These are the slides that I showed during my thesis defense last April at Emily Carr University. It went very well, with some great questions at the end from my panel.

1. SARAH HAY
ECI MAA design candidate
Thesis presentation
SLOW DESIGN
April 24th 2008. 15:00 PT.
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

2. AGENDA
• background:
Industrial Design to Communication Design to Slow Design and Creative Strategy
• timeline:
ongoing project / the last 2 years made visual
• thesis paper:
slow design: the lost art of shifting gears
festina lente, seven generation theory and creative collaborations
• thesis project:
RAFT: slow process and outcome driven
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

3. WHY TIME?
There is a correlation between velocity, and the health of the
environment.
Time is perceived as a barrier to more sustainable modes of living and
working.
Explorations are informed by long term, cyclical thinking.
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

4. TIME
Time is fundamental to our understanding of the world.
It is simultaneously a structure, a dimension,
a quantity, a concept, infinite, and finite.
It is rhythmic cyclical linear sequential.
Our lives could be thought of as
successions of events
of various durations
of various scales.
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

5. T I M E L I N E (the last 2 years)
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

6. time line
(september 2006 to may 2008) snow storm
lunar eclipse
meteor lunar eclipse
spring
rainbow perfect double rainbow
rain rain rain rain big sur phosphoresense
solar eclipse perfect rainbow georgia strait
strange weather
forest fires
news light house park interior BC
Gossip Island Vancouver Civic Strike
practice sail
winter sailing
moved apartments 39th annual 39th annual
southern straits southern straits
activities
26birthday sail
mad max
planning and website
Gossip Aboriginal Front Door
Island RAW recycled art works
board meeting Conscientious Innovation
arts n crafts RAW recycled art works
ARC ARC rhizome rhizome board meeting Lund
collage cards puppets finding home cardboard BC
CBE nests
centre for breakfast excellence San Francisco
is formed!
1 day design charrette NYE 2008 Design Nerd Jam
Push festival > Scarface
identity exchange
VAG Fred Herzog Burning RAFT
Light House 8 hours / week 3 day design charrette
panama turtles internship Seattle field trip
farmboy fine arts Man Buntzen Lake
waiting spaces
seed was planted Kaos Pilots charrette my 27
studen hiring committee
student sick-o
birthday CIRS / Stantec meeting RAFT
moon calendars
VAG Paint CIRS meeting @ Stantec Van Isle sailing Amanda Mitchell biggest barrier is social False Creek
mini practicum studio visit @ LCS and Mithun 360 fraser lightships SPACES magazine
> wind water time energy The Hidden City EATart work party EATart fundraiser
end of term soropta beach panama energy awareness through art
presentation to class turtle conservation
design drawing
g GLOBE conference
Ethical Progressive Intelligent Consumer
experience EPIC
BC Home + Garden Show community development morphology half insect / half machine bicycle sustainable living expo
Vancouver Home and interior Design Show field recording
202 F002 Colour School Vancouver City Series
time praxis
s
(the practice) SSHRC blurring boundaries
research methods paper weaving words conscientious innovation internship Deleuze - 1000 Plateaus on Beautification
september
m october november
m december
m january
a february
u march
c april
l may june july august september october november december january february march april ma
ay
influence research methods seminar research methods seminar intro presentation
internship paper thesis proposal / presentation
(the theory) the long tail spanish moving radical art festina lente
Interactivity interactivity paper
the bottle is a cat Fluxus creative class maps Tools For Conviviality
thesis
social process social innovation sound walk (listen) biomimcry self reliance to make haste slowly
psychogeography mash ups Regenerative Building slow design the lost art of shifting gears
new genre public art
Happenings design intervention applied arts
brand planning
necker cube art intervention shared responses to the soundwalk leatherbacks creative strategy
relational aesthetics
John Cage
performances
spime = space + time community
social software
mangroves festina lente RAFT begins
concepts inter trans multi disciplinary accidents community phenomenology
talks VanCity Speaker La Commune Discussion Group Helen Goodland
Alex Stefan
field research
Bill Moggridge Ann Thorpe Metaphor
Light Resource Lecture Van Jones Amanda Mitchell Net Zero Building
Janine MacCleod World Changing interactivity Designers’ Atlas
BIG.dk James Bond Forgotten But Not Gone Maurice Blanchot
Green Guide
slow Blessed Unrest The Essential Solitude Vantage Point
VPL > Public Spaces Karim Rashid
Carl Safina 7 generation Paul Hawken William Rees Topology and Learning about Learning
Ezio Manzini E. Grosz, Business of Beauty BBC Blue Planet
reads Thinking the New: Virginia Wolf Post Design Voyage of the Turtle theory Eternally Yours
Ecological Perspective
BBC Planet Earth
Enabling solutions the myth of everyday life
hannah arendt and jean baudrillard Margeret Atwood
participatory ecological design pedagogy in the consumer
Of Futures Yet Unthought secret life of things
Driven to Distraction Ti-Fu Tuan Ayn Rand Oryx and Crake Time in Design Six Memos for the Next Conscious Strategic Design Piloting
Ornamental Knots
Earth From Above
Ed Van Hindte Millenium
Edgar Morin
Topophilia Atlas Shrugged as a Strategic Tool Chapman MoMA Elastic Mind
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus The Curious Incident Italo Calvino Kamille Friis
Seven complex lessons for future of education Earnst Haekel Nicolas Bourriard David Abrams The Weather
Carol Becker death of environmentalism of the Dog in the Night Time
Art Forms in Nature Relational Aesthetics Spell of the Sensuous Robertson
Lonely Planet’s Subversive Imagination: Harvest Emotionally Durable Design
The Weathermakers
Visualizing Research Experimental Travel Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility Janine Benyus Ethnographers Toolkit Future Farmers Chapman
Gaston Bachelard Easy to Make Furniture Biomimicry
Malcom Gladwell Amy F.
i books Susan Lacy
Strangely Familiar
Poetics of Space Storage Ideas
Blink
The Golden Spruce Outside Architecture
Mapping the Terrain Liam Gillick Smart Architecture
Design and the Everyday Literally No Place Spiral Dynamics
Italo Calvino Diana Forsyth
Jane Jacobs Invisible Cities Studying Those Who Study Us Slow Thinking
Ed van Hindt Paul Virilio Aalvar Alto
Open Sky Nature of Economies TOP
Lightness, Smart Janine Benyus Architecture for Humanity Le Corbusier
Ed van Hindt Biomimicry Design Like You Give a Damn Joe Columbo Slow Design
Design:
Fuad Luke
8’
Eternally Yours history theory and practice of product design Shigeru Ban
John Thakara visions on product endurance The Secret of Culture
In the Bubble
8’
Geography and Imagination
World Changing Olafur Eliason
Ed van Hindt Daniel Birnbaum Take Your Time
Chronology Stuart Walker @ SF MOMA
Smart Architecture
FRONT SIDE
Sustainable by Design
Bruce Sterling
RAFT
Shaping Things design evolves

