Sembli Collective, a group of Pratt Industrial and Graphic Design students, are teaming up with Kids of Kathmandu to design desks for use in newly built schools in Nepal that were previously destroyed in the devastating 2015 earthquake.
Fellow student Selena Liu and I teamed up to design floor desks for the K-3 age range. Our challenge was to design a desk that could be flat packed, made of universally available materials, and could provide a flexible classroom environment.
We traveled with the group to Nepal in June. In Kathmandu, we worked with local fabricators to manufacture prototypes of our designs. There were various obstacles faced, so it was an excellent lesson in problem solving.
We then traveled to a Himalayan village called Melamchi, where Nepali students tested our desks.
