Read about Parsons’ recent external partnerships, excerpted from Regarding Design magazine (re:D)
FIELD NOTES
Students throughout Parsons’ schools and at the Paris campus are tackling real-world challenges facing a range of design fields. Their work is demonstrating the many benefits of collaboration—for Parsons students and external partners alike
By David Sokol
One day this past March, half an hour after the Guggenheim Museum’s usual Thursday closing time, the doors to the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building were reopened to a crowd not normally associated with the Manhattan gallery circuit. Parsons students led adults and children in a creative workshop on the museum’s third floor. Together they sketched, prototyped, and built miniature kites, to be whisked down the rotunda’s iconic spiraling ramp at the evening’s close.
As the workshop participants made kites, other attendees interacted with anthropomorphic sculptures in an installation titled Picos in the museum’s lobby. Made from kitchen trash bags affixed to oscillating table fans, the figures sported what looked like beaks (picos in Spanish) and swayed in the air. One pair seemed to be nuzzling each other; another did battle with their beaks. A third group tipped their beaks when museumgoers approached and seemed to kneel reverentially before them.
The sculptures called to mind interactions typical of art-world settings, where cozy alliances, competition, and assertions of authority abound.
The Picos installation and the interactive workshops were part of Float, a public event representing the culmination of the Parsons course Kite City taught in fall 2023 by professors Neva Kocic , a product designer, and Marisa Morán Jahn, an artist who is also the director of the BFA Integrated Design program in Parsons’ School of Design Strategies. Chitra Ramalingam, the Guggenheim’s director of Academic Engagement, had initiated Kite City by inviting Jahn to partner with the museum through its Innovation Lab program, designed to create collaborations
Chitra Ramalingam
LEFT: Students in Parsons’ BFA Integrated Design program recently partnered with the Guggenheim Museum on a kite-making workshop for young museumgoers. In a lively procession that BFA program director Marisa Morán Jahn (seen in white) led down the museum’s spiral ramp, youngsters proudly showed off their creations, animating the space in a new way. OPPOSITE: Images of the people and partnered projects discussed in this article.
Since then, Parsons has sought to deepen the relationship between scholarship and career preparation by organizing outside collaborations for students. This effort is evidenced by a 1952 New York Times article applauding E. Camill Solari, an interior design student, for winning a competition sponsored by Baker Furniture. Twenty years later, the Times reported that S. Klein Department Stores had invited Parsons students to conceive a new facade, signage, and lighting for its flagship on Union Square.
Now that in-person partnerships have returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, Parsons faculty are once again creating opportunities for students to work in the field. And they are setting their sights even higher, developing a broad array of ambitiously conceived collaborations with external partners. Tuomas Laitinen has long seen the value of such collaborations. Laitinen, a Finnish-born fashion designer who taught for
“We’re looking to make the museum a platform for student creativity but also to produce feedback for ourselves about our museum’s work.”
— Chitra Ramalingam, director of Academic Engagement, Guggenheim Museum
for New York–based college students. Ramalingam says that this was the first time her department worked with transdisciplinary designers. “The way Parsons’ Integrated Design program gives students cross-disciplinary experience—and Parsons’ emphasis on developing external partnerships and design processes with institutions—made the project an especially good fit.”
Bridging academic study and real-world experience is in Parsons’ DNA. Frank Alvah Parsons, hired by William Merritt Chase in 1904 to teach at the New York School of Art (Parsons School of Design’s precursor), launched curricula aimed at facilitating young people’s professional development in fashion, graphic, and interior design. Previously entry into these industries had taken place largely through informal apprenticeship networks.
a number of years at Aalto University, joined Parsons Paris to prepare the 2021 launch of the Master of Fine Arts in Fashion Design and the Arts program. His focus on external partnerships is the result of years of experience bringing scholarship and industry together in his own career.
“You have to be in industry to understand whether an idea is relevant,” he says.
