanessa Rosales) Juan Moore; (Emily B. Yang), Gale Fassbender, Sarah Kuszelewicz, Electra Mars; re:WIND—The New School Archives and Special Collections, Courtesy F. Schumacher & Co.; We’re Parsons—Matthew Mathews. The New School is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution.

Published 2023 by The New School.

Produced by Marketing and Communication, The New School.

Regarding Design (re:D) 2023

re:D—An award-winning showcase of work by Parsons students, faculty, and alumni—celebrates more than a century of changemaking creativity and critical thought

Designing Our Urban Futures

Community. Innovation. Research. Systems. Scale. Change. This issue of re:D —like much of the work at Parsons—interweaves these phenomena in creative new ways. As society continues to evolve and urbanize, our community is developing novel solutions to perennial problems, addressing the need for affordable housing— the focus of a Consortium for Trans/disciplinarity project (see page 12)—and fostering sustainable communities with local nonprofits (see page 18). Also taken up on these pages are new challenges, like guiding the meteoric rise of AI and machine learning with responsibility and creativity, in collaboration with a new corporate research partner, LG AI Research (see page 6).

In this issue, you will find cause for pride and inspiration for connecting with the Parsons community, which spans the world and transcends disciplinary boundaries in search of more sustainable urban futures.

ABOUT THE COVER

To reflect this issue’s theme of innovative co-designed approaches to bolstering urban resilience, the re:D team asked community members to share words that came to mind in thinking about an equitable urban future. The call came in the form of QR posters placed in university buildings during the Parsons Festival and yielded words that re:D’s designer, Grace Hopkins, used to generate imagery, employing the text-to-image AI software programs Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and DALL-E. The results ranged from fantastical to photorealistic, with verdant (“green” was a recurring term) futuristic cities the prevailing typology. Of the highly iterative process, Hopkins says, “As with any new technology, there are a lot of surprising outcomes from AI—some that inspire new creative approaches, and some that get quickly discarded.” Hopkins organized hundreds of software-generated images by subject—depictions of buildings, nature imagery, and representations of people living in an urban future—for the cover. She was intrigued by the way the process, a combination of digital automation and skilled handwork, reversed the typical method of working with AI. “We think of technology’s ability to organize content and humans’ capacity to create, but in this case, my design resulted from culling and presenting from the output of generative software freed to create. I gained fresh insights by playing a new role in the process,” says Hopkins—an approach encouraged at Parsons. (At right are thumbnails of AI images generated in the cover-design process.)

News

Recent achievements of our community of students, faculty, and alumni innovators

Rewriting The Code

Parsons’ explorations of artificial intelligence and machine learning reflect the school’s human-centered approach

New Transdisciplinary Models

The new Consortium for Trans/disciplinarity (CT/d) is transforming an affordable housing project in Brazil into a model for work done throughout the university and beyond

CO-DESIGNING IN COMMUNITY

Juanli Carrión’s course is guiding students as they partner with local and global nonprofits to help communities thrive

Profiles

Meet our changemaking students, faculty, and alumni and discover work that is making the world a better place for all

WE’RE PARSONS

Learn more about us and what we offer

RE:WIND

Meet fashion alum Sherl Nero ’61, who led design at Design Works of Bedford Stuyvesant, a groundbreaking Black-owned Brooklyn-based home goods firm

1 Building Roblox

Parsons entered the metaverse through a new partnership formed by N Ventures the university’s professional education and licensing unit—between the school and the global online gaming platform Roblox. Students in the MFA and BFA Designand Technology programs, led by Kyle Li, an assistant professor of communication design and technology, collaborated over the past semester with Roblox leadership to research 3D digital fashion using Roblox tools and then create a capsule collection of virtual garments for gaming avatars. Six School of Fashion alumni mentors provided critical guidance to the student teams, and model and activist Karlie Kloss and designer Wes Gordon served on the crit panel. Zhenyu Yang, MFA Design and Technology ’23, BFA Fashion Design ’20, described the process of designing digitally as “freeing—I didn’t need to run around finding materials, and there’s no worry about physical wearability.” Li described the initiative—covered widely in the press and featured on CNN's Next Frontier series—as providing “tools that are likely to become increasingly relevant in students’ careers,” an observation backed by impressive sales figures for digital gear already on the market. Roblox’s millions of users worldwide can now buy Parsons’ digital avatar garments on the Roblox website. newschool.edu/red/roblox newschool.edu/red/robloxshop

