This two-week course presents students the opportunity to develop a personal design process—specific to their aesthetics, needs and stylistic inspirations—and ultimately, to design and craft a new work from a single sheet of Baltic birch plywood.  Students will gain insight into plywood’s inherent strengths and weaknesses, and consider how these material qualities influence our decisions as design ideas develop. Additionally, students will consider how a work’s spatial presence, narrative and human interaction influence our designs.  The course presents effective ways to use iterative drawing, scale models, and templates to draft and reproduce buildable designs.  

The second week is an intensive, hands-on learning experience as students take their designs into the woodshop, and transform their sheet of plywood into a fully-realized piece.  During this time, students become knowledgeable in plywood’s connections and how it’s worked, while becoming fluent in woodshop machinery, and ultimately, completing a final design in plywood.

This course is for students who already have fundamental woodworking skills and familiarity with woodshop tools.

Please note:  This course occurs during the Woodworking Certificate. Students, participating in this course, will be taking this module alongside full-time students in the program. The class will meet Monday-Friday from 9am-5pm. Students will have access to the shop over the weekend