Laitinen now heads the MFA program at Parsons Paris and serves as the BFA Fashion Design program’s creative director. In the three years since the MFA program’s inception, he has kicked off each fall semester with “collaborations that should be a fashion student’s dream,” as he puts it. Initially Laitinen and MA Fashion Studies program director Marco Pecorari brought first-year students into the world of Versace, where they conducted archival research and incorporated the celebrated fashion
house’s long-standing “design codes” into looks of their own creation. A similar and equally successful partnership with MM6 Maison Margiela followed. “It’s a trial in combining your creativity with the heritage of a house,” says Laitinen of these matchups.
This year, 20 MFA students from Parsons Paris immersed themselves in the legacy of Mugler, the fashion house established by Thierry Mugler and overseen by Casey Cadwallader since 2018. “Students are working on the same challenge that Casey and all house designers face every season, which is, How do you go into this incredible archive and make modern, desirable garments that don’t just repeat the past?” says Laitinen.
The students applied a modern sensibility in reinterpreting Mugler’s sculptural approach to construction. MFA candidate Wendy Kuo used 3D printing to create attachable forms designed to exaggerate the features of the female silhouette. Kuo’s classmate Araz Yaghoub Nakhjavan Tapeh wedded the Mugler codes of anatomical seaming, lingerie, and corsetry to the power dressing of the Reagan-era office. Taking a cue from the way Mugler himself conceived themes for collections, Tapeh drew inspiration from the famous 1980s bodybuilder Lisa Lyon.
She explains, “I wanted to delve into a specific universe and let it inform my design choices.”
“Understanding how to express their ideas in a visual and textual way will be developed further when they work on their thesis collections.” For years, Parsons students have benefited from engagements with fashion luminaries in both Paris and New York. Figures ranging from Christian Dior to alums Norman Norell , Donna Karan , and Jack McCullough and Lázaro Hernández of Proenza Schouler have critiqued student work on Parsons' two campuses. But the Mugler x Parsons Paris project stands out as an example of the kind of intensive, wide-ranging creative collaborations that working designers must now undertake to bring their ideas to the runway—and the global public's awareness. The Mugler project and other ambitious collaborations underway at Parsons are serving as a blueprint for future partnerships with prominent companies and organizations seeking to foster innovation while promoting sustainability and inclusiveness. These exercises will serve students as they work toward their thesis collections and in the industry after graduation.
According to Ramalingam, successful collaborations require openmindedness from both partners. For Kite City, that flexibility was reflected in a project brief that was surprisingly general, allowing the participants to explore ideas freely. “Even though the Guggenheim is an art museum, it’s also a unique building with a potential for a kind of radical public space,” Ramalingam explains. “We’re looking to make the museum a platform for student creativity but also to produce feedback for ourselves about our museum’s work.” In Parsons’ fall 2023 course catalog, Kite City was described simply as an exploration of flight.
“You have to be in industry to understand whether an idea is relevant.”
Tuomas
Laitinen, director of the MFA Fashion Design and the Arts program
The MFA students also worked with professor Chris Vidal Tenomaa to style and photograph classmates’ garments as if they were producing a campaign. “This visual representation is a way for students to demonstrate how their visual and creative worlds look,” Tenomaa says.
The evening in which Float took over the Guggenheim rotunda materialized organically from Kite City’s spirit of unfettered inquiry and engagement. “Walking down the ramp, people have this impulse to throw things off the balconies or to roll or skate down the ramp,” Jahn says of the origins of the course. In developing Kite City, the faculty members were guided by the idea of “embracing this desire and quickly prototyping different things that caught our attention.”
But a fluid project brief does not spell limitless possibilities. “It’s critical that students have design constraints and guidelines and audiences to work with,” Jahn says. After specialists told the class that flying a giant kite inside the museum rotunda wasn’t technically feasible, the group turned their sights to other activities that could be set up with ease. Their exploration of the functional and expressive possibilities of fan technology resulted in Picos, while their interest in sharing with young museumgoers the creative processes they employed in their course led them to develop workshops.