2 Parsons Festival 2023

This year’s May festival featured a diverse array of events, including exhibitions of cutting-edge student work and a special pre-Commencement celebration honoring Indigenous students. The BFA Design History and Practice program, offered by the School of Art andDesign History and Theory, presented a capstone exhibition tour followed by a symposium. The School of Fashion (SOF ) screened two livestreams of its A.NEW 2023 BFA Fashion Design Runway, and AAS Fashion Design graduates showed work at the University Center. The School of Art, Media, and Technology’s BFA Illustration program hosted a graduating seniors book launch and a thesis screening at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, where MFA Fine Arts and BFA Photography graduates also held their thesis exhibition and reception. BFA Fine Arts graduate showed work at the Parsons East building. Graduating students in the MS Data Visualization program delivered keynotes and demonstrated their theses at the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center. All three Communication Design programs ( AAS, BFA , and MPS) held a thesis book launch during Commencement week. The School of Constructed Environments showcased student work in architecture, interior design, product and industrial design, and lighting design in exhibitions held at the Parsons East and new 39 West 13th Street buildings. BFA and MFA Design and Technology graduates mounted their thesis show, Entropy, at

6 East 16th Street, displaying interactive work, mixed-media installations, products, games, and augmented and virtual reality spaces. Graduating seniors from SDS’s Integrated Design program hosted Fig 23, a series of exhibitions and live events, at 2 West 13th Street. A printmaking and artists’ books popup exhibition was held at the Making Center. Four multimedia team projects created by students from Parsons and the university’s performing arts college were presented at the University Center. SDS’s MFA Transdisciplinary Design program held a thesis showcase, and SOF’s MFA Textiles program created an immersive installation and hosted an open studio at 39 West 13th Street to showcase the fourth generation of graduates. Graduates from the BBA and MS Strategic Designand Management programs held annual symposia. newschool.edu/red/festival2023

3 Paris Partners

This past year featured another series of industry collaborations that gave Parsons Paris students exclusive access to high-profile partners. Last fall, first-year MFA Fashion Designand the Arts students engaged with MM6 Maison Margiela, the legendary fashion company carrying forward the influential vision of conceptual designer Martin Margiela. During the five-month project, the MM6 Maison Margiela creative team challenged students to reimagine the brand’s philosophy from a personal, artistic perspective. The brief called for responding to the brand’s design motifs and strategies—such as trompe l’œil, circles, and unexpected juxtapositions—and radically reconfiguring three pieces by varying proportions, sizes, or materials. In the interest of sustainability, students used unconventional materials, including the company’s discards and deadstock. To record their process, students created a newspaper and photographed one another’s collections using family members and friends as models, just as Margiela did. The work was on public view on campus, accompanied by a publication documenting the project. Faculty members Francesca Bonesio, Bridget O’Rourke, StephanieNadalo, and Carlos Franklin led BFA Art , Media, and Technology students in a partnered project with art directors and curators of Paris Photo—Europe’s largest photo fair—to develop strategies for making the emerging artists and galleries segment more accessible, diverse, inclusive, and sustainable.

