Is there anything good to say about the economic downturn and its effects on design? In a word, yes. At HLW in Los Angeles, the slump provided a self-starting stimulus package for pro bono work. "We had the chance to reach out to the community by donating 1 percent of our time to nonprofits," managing principal Chari Jalali says. So she put out an RFP, in effect, to her colleagues. And Shiva Mandell wasted not a moment in proposing Trash for Teaching as a beneficiary. (Then an associate at HLW, he's now a project coordinator for Interior Design Hall of Fame member Clive Wilkinson.)
Per the mission statement of the six-year-old organization, it "collects clean and safe cast-off materials from manufacturing processes and repurposes them as educational resources." Specifically for art classes. Here are the various ways that T4T works. At headquarters, 4,000 square feet in a 1920's factory, elementary-school art teachers can buy the donated material to take back with them, lead a class on a field trip to paint or sculpt right there, or attend a workshop to hone their own skills. "It's about supercharging the curriculum," Mandell says. But T4T doesn't limit its efforts to work in situ. Founders Steve and Kathy Stanton, he's a trained architect who manufactures candy boxes in the remainder of the building also developed an outreach program. First, the couple purchased a decommissioned postal truck, retrofitted it as a mobile classroom, and modified the engine to run on vegetable oil. An adapted passenger van soon followed. The Treasure Trucks, as they're called, roll up to public schools to offer a substitute for art programs obliterated by budget cuts. http://www.interiordesign.net/article/530897-One_Man_s_Trash_.php