The results were revelatory. Noting that Float “gave people the chance to do things that seem to go against the rules of the museum, like flying a kite,” Ramalingam promises that the evening will guide future programming at the Guggenheim. “Seeing how participants found their own choreographies within that installation was not unexpected, but the intensity of the experience really surprised me.”
“Surprise us” could very well have been the project brief from Brompton, a British inventor and manufacturer of folding bicycles. While the collaboration between the BFA Integrated Design team and the Guggenheim was taking place, School of Constructed Environments (SCE) associate dean Daniel Michalik and MFA Industrial Design program
Parsons Paris MFA Fashion Design and the Arts student Araz Yaghoub Nakhjavan Tapeh interpreted Thierry Mugler’s signature design features—intricate seams, corsets, boning—and exaggerated feminine silhouette in this look created for the Mugler brand partnership.
Wendy Kuo
Araz Yaghoub Nakhjavan Tapeh
founder and professor Rama Chorpash were spearheading the Metro Cycling Studio, a partnership between the company and master’s and undergraduate students at SCE. The Parsons x Brompton partnership challenged students to “explore the intersection of design, urban movement, public space, and cycling culture,” according to the company’s North America president, Juliet Scott-Croxford. MFA student Craig Wei, a project participant,
Students participating in the Mugler partnership created publications designed to communicate their creative vision and document their projects. Shown here is a work featuring 3D molded hip accents by MFA Fashion Design and the Arts student Wendy Kuo.
surface that problem,” says Dizdar. “Brompton wanted to learn more about what makes us question things.” Both Dizdar and Wei recently graduated, not long after their designs won first prize among master’s students in the competition.
The studio’s undergraduate winners, 2024 BFA Product Design graduates Rachel Joo and Kyleigh Mogilewski, also developed several prototypes side by side, with an eye to making the bicycles accessible for Disabled and older people. After working on a raincoat that snaps together
“Brompton was impressed by the level of rigor that Parsons brought to the project.”
Daniel Michalik, associate dean of the School of Constructed Environments
explains, “We weren’t asked to redesign the bicycle” to better integrate it into city living. “Instead, the brief made us think about how bikers would use Brompton for the next 50 years.”
“Brompton is not a company looking for an exercise,” Chorpash says of the student–manufacturer relationship that unfolded from the loose directive. “Neither Brompton nor the Parsons students have the answers, and although the project involved a student competition, the ensuing search was an authentic, more equal endeavor.”
Wei teamed up with MFA student Melis Dizdar on three concepts. In the weeks leading up to their final presentation, they focused on a bike-mounted storage case that expands and contracts by means of an accordion-pleated textile. “Whether we faced a problem of urban bicycling or identified a problem that someone else is facing, it was our decision to
ABOVE: MFA Industrial Design students Melis Dizdar and Craig Wei created a collapsible carrier that can be attached to a folding bicycle frame. BOTTOM RIGHT: BFA Product Design students Rachel Joo and Kyleigh Mogilewski drew on Parsons’ wide array of making tools to design mobile bike repair stations and an app with which to locate them.
with magnets and developing several carrier devices, they opted to create a portable repair station and app that match cyclists requiring service with a network of Brompton-certified mobile mechanics.
“If I need to solder an electronic piece for my prototype, there’s a workshop at Parsons for that. If I need to get help dyeing textiles, I can go to the Fashion Design department. Parsons uniquely allows multidisciplinary work for partnered problem solving,” Mogilewski says of the project’s development. “Brompton was impressed by the level of rigor that Parsons brought to the project,” Michalik says.
Chorpash attributes the success of the Brompton partnership in part to the company’s heritage of progressive innovation paired with the public’s increasing embrace of design that promotes social and environmental good. “I think it’s less that Parsons has changed in the last decade or two than it is that the level of consciousness in the world has changed,” Chorpash says. He notes that the collaboration with Parsons helped Brompton amplify its social impact while benefiting financially.
“This is a moment not of critique, but of imagining another future.”