Last May, MA FashionStudies alumni (Ariel Stark ’19, Angelene Wong ’19, Sandra Mathey García-Rada ’20, Ilaria Trame ’22, Stephanie Lever ’22, Ayaka Kitagawa ’22) and Kathryn Frey, BFA Art, Media, and Technology ’21, partnered with Centre Pompidou to create Fashion Interventions at Centre Pompidou participatory performances inviting visitors to reflect on the museum’s permanent exhibitions. newschool.edu/red/MM6

4 Incorporated Ink

Each year, our community shares its creativity in print. Recent faculty publications include Material Health: Design Frontiers by Alison

Mears and Jonsara Ruth of Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab, which explores the complex intersections of health and design. Marisa Morán Jahn, assistant professor of design strategies, published Design and Solidarity: Conversationson Collective Futures, a collection of dialogues on the transformative potential of mutualism and design. David Gissen, professor of architecture and urban history, received broad press coverage for The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes Beyond Access, which critiques architecture’s failure to address disability.

Marco Pecorari, Parsons Paris MA Fashion Studies program director, edited Fashion, Performance and Performativity: The Complex Spaces of Fashion, a comprehensive survey of topical theory, which includes a chapter by Emmanuel Cohen, director of the First Year Curriculum (Integrative Studio and Seminar). Morna Laing released Revisiting the Gaze: The Fashioned Body andthe Politics of Looking, an investigation of the female body and fashion in light of sociocultural shifts. Assistant professor of strategic design and management Rhea Alexander published A Design-Driven Guide for Entrepreneurs: Strategies for Starting Up in a Multiverse. Emeritus professor Peter Wheelwright released the novel The Door-Man, which was listed among the New Yorker 's Best Books of 2022. Lori Grinker, AAS Photography ’80, assistant professor of journalism and design, published Mike Tyson, a collection of never-before-seen photographs. David J. Lewis, dean of Parsons’ School of Constructed

Environments, wrote Manual of Biogenic House Sections, a call for a full embrace of plant-based and low-carbon building materials. Bill Shaffer, MA History of Design and Curatorial Studies ’17, wrote The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father’s Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism, a biography of Robert Ray Hamilton that took shape during his Parsons studies. Parsons Paris MA Fashion Studies ’19 alums Philippa Nesbitt and Angelene Wong (with Paul Jobling) published Fashion, Identity, Image, which explores the apparel industry’s recent engagement with intersectionality and nonbinary identities. Manuel Lima, MFA Design and Technology ’05, shares a framework for a socially beneficial ethical design practice in The New Designer : Rejecting Myths, Embracing Change Arielle Jovellanos, BFA Illustration ’14, illustrated the graphic novel Girl Taking Over : A Lois Lane Story, by author Sarah Kuhn. Sarah Hasted, a part-time assistant professor of photography, edited Micaiah Carter: What’s My Name, which features the influential work of Micaiah Carter, BFA Photography ’17. Matt Delsestom, MA Theories of Urban Practice ’14, published Design and the Social Imagination, which explores the way design can be used to address challenges and build more sustainable communities. newschool.edu/alumni/bookshelf

5 Parsons Benefit

The 74th Parsons Benefit—an annual celebration of fashion and its influence— brought together the university community and celebrities to recognize the contributions of members of Parsons’ network. Held this past May at Cipriani, the benefit raised $1.7 million for student scholarship funds and included two new $10,000 scholarships from the NMG x Fashion Scholarship Fund. Presiding over the event were Wes Gordon, creative director of Carolina Herrera; Alexandra Moosally, co-founder of Saint New York Partners; and Gena Smith of LVMH. The honorees were Geoffroy van Raemdonck , chief executive officer of Neiman Marcus Group; Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing; and model Naomi Campbell. The evening was described as a celebration of “inclusivity, diversity, and democratizing fashion” by Rousteing, whose award was presented by Anna Wintour, Vogue editor in chief and global chief content officer for Condé Nast. Former First Lady Michelle Obama addressed Rousteing by video. Marc Jacobs accepted Campbell’s award in her absence as Kim Kardashian, actor Jodie Turner-Smith, and model Cara Delevingne looked on. A static show of pieces by BFA and AAS Fashion Design students and an installation of works by MFA Textiles students were on view, and students in the MFA Fashion Design and Society program—now under the direction of Lucia Cuba Oroza, MFA Fashion Design and Society ’12—presented looks on a runway. Pauline Roberts, Performer-Composer MM ’23, Performer-Composer MM student Carlos Cipoletti, and MFA in Contemporary Theatre and Performance student June Seo from the university’s performing arts college filled the room with music, and raps by Busta

