In December I completed my first semester in the Product Architecture and Engineering (PAE) Lab at the Stevens Institute of Technology.  PAE is a graduate level program “integrating the the study of Architecture, Engineering, Product Design, and Interaction”, all of which are central to SMIT’s work.  More from the PAE website:

“The program overcomes longstanding deficiencies in design education by creating a distinctive fusion of design culture and technology through the disciplines of computation, analysis, and advanced production methodologies.

The curriculum focuses upon immersion in the tools that inform this design convergence, and creates opportunities for students to undertake applied research on real projects and collaborate with designers, engineers, scientists and manufacturers at the most progressive design firms in the metropolitan New York area.”

The program is headed by John Nastasi, and I have found it to be a perfect fit for my academic and professional aspirations.  SMIT hopes to both further it’s design work based on the knowledge and experience gained in the PAE lab, and hopefully to work directly with PAE on the continuing technological development of Solar Ivy and GROW.  The first effort in this vein is a Solar Ivy Shading Study, which will be described in a forthcoming post.

I encourage any designer considering graduate studies to look into the PAE lab at Stevens, and I look forward to updating SMITblog readers on my progress in this exciting program.

-Ben

Well, we have not been great s-m-i-t bloggers so far.   In fact, our site has been pretty static since its february launch.  However, you will all be glad to know we have been very busy since then, and things are great here at SMIT.  Keep an eye on the site for some upcoming changes & additions, and look for our first newsletter soon.

Since this is my first post on s-m-i-t, I should tell you a little bit about my interests and what you can expect to see me blogging about.  First things first – I  have developed a real taste for google reader.  I’m all about the feed.  Almost every day I see things that are very relevant to SMIT’s work and I say to myself ‘if I blogged, this would be a good thing to write about…this matters to SMIT’.  Most of these little gems show up in one of four folders in my expanding reader account: arch, design, science, or green.  Sometimes if they are very lucky, they are starred & end up on my delicious page, and are subsequently sent around by Sita, Sam & myself.

I am going to use this blog as another place for this information to live.  I hope that by referencing & writing about my interests in science, architecture, design and sustainability, I can better describe the evolving ambitions and ideology of SMIT.

Hopefully, in the future our posts will be much more frequent then they have been.. and if not, write us and tell us our blog is WEAK! (all caps required.)

Until next time – Ben.