GoodFastCheap

GoodFastCheap is an alternative design-build model that privileges speed and efficacy in an effort to break down barriers that may otherwise prevent a majority of students from participating in design-build projects throughout their academic tenure.Good in these projects refers to a social agenda; an effort toward a social good. But the definition of good is also repositioned in a way that accepts Fast and Cheap as having positive connotations in their ability to deliver agency to the students; empowering them to act. The good described in the projects below allows a greater number of students to partake in the process of design-build; more student participation equals more good.Acting fast requires that we accept a variety of scales and let time become a more definitive design driver. For instance, we may begin with a constrained amount of time as the ultimate design driver and ask what is possible within this time. This develops a resourcefulness in our students that helps them conceptualize alternative practice models wherein every material encounter in the world becomes ripe for speculation as a project. If students and faculty embrace GoodFastCheap as a design-build model then the waiting game is over; no more waiting for a grant, a sponsorship, a donor – engagement in the process can begin immediately.Cheap embraces materials that may typically be thought of as waste. This is not new to design-build but we embrace this part of its history unabashedly. Historically there are pleasures in the cheap being masked by our current educational model that overemphasizes the expensive. Cheap is all that some people can afford, so good designers need to learn how to make cheap appealing.This paper will discuss three projects that have been built within the academic setting that embrace the principles of GoodFastCheap described above. The first project discussed involves the reuse of falling barn materials which were harvested for a series of design-build efforts focused on a hybrid assemblies that created multiple spatial installations and eventually a unique piece of furniture for a social agency. The last two projects we discuss in the paper emphasize a rethinking of fast and cheap as the ultimate good in an increasingly democratic design process. The first of these projects, the 2to3 CHAIR, is a piece of furniture built for 2-3 year-olds out of a single 30”X30” sheet of plywood. The idea arose out of a fascination with what we saw as the potential for using CNC tools in the rapid production of low cost assemblies; the epitome of GoodFastCheap. Toward this end we set three primary goals for the project: minimization of waste (good), ability for rapid assembly (fast), and the ability to make multiple chairs out of a single sheet of stock material (cheap). The second project, called the DRIFT LAMP, began with a single parametric definition developed by the students that is transformed through a shared social network. This process emphasizes design as a social activity; a new and democratic form of GoodFastCheap design-build.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7