Monday, November 18, 2024
By: Kyle Niblett
Emerging designers inside the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning met recently to unveil their final works focused on human-centered and sustainable design concepts. These students who are taking part in Lisa Platt’s Sustainable Adaptive Material Practicum Lab (SAMPL) Interior Materials course, specifically crafted their work for the Jacksonville Historic Eastside Community Development Center.
“Our students’ creativity and innovation never fail to impress me,” said Lisa Platt, a UF assistant professor of interior design.
The event that was co-sponsored by Floor & Décor took place inside the John and Anne Sofarelli Family Gallery at Jonathan and Melanie Antevy Hall, and featured guests from the Jacksonville Restore Repair and Resilience initiative, as well as DCP faculty and students. For over an hour, interior design undergraduate and graduate students showcased their innovative design projects.
“We wanted to create a space through materiality that is sustainable for the community,” junior interior design student Mitch Tuell said. “The goal was to give them more time to give back to the community as opposed to spending time maintaining their space. It was all about making it easier for those that use the Center.”
The project aimed to develop a design concept for the Community Center that integrates resilient materials and honors the Historic Eastside’s sense of place, creating an interior environment that reflects and supports the community’s heritage while aligning with the center’s future community development initiatives. Each project showed the different zones of activity in the Jacksonville Historic Eastside Community Development Center. The students leaned in to using regenerative and resilient materials to maximize their creativity in design. Each project team utilized a computational dashboard to analyze and quantify safety and sustainability material performance metrics. Composite material performance metrics were visualized across project zones, revealing the achieved levels of safety and sustainability in each design.
“The students have done a lot of historical research on the neighborhood,” said Elizabeth Paulson of JEA. “There is a big span of different views which is interesting.”
The event culminated in attendees voting for the best SAMPL project team, earning the winners an award from Floor & Decor.
SAMPL’s goal is to enhance educational resources and applied research in regenerative sustainable materials for building community resilience and well-being. Its resources are currently being developed though a generous grant from the Angelo Donghia Foundation and being supported by DCP industry partners at Floor & Decor.