Rhymes brought attendees to their feet. University leaders wore designs by alumni: School of Fashion dean Ben Barry wore an embellished suit by Jacques Agbobly, BFA Fashion Design ’20, and Parsons Paris executive dean Florence Leclerc wore an ensemble by Parsons Paris graduate Amina Galal, BFA Fashion Design ’23. parsonsbenefit.com

6 Community Achievements

Morry Galonoy, part-time assistant professor in Parsons’ School of Art , Media, and Technology, was recently elected chairperson of Queens Community Board 2, a role in which he promotes democratic process with his local community. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York chapter honored associate professor Andrew Bernheimer with the Medal of Honor for design excellence. Among the 2023 AIA award winners were faculty members SharonEgrettaSutton (Topaz Medal) and Evan Shieh (New Faculty Teaching). This year’s Metropolis Future 100 list included 2023 BFA Interior Design grads Young Kim, NamitaChandrashekar, and Annabelle Schneider. BFA Fashion Design alum Carly Cushnie ’07 designed costumes for Lifted, the first production of American Ballet Theatre with an all-Black cast and creative team. This year, MIT awarded Noemi Florea, BA Environmental Studies/BFA Integrated Design ’23, a grant to develop Cycleau, a water filtration system she invented while a New School student. The creative technology studio recycleReality, launched at Parsons, won two OBIE Awards for its work on the

