Extending the welcome mat of the Brown Design Workshop

Almost imperceptible physical changes have been underfoot in the makerspace of Prince Lab since July. Those most familiar with it are hard pressed to describe why exactly there is a more airy and open feeling: “These are the only new things in here,” said Louise Manfredi, the new Director of the Brown Design Workshop and one of the newest faculty additions to Brown Engineering, as she pointed out the table and plants in her office. “I refinished this. I wanted a bench table and (engineering facilities and operations manager) Jon Kristopik found this and asked if I could do anything with it. I sanded, restained, and repainted it and John Shilko and Ben Lyons and Jerry Zani helped me put new brackets on it and shore it up.

“The desk over there was something nobody wanted anymore and honestly, it fits into my position — taking things that nobody wants and re-imagining them into something beautiful and functional.”

For Manfredi, who grew up in the United Kingdom in a family where she was surrounded by artists, chefs and musicians, the journey to this place at this time makes perfect sense. “I was always surrounded by this creative energy,” she said. “If I wanted something as a child, I typically made it. I couldn’t go out and, with non-existent pocket change, buy a Barbie dream house. So I made it with cardboard and leftover bits and pieces from the house. I was actively repurposing materials destined for landfill at a young age. 

“The first thing I remember making of significance, which actually led to my parents finding the money to buy it, was an easel. We had a washing machine delivered in that strong cardboard, and I made the structure from that. I think I was maybe 7 or 8. A few months later, Santa delivered a wooden painter’s easel for me.”

In high school, well-meaning adults discouraged her from pursuing chemistry and mathematics by pointing out her flair and aptitude for the more creative subjects. Never one to be dissuaded, she would went on to obtain a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Leeds, after beginning there in product design. “The product design degree was led by STEM practitioners and I loved it,” she said. “It was all the engineering disciplines with design studios woven through it. At age 18, I already knew I could design fanciful objects that are speculative in nature, but what I really wanted to design were objects that could be implemented tomorrow. I wanted to master the engineering concepts that take ideas through to production. So that is why I picked the University of Leeds. I was in the first cohort of this brand new program which felt like a bit of a risk, but I was ready. I wanted to improve my STEM skills and it seemed like a good fit for me. And it turned out to be amazing. I stayed on to do my Ph.D. there and published work at the intersection of design engineering and the psychology of physiology. Which is how I ended up in a neuroscience lab.”

The neuroscience work she refers to was in the lab of the late Sliman Bensmaia at the University of Chicago, and where Manfredi’s postdoctoral work, funded by Kimberly-Clark, would be. Bensmaia focused on how sensory information is encoded in the nervous system and the brain, centering on the sense of touch. 

“Kimberly-Clark was interested in how to make synthetic materials feel natural and high quality, and Sliman’s work involved understanding how complex signals on the skin inform our tactile perception. It was a beautiful synthesis of design, innovation, engineering, and basic science. I had a wonderful time learning there, however, the nature of the research moving forward was not something I wanted to continue. I knew I needed to think about what my new trajectory could be, and that didn’t really start until I got to Syracuse.”

Manfredi realized that she cared most about sustainability issues around production and consumption.  

“That’s one of the wonderful parts of academia - I can change my mind and investigate something different. It does put you on a back foot if you’re trying to achieve the traditional idea of an academic career, the tenure-track process, the lab, the graduate students. I radically changed my direction, but I realized at Syracuse that I wanted a position that worked to my strengths rather than me trying to fit into the specific definition of a tenure track professor.

“That said, the Brown Design Workshop has now become my research lab, and it is a complex system indeed. We don’t have any environmental impact scores or metrics at all for the BDW, so it is a blank canvas. I want to try to work out how we measure the impact of the materials and the processes that we use, measure how much waste we generate and what our potentials are for creating a circular economy. I want to challenge our students to think beyond their project needs, and think about the materials used, the suppliers, the accountability for acquiring those materials from an ethical and environmental standpoint. Is there a way that we can bring in new and innovative materials for students to experiment with here and perhaps we feed back information to these manufacturers? These incremental improvements to the BDW become research projects and collaborations with students, staff and faculty. It is a great way to connect with individuals all over campus.

“I’m so excited to come here and work with two programs that have design engineering in the title. What an opportunity to have the insight of design and engineering faculty in your core curriculum! You can see that students are really excited about it and what I love about the design engineering undergraduate concentration is that it brings students in like myself at that age, who may have felt, or were led to believe, that they were not good enough to be in engineering. I feel honored to be part of their journey at Brown.”

As Associate Professor of the Practice, Manfredi has a teaching assignment in the joint Brown-RISD Masters of Art in Design Engineering program. She will also teach ENGN 0620 (Design Brief) for undergraduates in the spring. She was named the 2020 Educator of the Year by the Industrial Design Society of America for her commitment to interdisciplinary design education, and has just closed out her term as the IDSA northeast education council chair. 

“The BDW is an incredible space, in terms of culture, how it has been built from a room to this large space of endless possibility. It is an incredible gift to have inherited from Chris (Bull, the founder of the BDW) and the advisory committee who built it. The goal is to nurture that culture and also look at how we bring in more people to the space, how we demystify it and make it feel less intimidating to a newcomer. Ultimately, we want people to walk in and feel excited to be part of our BDW community.”