“Why should we care about form? If you fly in airplanes, ride in boats or automobiles, if you eat with utensils, if you interface with anything artificial, form is important, perhaps even life-saving, every day,” said Dean Mitzi Vernon. “The form of our contemporary world, especially the human-made world, is where we spend most of our civilized lives.”

FORM: Line-Plane-Solid is a studio course, an exhibition and an area of scholarship for Dean Vernon. Using design instead of words, FORM: Line-Plane-Solid explains the concept of form through the act of physical fabrication.

The process of creating in the form studio begins conceptually with raw material and simple prompts. Form evolves to product as the studio, and the exhibit, progresses. From the drawing aspect of the project, which introduces the properties of the hand and how human anatomy extends form, to the solid flowform exercise to the utility of a simple handtool, students learn, in tandem, the importance of human interface and the inherent properties of materials. However, the essential emphasis is on form doing the work, not relying exclusively on material properties.

The FORM exhibition features 200+ projects by students from the Virginia Tech Form Studio (2011-2014), where Dean Vernon taught before coming to the UK College of Design. Everything from the actual infrastructure of the exhibit, to the graphics, to the artifacts were created by more than 100 students involved in Virginia Tech’s Form Studio.

This exhibit is another example of Dean Vernon’s vision of continued stewardship with the Bluegrass Region, bridging the conversational divide between design and its impact on our community.

Article by: University of Kentucky College of Design