7. I N T E R N S H I P (summer 2007)
Playa Soropta, Panama
– sea turtle conservation
Light House Sustainable Building Centre
– communication design
Conscientious Innovation
– creative strategy + design
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

8. THESIS PAPER
• slow design and the lost art of shifting gears
• reprioritization of time in the design / decision making process
• festina lente, seven generations and sustainments
• defining a process / method for slow design
• emotional durability / beyond ‘green design’
• use the thesis project RAFT as a vehicle to test the theoretical, to manifest slow design.
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

9. SLOW DESIGN
A theoretical framework (Fuad-Luke 2004)
• process:
holistic, inclusive, permits evolution
• desired outcomes:
reduce resource flow and therefore consumption
individual, socio-cultural, environmental well being
• overlapping themes:
tradition, ritual, experiential, evolved, slowness, eco-efficiency, open source, technology
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

10. LOCATING SLOW DESIGN
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

11. THESIS PROJECT>RAFT
1. process driven:
built of salvaged and/or sustainable material
improvisation and subjective preferences and intuition
each material has a narrative, slow design exposes these through the act of
making - together they build in layers of meaning to the object
2. outcome driven:
floating platform for peaceful enjoyment and informal education
participatory design requires people to help assemble and disassemble
hands on learning – rope tying, lashing techniques
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

12. Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

13. MATERIALS
• timber pallets > Steveston Marine (free)
• 200L HDPE barrels > craigslist.org (purchased)
• 3” bamboo > ID students, bamboo world (purchased)
• rope > Steveston Marine (purchased)
• inner tube > Wreckless bikes (free)
• oars > craigslist.org (purchased)
• netting > Fishermen’s Wharf (free)
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

14. ASSEMBLY
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

15. T E S T L A U N C H – False Creek
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

16. E X P E R I E N C E – Buntzen Lake
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

17. E X P E R I E N C E – False Creek
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

18. V A N T A G E P O I N T – perceptual shifts inspire change
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

19. CONCLU SION
I believe that sustainability can emerge out of the celebration of
slowness, with rigorous sensibility towards the environment,
quality of life and temporal rhythms which can be integrated into
the designing of objects, structures and spaces over time.
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

20. THANK YOU
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

21. FURTHER QUESTIONS
• what would I do differently?
• what I will take away with me?
• what’s next?
• a new research question?
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation

22. SLOW DESIGN TEMPLATE
Sarah Hay MAA Design Candidate
Thesis Presentation