Steve Boyer Design

In 2005 I was asked by eco-activist and author Gregory Wright to provide illustrations for an article entitled “Envisioning Solar Makeovers” in Solar Today Magazine showing how landmark Los Angeles buildings might be retrofitted with solar panels in a way that preserved some degree of their original architectural features while providing a fresh look.

I chose the classic Museum Square building on LA’s Miracle Mile for its location, prominence and western and southern exposure with no adjacent buildings to cast shadows.

Here are the before and after illustrations:

Museum Square, before solar retrofit

Museum Square, solar retrofit #1 – with standard flat solar panels

Museum Square – solar retrofit #2

The article, as published, can be read here:
Readers_Forum_SolarToday_MA06_0

Sample page from lab book

After graduating from SCI-Arc in 2005 I began teaching electronics classes in the Visual Arts department at UCSD.

Electronics I+II

Special Topics in Computing in the Arts

History of Art and Technology

Senior Thesis coordinator for ICAM major (Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts and Music)

Courses I taught at Otis:

Professional Practice – A general preparatory course in business fundamentals for design professionals covering issues of employment law, intellectual property law, best presentation practices and practice design.

Integrated Design Studio – The Integrated Design Studio presented an opportunity for me to experiment with research topics that were of current interest to me. The first semester of each year I taught an Energy Literacy studio which emphasized the need for designers to be literate about issues of energy, materials and the social, economic and environmental impact of their design practices. The second semester I changed each year. Projects in the second semester included LED Animation and Color Theory, Designing Financial Products and Design and Immateriality, a critique of smart phone culture.

Design Studio – In the senior design studio the emphasis was on guiding the students through the process of developing and communicating their design identities.

Design and Entrepreneurship – This was a joint program between Otis and Loyola Marymount University in which design students from Otis and business students from LMU were teamed up to envision solutions to problems and to find the business opportunities in marketing the solutions to those problems.

Sponsored Research – I participated in 2 sponsored research projects. The first was sponsored by the Human Renaissance Institute, a research subsidiary of the Omron corporation headquartered in Japan. The goal of this project was to help students to develop the ability to envision a speculative future and to imagine how their work might fit contextually into that future. The second project was sponsored by Hyundai and focused on brand perception issues with the Hyundai brand.

I taught the electronics classes in the Department of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 6 years beginning in 1995. During my time there I developed a sophisticated curriculum for teaching hands-on electronics to artists and designers. It was one of the first programs of its kind at the time and helped to lay the groundwork for what is now commonly known as the Maker’s movement which has a strong emphasis on DIY electronics and micro-controller development.