Pratt Institute

With Rebecca Welz

11 of us from Pratt Insti­tute left the snow and ice of New York win­ter and trav­eled to Belize over win­ter break to snorkel the reef and to work with biol­o­gists, com­bin­ing first hand obser­va­tion of sea life with lec­tures on man­groves, sea grasses, and coral and fish species.

Time was set aside every­day for the group to draw sea and plant life and for notes to be taken. Every­one kept a diary of what we saw and what we did. As fol­low up and fur­ther devel­op­ment of ideas, we con­tinue the work of explo­ration in a stu­dio class that meets once a week in the spring semes­ter at Pratt. From the infor­ma­tion stu­dents glean from research and draw­ings, they will develop forms.  Form devel­op­ment can be based on how some­thing func­tions as well as how it is struc­tured. From form explo­ration the stu­dents will begin to do fur­ther draw­ings and sketch mod­els with their accom­pa­ny­ing research. From sketch mod­els fur­ther devel­op­ment will take place result­ing in prod­uct design.As we look to nature for solu­tions to design prob­lems, we will remem­ber the excite­ment of float­ing on the sur­face of the sea and hav­ing choco­late col­ored nurse sharks and sil­ver stingrays swim­ming below us. We held brit­tle stars and upon fur­ther research learn that Lucent Tech­nolo­gies stud­ies the eyes of those crea­tures to make advances on lenses. Our own design method­ol­ogy can evolve so that we design with the con­sid­er­a­tions of doing the least amount of harm. We not only have the expe­ri­ence of peer­ing below the sur­face of the ocean but of ask­ing our­selves how does nature do it? What solu­tions in nature can we learn from?

Stu­dent Thoughts on the Trip:

Gretchen White
Inspi­ra­tion daz­zled from scur­ry­ing her­mit crabs to the over­lap­ping sil­hou­ettes of soar­ing birds.  Blue skies melted into watery sweeps of indigo and turquoise, invit­ing us to jump in and dis­cover hid­den trea­sure.  We observed glit­ter­ing fish mov­ing in and out of tow­er­ing coral, grace­ful tur­tles, flut­ter­ing stingrays, allur­ing conch shells, and fleshy jel­ly­fish, among many other species!  The Flamingo Tongue stood out as a sam­ple of under­wa­ter magic.  This snail inhab­ited a creamy unas­sum­ing shell about three quar­ters of an inch long.  He wrapped his sun­set orange polka dot gills around the shell giv­ing it a seam­less pat­terned surface.

Mered­ith Zuch­man
An inte­gral part of the expe­ri­ence for me was stay­ing on the island for the week and really get­ting a feel for a dif­fer­ent way of life.  This was expe­ri­enced through my inter­ac­tions with the locals, learn­ing about the ecosys­tem and ani­mals, and hear­ing about the daily lives of the Belizean peo­ple.  I also enjoyed learn­ing about the plants and ani­mals and then going out into the man­groves and reef sys­tems and imme­di­ately being able to iden­tify dif­fer­ent species first hand.  Spend­ing this time with like-minded design­ers who I could then con­fer with was also part of an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence.  The whole trip was truly amaz­ing and has reminded me what I want to do and be as a designer!

Pete Klassen-Landis
For five days I was not going to be who I nor­mally am. For five days I was going to be a child again, look­ing at every­thing with new eyes and every­thing I was see­ing was new; the peo­ple, the archi­tec­ture, the sig­nage and graf­fiti, the road­ways and lack of stop signs. When trav­el­ing to a for­eign place you must relax your reg­u­lar ways of oper­at­ing and go with the flow. You are now on Belize time. Our days were filled with lec­tures, snor­kel­ing, kayak­ing and of course tak­ing in the sun. I saw some amaz­ing crea­tures, both under­wa­ter and above. My three favorite crit­ters were the hawks­bill tur­tle, the yel­low tail dam­selfish and a tiny lit­tle quid that flashed bril­liant col­ors as it darted away from me. I had a great time in Belize and the trip con­tin­ues to inspire me.

Car­men Wong
My expe­ri­ence in Belize was amaz­ing! It was my first time snor­kel­ing and it was very enjoy­able. I got a chance to see many under­wa­ter and land crea­tures all in one vicin­ity up close. I also saw and learned about man­groves for the first time. I think they are very unique trees and was fas­ci­nated by the aer­ial roots of the red man­grove. Not only does the tan­gle of roots pro­vide shel­ter for ani­mals, but it also sup­ports the ground around the roots. We had a good vari­ety of stu­dents in our group. Get­ting to know every­one and hear­ing about their expe­ri­ences was fun. The only thing that I would say that I dis­liked about the trip was being eaten alive by mos­qui­toes and other bugs.