Design Students Serve Up Hot Show with Kitchen Appliance Instruments

The humming of the refrigerator took on a whole new meaning Jan. 21 when first-year architecture and interior design students from UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning presented a stove-top symphony, a concert where all the original compositions were played on instruments the students had fashioned from old refrigerator, stove and dishwasher parts.

“Let them loose in the kitchen, and just see what happens,” joked DAAP student Geoff Simmons, helping with the event, as he introduced the first of 18 groups to take the stage before a packed house.

The idea of the design assignment and the public performance was to challenge students to perceive their environment and world in new ways, to learn about visual design and function by crafting for the ear.  Explained James Postell, associate professor of interior design, “We can learn design from music, writing, movies, drama, cuisine, buildings and from appliances too.  Interior design and architecture are very similar to music.  All require compositions that grow from individual, component parts.”

The noteworthy songs ranged in style as widely as did the shape and form of the hand-made instruments.  Some tunes recalled jazz and rock melodies while others can only be said to have reflected the calliope of the big-top circus tent and the easy-going informality of the county fair.  All were laced with humor as students donned on-stage personas and costumes and choreographed their musical offerings.

The gathered DAAP students, faculty and parents could certainly appreciate the musical message of the group called “The Survivors” with their rendition of a composition they titled “First Quarter.”  It was the musical expression and description of their sink-or-swim first quarter in the program, at the end of which – in December – they had made their musical instruments.  Just as with their first quarter in college, the composition steadily increased tempo to a frenetic beat.  Then, it suddenly stopped.  All the members stood still, and the piece seemed decidedly finished.  Just when the audience accepted and understood that the composition was, indeed, complete, the music really took off at an even fiercer tempo.  It perfectly represented their experiences as first-quarter students in DAAP’s demanding architecture and interior design classes (recently named as the best undergraduate programs in the country).   

Another group, “partly cloudy,” donned giant, brightly colored, cardboard rain drops, clouds, a lightening bolt, sun and a tornado to play a composition that mimicked the slowly rising crescendo and tempo of a severe storm.  Freshman Brian Ringley of Mansfield, Ohio, marched through the audience tooting his dishwasher-parts horn.  When he reached the stage, he kicked up a storm, knocking down cardboard trees and houses, blowing quite respectable blasts on his trumpet horn.

The designing of the musical instruments and the Jan. 21 performance are part of the first-year “Foundation Studio” in the architecture and interior design programs.  Leading the studio are Gulen Cevik, adjunct assistant professor of interior design; Dennis Mann, professor of architecture; James Postell, associate professor of interior design; David Lee Smith, professor of architecture; Marc Swackhamer, assistant professor of architecture; and Melanie Swick, adjunct professor of architecture.