Beth Ferguson, Elton Hao Wu, Angela Sanguinetti, David Haddad, Jamie Oka, UC Davis
A reimagination of services as a flexible infrastructure to help cities and universities. The project embraces Davis’ bike-oriented community through the installation of a solar-powered charging station for electric bikes, scooters, and personal mobile electronics.
This project connects to the Placemaking initiative by involving two Spring courses taught by Professor Beth Ferguson; Studio Practices in Industrial Design and Studio Practices in Sustainable Design. Students will be involved in the research, prototyping, furniture design, placemaking design and LED lighting display design. Students will be asked to prototype the LED art lighting display with the laser cutter and 3D printer. Professor Ferguson, a new designer in residence at the Autodesk Center for Technology at Pier 9, will be able to fabricate the final lighting display using the Autodesk waterjet cutter and other advanced fabrication equipment. Students will have hands-on experience designing and building solar charging stations that will contribute to sustainable transportation and energy use in the UC Davis campus community and beyond.
In addition to providing clean, renewable energy for personal electronics and two-wheeled electric vehicles, the station will integrate environmental dashboard technologies and other creative, multimodal data visualizations to educate and provide feedback to the campus community regarding local energy and environmental issues. Our vision is that the station will serve as a functional gathering node, community focal point, and energy and environmental information center.