Article by Jiyoo Jye
Pioneers of one of our newest NuVuX programs, students at Hawaii Technology Academy have recently completed their first immersive virtual studio term. Pop Up Participatory Devices, profiled below, was the final studio run in the Fall Semester. This studio uses an examination of animal communities and ecologies as inspiration for new participatory environmental interventions on the HTA campus. As a studio, students designed and built pop up interactive devices to reinvigorate or create new uses for spaces at HTA. Through a comparative analysis of animal-built structures and societies vs. human-built structures and societies, they collectively explored the significance of community and the structures that bring us together.
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Become a Honu Reader as you surround yourself with exciting new experiences beginning right outside HTA’s front entrance with a new portable library collection of hexagonal bookshelves that manually operate using plexiglass doors. HTA’s community is enriched with access to new stories and worlds by borrowing and trading books from the shelves, chatting with fellow users, and connecting to the Honu Readers’ social media page.
Description: HTA’s Oahu campus is extremely small. Limited rooms become multipurpose with the sad result of having no space for a shared library for K-12 students. A space-saving series of portable hexagonal library cubbies meant to allow and encourage students and staff to take a break and reset by getting lost in a good book is the perfect solution. This first iteration of the portable library will be connected to the chain-link fence near HTA’s front entrance staircase with future additions mounted to walls in classrooms and various locations around campus. A single cubby is dedicated to providing sanitation supplies and a login/logout clipboard. The idea is to “Take a Book and Leave a Book.” Users will feel delighted as they browse the available books, select one, log down their names and what they have borrowed or traded. Students can socialize with others around the physical bookshelves and extend their connection virtually by creating posts of reflections and recommendations on the HonuReader Instagram page. We invite you to join the Honu Reader Family!
