Second year Industrial Design students have spent their fall term with faculty members Odin Cappello and Glenn Moffat and Crystal Fountains partners Jongmu Lee and George Ayer designing fountain concepts that would be put to the real test: each student team has created a complete product experience and presented their design to a panel of judges for a chance to win sponsored prize money and have their design developed by an industry leader.
Throughout the semester, students worked in teams to design working fountain models to present to Crystal Fountains – a leading company in creating beautiful and functional water displays around the globe. Jongmu Lee, Senior Art Director at Crystal Fountains, helped direct these students throughout the process of sketching and building their designs before sitting on the panel and being one of the judges of their final work.
“The original concepts that our second year students created have thoroughly impressed the team at Crystal for two years in a row,” said Odin Cappello, faculty member at the School of Applied Technology. This is the second year Cappello has connected Crystal Fountains with his Industrial Design class, and the collaboration’s success has only grown. “Crystal has extended the number of prizes from three to five and increased the overall award amounts.”
The collaboration was hugely beneficial for both groups involved: the students were extremely motivated to create their best work because it was a real project for a real industry partner, and Lee and the team at Crystal Fountains have seen creative designs flourish inspiring their own innovation.
Prizes were awarded to the five winning teams who moved on to present their ideas at the Crystal Fountains Head Office for further feedback. “After the final event, a number of my colleagues approached me with excitement talking about a possible adaptation of the students’ ideas into their design,” Lee stated. “They expressed to me how much they were blown away by the quality of presentations and professionalism the students carried out.”
Winning Teams
1st Place – Revo
Lauren D’Souza
Christopher Nguyen
Ashuni Patel
Joshua Solomon
2nd Place – Jet Draw
Keisha Burns
Sandra Moros Glaser
Elliott Morrone
Evan Stichhaller
3rd Place – Waterstrings
Alexandra Detullio
Stephanie Gooderham
Luka Thurlbeck
4th Place – Vortex
Avery Lukan
Adam Lukey
Riley Long-Alexander
Santiago Varela
5th Place – Eska
Shervin Abdi
Sarah Ballantyne
Ryan Chiu
Brandon Fraser