Building Bridges
Thinking through community building through design and how to create related projects from scratch.
What
“Building Bridges” is a compilation of thoughts and ideas I considered for my senior thesis that was organized into a printed book.
Why
During the first semester of my senior year, I was tasked with researching, experimenting, and recording potential thesis ideas.
How
Coming up with a design thesis was certainly a daunting task, but my professor offered our class questions to consider, topics to research, and creative exercises to complete in order to get the ball rolling. The starting content of “Building Bridges” centered around exploring as many design ideas as possible and seeing what resonated most. This brainstorming session led to the generation of key terms and phrases that I wanted to continue thinking about as my senior thesis began to take shape.
Thinking ahead, our professor asked our class to consider how and why our interests overlap. This exercise forced us to consider how our design theses could work in a unified group exhibition setting (which would become our main focus the following semester). Laying down our top choice ideas on a table, we physically marked and grouped similar ideas together, creating “idea islands.”
Finally, after much thought and consideration, I decided to narrow my focus to community-based design with solutions that could be reasonably acted upon. In terms of the overarching name of my initial thesis (and book title), I thought about how the phrase “burning bridges” typically referred to the destruction of relationships. However, in modern times, people are more disconnected from each other than ever before. Thus, there proved a need to build bridges rather than break them.
Towards the end of the semester, I gathered my content materials and looked for inspiration for book layouts. Ultimately, after trial-and-error with content placement, I found that a square-shaped page would give me ample room to expand my ideas and thoughts across a long, rectangular spread. This format also allowed me add in large images throughout the book in order to truly capture the processes of ideation and experimentation that occurred.