2022 “Breakthrough Artist” ad campaign with Amazon Music and Overall Murals. Namra Khalid, BFA Architectural Design ’20, was among the winners of the inaugural Young Climate Prize, given by the nonprofit The World Around. Nao Takekoshi, BFA Fashion Design ’89, was recently named creative director at the Austrian-based knitwear firm Wolford. A mural depicting Breonna Taylor by artistactivist Yetunde Sapp, BA Liberal Arts/BFA Fashion Design ’23, was chosen for exhibition at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. Andrea Geyer, an associate professor of new genres, and Dafna Naphtali, a Eugene Lang College part-time assistant professor, were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships this year. IbadaWadud, an assistant professor of strategic design and management, worked with New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand to introduce the Fabric Act, a piece of legislation aimed at reinvigorating the garment industry and promoting industry equity. Sherwin Banfield, BFA Illustration ’99, paid homage to the rapper Biggie Smalls in a sculpture selected as a spring 2023 public art installation in DUMBO. Part-time faculty member Lani Adeoye, AAS Interior Design ’14, won first prize at Salone Satellite 2022 with RemX, a prototype for a walker made from the kind of natural materials that have been used in Nigeria for decades by Adeoye’s own Yoruba community. This year’s Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Awards winners include BFA Fashion Design alumni Elena Velez ’18, Catherine Holstein ’06, Emily Adams Bode Aujla ’13, and Prabal Gurung ’01. Urban Systems Lab (USL) associate director and Parsons professor Daniel Sauter received the Architectural League’s 2022 Independent Project Grant, which is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. The award will help fund Sauter’s development of Ocellus XR, an app producing 3D visualizations of climate risk, social vulnerability, and proposed green infrastructure for NYC. The project team includes USL director Timon McPhearson; Joe Steele, MS Data Visualization ’18; Xinyue Elena Peng, BFA Design and Technology ’22; Schools of Public Engagement research fellow Claudia Tomateo; and USL associate director Chris Kennedy Students from Parsons’ Design and Technology programs attended the 2023 MIT Reality Hack, a communityrun XR event, at which they won top prizes in four categories; students receiving awards included four from the MFA program (firstyear student Nikki Dami, BeatrizRibeiro ’23, Hong Hua ’23, and Yixuan Liu ’23) and BFA students Heeya Mody, Julia Daser, Grace Park , Pepi Ng, and Eloise Yalovitser. Artist Rachel Marks, a part-time Parsons Paris First Year Curriculum instructor, began a two-year residency with the Paris Philharmonic, for which she and community members created Symfolia—an installation with a tree-ring motif made of recycled musical scores and instruments. Parsons Paris BFA Fashion Design alum Petra Fagerstrom ’22 was a finalist in both the 38th annual Festival D'Hyères fashion competition and the International Talent Support Contest 2022. Students in a recent MFA Textiles course joined forces with the materials firm Aquafil to create products using the company’s ECONYL® nylon, which can be deconstructed and recycled at the end of their life. Hannah Kim, Jason Phillip Greenberg, and Xinyu Wang, graduates of the MFA Textiles program, won the Designing for the Future Award and exhibited their designs at NeoCon in Chicago. Padina Bondar-Gibbs ’20 and Aradhita Parasrampuria ’20 (who also earned a BFA Fashion Design degree at Parsons and now serves in her graduate program’s faculty) received the Student Award, one of Interior Design magazine’s 2022 Best of the Year Awards. Taku Yhim, BFA Fashion Design ’22, received the $10,000 prize in the cotton manufacturer Supima’s national competition. He and fellow alum AradhitaParasrampuria (see above) were also among the six finalists for the Swarovski Foundation’s Creatives for Our Future grant. Artist, illustrator, and Parsons Paris graduate Rachel Cunningham, BFA Art, Media, and Technology ’17—whose work Vogue called “romantic, artsy, and sexy”—was deemed “one to watch” by the magazine’s Paris edition. Bel Zaiden, AAS Fashion Design ’22, helped Lucky Brand launch its second collection of apparel made partially with secondhand garments. Parsons School of Design alums Rachel Gorman, MFA Design and Technology ’23; Oscar Schrag, MFA Industrial Design ’23, BBA Strategic Design and Management; and Jessica Thies, MFA Industrial Design ’23, won the Science Sandbox Prize for Public Engagement at the 2022 Biodesign Summit for their humorous and speculative performance project, Orderof the Bovine. MFA Design and Technology graduates Yuqing Liang ’22 and Yibo Fu ’22 won the Student Notable Interaction Award from Core77 for their machine learning–based truthor-dare game machine, Trouble Maker. Of the 26 2022 CFDA student awards, which carry prizes of up to $50,000, 12 went to Parsons graduates: 9 to 2023 BFA Fashion Design alums ( Arjahn Cox , Bradford Billingsley, Angel Pan, Grace Gordon, Elizabeth Dewald, Helen Sotropa, Samuel Pickett , Vivian Luo, and Isabella Kostrzewa) and 3 to MFA graduates from the School of Fashion (Melany Corchado, MFA Fashion Design and Society ’22; Haixi Ren, MFA Fashion Design and Society ’23; and Jasmin Risk , MFA Textiles ’23, BFA Fashion Design ’16). Fabian Malmhagen, MFA Industrial Design ’23, won the prestigious Green Good Design Award for his piece Last Chance in 2023.

7 Commence With The New

At each Commencement, The New School presents honorary degrees to community leaders whose work aligns with the university’s changemaking ambitions. This year’s recipients were Iranian American journalist and women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad; inclusive fashion designer Telfar Clemens; composer, singer, and visual artist CécileMcLorin Salvant; and acclaimed author and LGBTQ advocate Jennifer Finney Boylan, who served as Commencement speaker. Student speakers KamilahTibbitts, BA Media Studies, and Ruby Thelot , MFA Design and Technology, were joined by student emcees Veronica Espinal, MA Media Studies, and Xusheng Yu, MFA Industrial Design. Graduating student Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson, BFA Jazz and Contemporary Music, performed a special jazz set.