Casting in Context
Steven Haulenbeek and Pete Oyler
1 week course || SCULPT 665 001 || 1 credit hour || Lab Fee: $100

This one-week design focused class will explore the relationship between industrial approaches to production and the natural environment. Making use of Ox-Bow’s unique location, natural, raw, found materials will be used as source material for mold making and on-site metal casting of functional objects. With an emphasis on finding creative ways to use readily available materials in the design process, this class will emphasize hands-on learning and students will develop skills in mold making, casting, and iterative design thinking. Students will work collaboratively throughout the casting process and will embrace a process based approach to making functional objects. Drawing inspiration from process-based designers working at various scales of production–including Hella Jongerius, Max Lamb, Chen Chen and Kai Williams–this course will explore how a range of contemporary designers expand traditional approaches to making objects and develop new processes through iteration. Readings by design critics David Pye, Alice Rawsthorn, and Murray Moss will help to inform and contextualize studio discussions. Key to all course content is an emphasis on different approaches to independent studio practice and production methods.By the end of this course, students should expect to produce one functional cast object and have thorough documentation of process.

FACULTY

Steven Haulenbeek
Ice-Cast Bronze Lace Vessel #1
Cast Bronze
2018

Steven Haulenbeek is a Chicago based industrial designer and artist. He received his bachelors in drawing and sculpture from Hope College in Holland, Michigan in 2002 and received his Masters degree in Designed Objects from SAIC in 2006. In 2010 he founded his independent design practice with the interest in experimental, material, and process-based objects for the home. Steven Haulenbeek Studio is represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris,

London and New York as well at The Future Perfect in New York and San Francisco. Steven’s work passes by the typical design/build format and instead seeks to invent a production framework by which objects emerge more organically. “Ice-Cast Bronze” and “Resin-Bonded Sand” are two of his best-know experimental processes developed in this spirit. TheIce-Cast Bronze collection pairs the natural freezing cold climate of the Chicago winter with the lost-wax process to create uniquely textured objects and furniture in cast bronze. The RBS Series (Resin-Bonded Sand) utilizes silica sand, a typically disposable industrial byproduct, to create colorful sculptural objects, furniture and lighting.

Pete Oyler
Title: L4.2-2
Materials: Ash

Pete Oyler is a product and furniture designer whose work explores the intersections of design, craft, contemporary culture, and history. Oyler produces work for license and larger volume production under his own name and is a Principal at Assembly Design, an award-winning studio he co-founded with interior designer Nora Mattingly. His studio practice emphasizes both traditional and experimental approaches to a wide range of materials and methods of production. His work has been exhibited and published internationally and he has received numerous awards including Forbes’ “30 Under 30”, the Metropolis “Likes Award for Innovation in Design”, Sight Unseen’s “American Design Hot List,” and Newcity’s “Design 50: Who Shapes Chicago.” Based in Chicago, Oyler is an Assistant Professor in Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.