Design and Glass Students at RIT to Exhibit during Design Week in New York City

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Elizabeth Lamark

Daniel Ipp, a fourth-year industrial design student, created a lighted side-table for Metaproject 02.

A team of Rochester Institute of Technology students has been chosen to exhibit its work from an interdisciplinary collaborative project with The Corning Museum of Glass during Design Week in May in New York City.

Tom Zogas, a fourth-year student in the glass program, and Daniel Ipp, a fourth-year industrial design student, were both chosen by jurors from The Corning Museum of Glass and legendary designer Massimo Vignelli as winners of Metaproject 02 and will lead the exhibit. Zogas’s glass-blade fan was chosen as the winner of the glass category. Ipp’s lighted side-table was chosen in the industrial design category.

Students from RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences presented works from this year’s Metaproject during a campus event Feb. 16 at the Center for Student Innovation. Metaproject is an innovative annual project based on a 20-week course that partners with industry, positioning the output in a global venue. This year, the School of Design and the School for American Crafts partnered with the world-renowned Corning Museum of Glass.

“I am really pleased by the level of imagination and freshness expressed by these designs,” says Vignelli. “Simple problems are the most difficult to solve, and these students have shown restraint and discipline along with imagination."

Additionally, jurors chose 16 students as runners-up and they will also have the opportunity to exhibit during design week.

Industrial design runners-up are Will Alusitz, Kyle Blemel, Gue Wei Chen, Jacob Dorpfeld, Robert Guglielmo, August Kawaski, Clay Amos, Andrew Miller and Casey Schneider. Glass program runners-up are Alex Demmerle, Namdoo Kim, Alyson Klopp, Karen Mahardy, Michael Migliorini, Surim Lee and Jasper Singer.

“In Metaproject 02, the collaboration between faculty and students of the School of Design and the School for American Crafts was remarkable and unusual. No other studio glass or industrial design program in the country, that I am aware of, has so successfully introduced art students working in glass to design,” says Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass, The Corning Museum of Glass. “And no other program that I know of has introduced design students to the possibilities of glass through direct access to the material in the hot shop. I hope that such collaborations become more commonplace as we move toward increased integration of the fields of art, craft, and industrial design.”

The exhibit will be from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 19 through May 21 at Wanted Design, 119 5^th Ave., second floor, New York City. 

Industrial design majors worked together with glass program majors to explore design concepts that take advantage of glass as the primary material.

Additionally, RIT will publish a case study book, which chronicles the methodology and output from the course, shedding light on the design process. The “Design is One” philosophy exposed by the Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT was overlaid into the conversation, linking the work thematically to the Vignelli Center for Design Studies.

Tom Zogas, a fourth-year student in the glass program, created a glass-blade ceiling fan for Metaproject 02. Elizabeth Lamark