[10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact series]
Some may say there’s a fluid access to design thinking (and dreaming) in academia that becomes increasingly difficult to tap into as we immerse ourselves in professional practice. At the same time, getting impactful hands-on experience can be a challenge to find in a structured curriculum.
Storefront for Community Design’s partnership with mOb studio through the Design Session Studio program fills this gap and offers students the opportunity to work on innovative projects with the community in the City of Richmond.
In 2012, three friends and VCUarts professors, Kristin Caskey, John Malinoski, and Camden Whitehead, founded mOb studio, VCUarts' experimental design lab, uniting their respective departments of Fashion Design, Graphic Design, and Interior Design. With a shared mission of improving quality of life through design, Storefront for Community Design joined forces and moved from it’s 25th Street location to a shared storefront space at 205 E. Broad St.
““This partnership is at the core of the mOb studiO, providing a critical link allowing our students projects and access to people and places in the City of Richmond that most students and faculty could not access””
image: Camden Whitehead, John Malinoski and Kristin Caskey scope out a new home for mOb studio + Storefront in the early days.
Besides getting experience managing projects and forming community connections, it also serves as a primer for living in the city, how it works and the vast opportunities it affords. The program centers around understanding the power of design to constructively shape the city and offers students a model for alternative career paths in design. “This partnership is at the core of the mOb studiO, providing a critical link allowing our students projects and access to people and places in the City of Richmond that most students and faculty could not access” describes Whitehead.
Each semester, Storefront staff and mOb studiO faculty come together to identify projects and teams. Small student teams works directly with their community collaborator (client), a design practitioner as a mentor, and are supported by mOb faculty and Storefront staff.
Project Highlight: Shalom Farms’ Pop-Up Market
In 2015, Shalom Farms, a local organization addressing healthy food insecurity, asked mOb to design an alteration to their van to be used for pop-up markets bringing healthy food to different neighborhoods. Staff recently caught up with Colleen Brennan, a mOb alum who led the mOb team in designing a functional pop-up market van.
image: Concept for breathable fabric baskets, grommets allow the baskets to be easily removed for washing.
Image: Concept for “Lazy Susan” shelves
“mOb totally changed my career trajectory. I was on a path to becoming an artist/furniture maker when I joined the studio. But, I was introduced to the field of landscape architecture and urban design through mOb and was so energized by that kind of collaborative, public work.”
Like many, Brennan found her way into mOb as a Crafts major looking for more connectivity. "I really craved more collaboration and interdisciplinary work than I was getting in the fine art school, and I wanted to work more directly in the public realm through socially-engaged design" shared Brennan.
“Shalom Farms' work addresses healthy food insecurity, which was an issue that really interested me as it bridges the landscape, urban infrastructure, and the body scales. The graphic designers on the team did an amazing job with a branding package and educational signage for the farm, while the rest of the team worked on a pull-out shelving system to transform the van into a market.”
Brennan recently graduated with a Masters of Landscape Architecture and joined a landscape architecture firm in Durham, NC called Surface 678. When asked how she’d describe mOb, she says “it’s like an interdisciplinary design studio...but we wear tyvek suits when we do things together.”
Image: mObjOB 7—FRED (Free Reusable Everything Desirable) with Aberrant Architecture
Project Highlight: Tyvek Suits and FRED
You may be wondering “what are tyvek suits?” The suits are a purposeful unifying tool and show up at public mOb happenings like mObjOb, a bi-annual design-build initiative led by a visiting designer. For example, in 2016 mObjOb was held and FRED (Free Reusable Everything Desirable) was born as a vehicle for connecting communities and dispersing needed items.
mOb alum An Liu shared his memories on this project with us: “Building FRED is a whole team effort. We had architect Kevin Haley from Aberrant Architecture, a London based architecture studio. For the first time, I was able to truly collaborate with all the mObians from different majors and different expertise.” When building was complete, the studio paraded FRED to nearby neighborhoods wearing their signature suits.
“Time flies, many years passed, but FRED is still around, it has been turned into other forms to serve the communities. That mission, the secret mission of making this planet a better place for all lives to live is growing in my heart, day by day” says Liu. An Liu is currently a concept-driven designer at SMBW, a Richmond-based architecture and design firm, and adjunct faculty in the Department of Interior Design at VCUarts.
Image: mObjOB 7—FRED (Free Reusable Everything Desirable) with Aberrant Architecture
““Time flies, many years passed, but FRED is still around, it has been turned into other forms to serve the communities. ”
mOb has over 200 alumni now who are well into their design trajectories and frequently come back to serve as mentors for mOb prOjects and other initiatives. We asked alums to share their memories and how mOb has changed their design practice:
“Learning how to design WITH communities instead of FOR them. I always ask myself that in my studio practice now. This slight shift has changed how I compose myself as a designer.”
“Designing the website to connect black expecting mothers with health professionals... That project taught me that even though it's a website, it's still a space and that knowledge in one area is always applicable to others.”
—Don Petties, mObian, 2021
“Showing up in our mob suits in Harrisonburg to install bamboo installations over the creek... In a world that can be so easily clouded by negativity mob always reminds me that positive solutions are out there!”
—April Zammit, mObian, 2016
“I remember making a skirt out of folded brown construction paper... it reminded me of model making for a space. The folds and seams add structure to fabric the same way folds and joinery add structure in furniture making / building making… changed the game for my brain”
—Emily Yenke, mObian, 2013
“When we filled the rams in recovery space with beanbag chairs. Sitting in a new way helped people overcome shyness and become generally more open in that space.”
—Thomas Kennedy, mObian, 2018
If you are an alum that would like to stay involved, with mOb studio, sign up as a Design Session volunteer and let us know if you’d like to be a mOb mentor!
We need your support!
We can only continue because of your generous support that makes it possible for Storefront and the mOb studio to create innovative solutions WITH communities across Richmond. In honor of our 10th anniversary and to ensure future funding, we are laying the foundation for the next 10 years of community impact. Money raised will be invested in a variety of ways that, taken together, are designed to increase Storefront's mission and programming that will bring positive change to Richmond communities over the next 10 years.
10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact
Follow Storefront for Community Design’s 10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact series to learn more about our impact over the last ten years and check out a timeline of milestones for an overview of our work.
01 | Storefront is Born
02 | Ms. Thompson’s Kitchen
03 | mOb + Storefront = ❤️
04 | Recovery by Design
05 | A Celebration of Community Design
06 | Designing an Innovation Center
07 | Building a Brave Space
08 | General Demotion / General Devotion
09 | Community Driven Design Process
10 | A Vision for the Future