Chorpash points out that “the role of the university is not just professional training. It’s to help shape the world we live in. That’s the scholarship our
Melis Dizdar
Rachel Joo
Craig Wei
Kyleigh Mogilewski
ABOVE: A-wa(y)ste is a data-driven interface designed by Irmak Senyurt and Lucia Jaramillo to encourage resource conservation and bio-based solutions.
faculty is working on.” The goal of re-shaping the world—whether by supporting an industry partner with a progressive mindset or introducing a whole industry to new principles and best practices—is central to the new generation of Parsons partnerships.
There is evidence of this ambition in recently minted collaborations, such as the Lens of Impact initiative just established between the Swiss government–supported cultural research consultancy Swissnex and
MS Strategic Design and Management students Irmak Senyurt and Lucia Jaramillo present their project, A-wa(y)ste, at the 2024 Biodesign Challenge conference hosted at Parsons.
chemicals and carbon-intensive materials and to address other challenges through biotechnology. The competition was conceived by the team running the independent Brooklyn biology lab Genspace, one member of which, Alison Irvine , a 2014 graduate of both the BA Interdisciplinary Science and the BA Theater programs at Eugene Lang College, now
“Parsons’ reputation, global networks, and expertise at fostering understanding and reflection make the school an ideal partner.”
Marc Streit, head of Arts and Creative Industries, Swissnex
Parsons’ School of Art and Design History and Theory (ADHT). An ongoing discussion series organized by professor Caroline Dionne and staff in Swissnex’s Boston and New York offices, Lens of Impact examines emerging concerns in the art and design disciplines, such as human–animal relationships and queer identity. A recent public talk brought together ADHT professor Radhika Subramaniam and Swissbased performance artist Daniel Hellman to discuss creative ways to challenge dominant anthropocentric worldviews. According to Marc Streit , Swissnex’s head of Arts and Creative Industries, such endeavors are essential for his organization, as they “give us critical tools for examining the ways local political, social, and cultural landscapes shape design practice. Design is a shared collaboration language and lever for societal progress toward better futures for all. Parsons’ reputation, global networks, and expertise at fostering understanding and reflection make the school an ideal partner in cultural exchanges.”
These recent efforts are modeled on long-standing partnerships. Among these is the Biodesign Challenge (BDC), which Parsons’ School of Art, Media, and Technology (AMT) has co-hosted and competed in since the competition’s inception in 2016. The BDC invites high school and college teams from around the world to create alternatives to toxic
serves as treasurer of the BDC executive board. Irvine shared the idea with her contacts at Lang and Parsons, among them AMT faculty member Jane Pirone.
As Pirone recalls, “Because Alison had an interdisciplinary science background, the original question that we discussed was, What if it weren’t just engineers WQusing and asking questions about biotechnology? How would that change the way these things get developed and deployed in the world?” Parsons’ involvement in the BDC’s development is reflected in the program’s attention to questions of ethics and social justice.
This focus is evident in a project developed by Elana Farrell and Leah Hughes, both BA Interdisciplinary Science '22, which was overseen by Pirone and AMT colleague Harpreet Sareen. Farrell and Hughes brought the public into the project, in which they developed a culture of bacteria and yeast genetically modified to detect environmental toxins. Farrell has gone on to work at the National Institutes of Health, where she has analyzed lung cancer risks. Hughes has completed grant-funded study at Parsons’ Healthy Materials Lab and, through the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based nonprofit Innovators for Purpose, has taught a pilot course on bias in AI and machine learning to Boston-area youth. She currently serves as an educator at the MIT Museum.
“A lot of successful work comes directly out of the BDC,” Sareen says, pointing to TômTex as a notable example. TômTex is a bio-based fabric
ABOVE: Parsons’ School of Art and Design History and Theory offers curricula designed to develop students’ analytical capacities. The Lens of Impact events, created with the cultural organization Swissnex, carries forward this aim through conversations between scholars and practitioners on timely topics including sustainability and identity. LEFT: Faculty members Carolina Obregon, Harpreet Sareen, Jane Pirone, and Katayoun Chamany meet with Senyurt and Jaramillo after the two students presented A-wa(y)ste at this year’s Biodesign Challenge.
