Critical Interventions for Climate Change

Portfolio Sketches

Zach Rosenberg

The Weighstation is a project designed to make the public become more aware of the problems regarding global warming. The groups had the task to create an intervention that could be implemented into the real world in hope to educate the public.

In America, the rate of trash per capita is increasing rapidly. Compared to the other countries of the world, the amount of trash produced in the United States has grown significantly.

The team’s goal is share their knowledge with the public by building an intervention where people can physically feel how bad the problem is. Instead of handing out flyers and attempting to orally teach people, the Weighstation allows them to learn in an enjoyable way. The groups intervention was a ten-foot-tall booth that allows users to to pull a number of ropes to feel the difference in weight that represents each countries trash per capita. After the person pulls each rope, they can go behind the station and learn more about how much garbage each country emits.

After two miniature-sized prototypes, the group began construction on the solid-wood intervention by sizing, sawing, screwing and painting the life-size structure. Part of what the team wanted was a visually appealing product that would interest the public into trying it for themselves.

The United States represents the country with the most waste per capita, and to compare that, they chose the Czech Republic which has the least. To allow more comparison, Spain and Turkey were used to show a close-to mid point between the highest and lowest. The weights are represented through trash bags containing exactly half of the true weight per capita. The bags are connected to a pulley system which allows the user to feel the weight from the other side of the intervention.

The group is very happy with the work put into the final project. After a thorough prototyping stage and a solid amount of confusion and disagreement, they were able to produce an extremely viable intervention. This product gets the message across that they were aiming to reach the community with. The Weighstation would be a great product to be included in public areas such as parks, cities, and museums.

Sequence

Emily Cudhea-Pierce

Final Thoughts

Riley Nelson

       We were tasked with creating an intervention or device that helps bring awareness to climate change.  Our goal was to get people personally connected to climate change in hopes that they would make an effort to help combat it in the future.  Global warming is very present in our society today, however the average person does not go out of their way to help prevent something they think does not affect them.  We wanted to make climate change more of a priority in their minds by evoking emotion.  

       We decided to make an installation that highlights the negatives of global warming while also showing the positives that can come from taking action.  The user has to choose between two different routes that they could take when walking down a street.  The idea was that both sides or paths evoke an emotion from the person.  The “recycling” side has lots of light colors and positive concepts that are associated with saving the plant.  We also created obstacles on that side to show that the right way might not always be the easy way.  On the contrary, the “trash” side is dark and smelly, but it is easier to go through.  It is supposed to make the user feel guilty because they chose to be lazy and do nothing to help save the planet.  The installation is a metaphor to pollution, so we hope it encourages the user to make better decisions about their actions in the future.  

        In real life, the structure would be over fourteen feet long, so we had to make scale model.  We used similar materials in the model in hopes to make it as realistic as possible.  Creating the scale model presented a problem because every measurement had to be precise and exact in order for the pieces to fit together.  Having all of the different sketches and ideas in different measurement scales was challenging because that threw off what the actual size of something was.

        Looking back, the end product was not something we would have made again in the future.  The idea we had of a person having to choose was a good start, but we needed to come up with a better way of conveying the idea.  For the purpose of this project, however, the end product turned out just fine.  Additionally, this project made us realize that collaboration is difficult.  Although there were some problems along the way, in the end we came through together to successfully present an idea that we were all proud of.

Sketches

Riley Nelson

Final Product

Riley Nelson

Final Description

Liza Howard

The idea behind this studio was to get the public aware of climate change. One of the main ideas was to get people to turn climate change from an idea to something that people can feel in their bodies and actually experience. By trying to get everyone educated on climate change, we wanted to invent a piece that would shock the publics eye. We knew that we wanted our piece to be very intriguing so that people in the city would actually want to experience it.

Our idea was to create basically a lenticular wall comprised of panels of mirror, glass, and a painting of Boston underwater. This means that the panels are angled so that you see something different when you look at the wall from different perspectives. We went through a lot of ideas before getting to this final idea. The wall will be split up into three mobile, rotatable sections and is going to be installed as a permanent installation at NuVu. From one side, it is a really cool way to view the world. You see yourself in the mirror as you look from one direction, and as you move you begin to see the world on the other side of the wall through the glass. A feature we weren’t expecting is that as you look through the glass you see underwater Boston reflected as well. From the other side, you see your own surroundings through the glass, and then it morphs into the underwater Boston view. This will affect people in a variety of ways, putting them in the mindset of climate change by putting them in an underwater situation. Lastly we added a track onto a scale model of the space where the wall would take place. The track allowed a wheel attached at the top of each frame slide back and forth so it was able to be slid to the side.

As a result, this wall is meant to evoke a specific emotion from it’s audience. Climate change is a pressing issue in our world today, and awareness about it is lacking. When people look at our piece and see an image of their entire city under water, it is an unconventional way of making them conscious of the fact that our world is changing. The glass part of the intervention is another way of expressing the idea of climate change and rising water level. It compliments the image by creating the feeling of waves. You can see through to the other side however, which symbolizes the idea that we do have hope, and we can stop climate change by putting in more of an effort. Not only does this piece contain artistic and functional elements, but it is impactful and will almost certainly stimulate thoughts and conversation. Overall, we are happy with the final product, and are looking forward to seeing it deployed in the real world!