Lehigh University FML Library Design Contest Winners

Installation design is a realm of art I never imagined myself breaking into. In the spring of 2024, Lehigh University announced a design contest for an art installation in one of our libraries. This was such an exciting opportunity and I started cooking up some ideas for a proposal.

After the contest announcement, I was talking with one of my closest friends, Kenna Macdonald. She mentioned wanting to also enter the contest as an engineer with product design experience. I thought, how cool would it be to work on this proposal as two best friends? And have our work displayed for at least the next 10 years? What a legacy.

Over the next 7 months we worked together as equals in researching materials, affects of plants on human productivity, surveying dozens of Lehigh students about their library experience, and looking for inspiration in nature. There were so many options. Does it move? Light up? Is it a 2 dimensional structure? What if we hand a bunch of plants from the ceiling?

Things began to fall into place as we researched the student experience in the FML Library and began to understand that stress and anxiety are major influencers on students' mindsets. An organic design was the obvious choice.

So....live plants? Nearly impossible. With weight restrictions, intense UV exposure from skylights, and a lack of a maintenance team for the next 10 years did not make live plants an option. But sustainability is our top priority, so fake plants were immediately ruled out. Kenna began to research preserved Spanish moss and its durability. Turns out, Spanish moss is used frequently in indoor art installations. She also looked into structure materials to give our plants the rounded shape we're hoping for, and wood and mushroom product became top contenders.

We compiled everything we knew into this proposal and I began to sketch out our vision. With fingers crossed we submitted our proposal and prototypes to the Lehigh Libraries team and hoped for the best.

Now, we are stoked to announce we have won the design competition out of a competitive field of talented student-professor design teams.

Looking ahead, Kenna and I will work with a group of brilliant engineering students. This will be their Capstone project, and we're stoked to be a part of it. Tune in as I blog our production journey over the next few months and hope for installation in December 2025!