orientation week for first year students

Whitehouse Institute of Design's orientation week for the incoming first year students for 2008 was held on the 17th to 20th March. Orientation week began with a brief introduction to the staff of Whitehouse followed by a workshop were the students created self portraits on A3 paper. Each of the specialisations - fashion, interiors and styling - went on "hotspot tours" of the area to show the students the shops and places they will most likely frequent throughout their degree. Guest speakers included current student Guy Fullerton and Daniel Rosenblaum, designer of the Ice Hotel in Sweden.

The students participated in activities such as "Make it or Break it" which involved making a bridge out of pasta and string which needed to spann 40cm and be able to hold a mobile phone. The strength of the bridges were further tested by placing up to 16 CD cases on them. There were three winners of the competition: the most creative narrative was a story about their "witch bridge", the best designed bridge was a string suspension bridge and the team that built the strongest bridge had the ingenious plan of tying their bridge to the tables with string, which therefore easily withstood the CD cases as well as 6 mobile phones and an iPod.

The final day of orientation week saw the students go on a sketch scavenger hunt where they had to find and sketch items that represented their personality including a building, a tree, a leaf, an item of clothing and a shop window. The piece of paper they sketced these on was stuck to the back of their self-portraits drawn on the first day, and these were displayed as flags at a picnic held in Jubilee Park in Glebe.

A big thankyou to all the staff, students and guests involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clockwise from top left: Fashion students; styling students; interiors students (all at Jubilee Park with their flags and the programme coordinators for each discipline); the strongest pasta bridge; the best designed pasta bridge