developed by MFA Textiles graduate Uyen Tran ’21, who received acclaim for the concept at the 2020 BDC and launched a namesake company the same year, while still in school. Whether competition alumni pursue jobs or develop enterprises focusing on biotechnology, Pirone says, “they have formed professional relationships and a community of practice. And our longtime relationship with the BDC allows us to stay closely connected to this community and engages us in ongoing education and capacity building, so that everybody can continue to thrive.” Professor Katayoun Chamany, a geneticist and cell biologist who leads Eugene Lang College’s Interdisciplinary Science program and works with AMT to support its BDC partnership, has even created curriculum modules that BDC organizers make available to participants.
“When you think of the word biodesign, medicine, engineering, and behavioral science may come to mind, but there is no one definition for it,” Sareen says. “We are helping to crystallize its meaning, with an emphasis on design and criticality.”
A similarly robust community of practice is emerging at the School of Fashion. In December, university leadership announced the founding of the Parsons Disabled Fashion Student Program (PDFSP) in partnership with the accessibility consultancy Tilting the Lens. Over four years, the pilot program will focus on recruitment, instruction, and mentorship of Disabled
students, with the aim of promoting equitable access to careers in fashion. “Typically in fashion education and in industry, design teams have invited Disabled folks into a design process as users, as testers,” says the school dean, Ben Barry . “When that’s the primary vehicle for Disabled folks to engage with design, it devalues our knowledge as designers and reasserts a hierarchy in which non-Disabled folks are the ones who hold design knowledge. Part of this program is recognizing that disability experience is also design experience.”
Shifting from consumption to production is one of incoming
LEFT: Caity Briare will join the fall 2024 cohort of the MFA Fashion Design and Society program as an inaugural participant in the Parsons Disabled Fashion Student Program. RIGHT: Disability advocate and founder of Tilting the Lens Sinéad Burke and dean of Parsons’ School of Fashion Ben Barry in the University Center.
the Lens CEO Sinéad Burke explains that PDFSP students should not feel confined to designing clothing for Disabled people. Nor should they assume responsibility for singlehandedly creating a more equitable fashion industry. “We cannot place the expectation of radical change on three people,” Burke says. The work of PDFSP thus involves several external partners. The program is underpinned by a Ford Foundation–supported study of Disabled fashion students’ experiences at ten schools. The grant has been renewed to fund a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) for a study of potential accommodations for Disabled designers and other employees of American fashion companies.
“Given that around 11 percent of working-age Americans have disabilities, our commitment to enhancing visibility and advocating for a more inclusive, accessible industry is crucial,” says CFDA CEO Steven Kolb, speaking of the upcoming research and the forging of professional pathways for young Disabled people. “Together with Parsons and the wider fashion community, we aim to foster a fashion ecosystem that is inclusive and empowering for all abilities and to make a significant move toward a more equitable and dynamic fashion future.”
According to Barry, “The PDFSP is not just a scholarship program, but a cultural change.” “I can only imagine how much more vibrant the fashion
“ The Parsons Disabled Fashion Student Program is not just a scholarship program but a cultural change.”
—Ben Barry, dean of Parsons’ School of Fashion
MFA Fashion Design and Society program student Caity Briare’s goals. “Growing up, it was especially difficult for me to find clothing that fit me, and I felt confined to certain clothing options because I had to think about how it would need significant alteration to fit me. In 2020, the first time I made something that fit my body, I was filled with immense joy and determination,” she recalls. Speaking of being a member of the PDFSP’s inaugural cohort, Briare says, “I have never wanted to be a part of something so deeply.”
industry will become,” says Briare. Burke adds, “This feels different from how we have historically perceived partnerships between schools and companies and institutions. What is really powerful about this work is that we’re able to improve their systems as well.”
The approach of the PDFSP, like that of Parsons’ other programs, points to a future in which partnerships serve as opportunities for professions to transform themselves. Thanks to the leadership of Parsons professors and their students, this vision is bound to become reality.
David Sokol is a New York–based writer specializing in design.
Tilting
