Campus Stories - Design

Campus Stories

Groundbreaking theater technology in the making

When Stanford’s Ram’s Head Theatrical Society presented Les Misérables last year, it wasn’t just the telling of a tale of love and the power of the human spirit. It was a demonstration of ingenuity. Lighting designer MATT LATHROP ’16, developed a digitally operated remote control follow spot for the production. “Rather than using a typical…

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Campus Stories

Blooming Fibonacci

These 3-D printed sculptures, called blooms, are designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. The placement of the appendages is determined by the same method nature uses in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotation speed is synchronized to the strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º – the golden…

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L.A. Cicero
Campus Stories

Stanford d.school students ‘humanize’ a truck for a good cause

The well-used delivery truck came with seats for two. Now it needed sturdy, safe seats for three people and a dog. And the passenger seat had to be removable so mechanics could maintain and repair the engine. That’s just one of dozens of design challenges that must be solved by Stanford students in the Humanize…

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Campus Stories

Happy 2015!

We are looking forward to everything 2015 will bring in the arts at Stanford – new exhibitions at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford Live performances at Bing Concert Hall and beyond, engagement with the Anderson Collection at Stanford University – and of course the enormous variety of performances, events, exhibitions and programs put on by…

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Campus Stories

‘Stanford in New York City’ to launch autumn 2015

Stanford will accept applications in early December for the inaugural quarter of Stanford in New York City, an undergraduate program in which students will use the city as their laboratory – taking courses; working in internships in the arts, design, architecture and urban studies; going on field trips and attending cultural events. The program, designed…

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L.A. Cicero
Campus Stories

Windhover contemplation center now open

When visitors walk into Windhover, the first painting they’ll see is Big Red, a large abstract oil painting of a kestrel flying in a red sky, a work that artist Nathan Oliveira returned to again and again over the 25 years it stood in his studio. Oliveira, who died in 2010, was an internationally acclaimed…

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Campus Stories

Stanford Engineering and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announce Magic Grants to transform the world of media

The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation has awarded its 2014-2015 Magic Grants to eight teams of students, faculty, alumni and post-doctoral researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities to develop new technologies that could transform the way media content is produced, delivered and consumed. Offered annually, Magic Grants are made possible by…

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Photo: Kurt Hickman
Campus Stories

Stanford students learn to build their own bikes

In the summer of 2001, Ryan Connolly wanted to build a bicycle from scratch. Connolly, a master’s student majoring in manufacturing systems engineering, had met a master frame builder in Palo Alto and convinced him to come to the Product Realization Lab (PRL) and share his knowledge. That fall quarter, Connolly learned to design and…

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Campus Stories

#MadeAtStanford

Campus Stories

Emerging Creatives

Last month, Stanford hosted the first ever “Emerging Creatives” conference, organized by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities. During this three-day intensive experience, one hundred students from twenty-five universities across the country explored connections among the arts, design, technology, and business while learning from pioneers and leaders in interdisciplinary collaboration. The students participated…

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Beverly Choe
Campus Stories

In Japan, Stanford architecture students explore design ancient and recent

Being able to visit the sacred Shinto Ise Grand Shrine in Japan during a rebuilding year happens only once every 20 years. Combine that experience with participation in a workshop to design a school in tsunami-ravaged Ogatsu and a competition to build a mobile artist pavilion of the future and you’ve got yourself an opportunity…

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Campus Stories

New maps showcase public art treasures on Stanford campus

While the Burghers of Calais is a favorite stop for visitors who pose for photos with Auguste Rodin’s larger-than-life bronze statues in Memorial Court, there are dozens of other public art treasures all over the Stanford campus awaiting visits from art lovers. Strolling across campus, students, faculty, staff and visitors can encounter art at almost…

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Creative Commons / Naoya Fujii
Campus Stories

Groundbreakers in fashion industry share insights at Stanford

Fall fashion at Stanford is not just cardinal-red hoodies and bike-friendly skinny jeans. On Dec. 2, “fall fashion” at Stanford may very well refer to the first of four conversations surrounding the fashion industry with New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn and a collection of forward thinking-insiders: Ron Johnson, Annie Leibovitz, Pascal Dangin, Antoine…

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Campus Stories

Studying Carrie Mae Weems’ work at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center from different angles

Of course art history and photography students are heading to the Cantor Arts Center to see Carrie Mae Weems’ remarkable three-decade retrospective. Weems is, after all, a MacArthur genius and one of today’s most important contemporary artists. But she is also an eloquent interpreter of the African American experience and through her work explores the…

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Photo by Harrison Truong
Campus Stories

Introducing the Interdisciplinary Honors in the Arts Program

The Stanford Arts Institute is bringing to Stanford’s campus a program unlike any other. Meet the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, Honors in the Arts, which provides an opportunity for students of any major to complete a capstone project that brings a student’s experience in another discipline together with artistic endeavor. Conceived by Executive Director of Arts…

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Campus Stories

Stanford’s Clark Center celebrates first decade

Created as a social experiment in collaboration and described as both a cauldron of creativity and Noah’s ark, the James H. Clark Center, home to Bio-X, turns 10 this month. The three-story, 146,000-square-foot research center brings together under one roof a variety of disciplines, including biology, medicine, chemistry, physics and engineering. That’s why it is…

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