MHQ was a project that was originally inspired by a creative project I read about in an architectural manufacturing book during my junior year in college called Mafoombey Space for Music. This project, completed by students at the Helsinki School of Design in 2005, was an 8’x8’x8’ additively manufactured cardboard enclosure an embedded interactive audio system that could fit up to three listeners at once.  The design process, the form of the enclosure, and the interactive nature of the environment inspired me. I really liked how this enclosure could create a totally new environment within a large public area. Users had the ability to adjust audio setting to create an environment they found relaxing.

For my Senior Engineering Design Project, I create a proposal and led a team of students in the design, development, and prototyping of an interactive audiovisual enclosure that promoted mind body wellness in communal areas. Initially this project was intended to be built using an additive manufacturing process similar to Mafoombey, but our team quickly realized that designing and building an enclosure with those methods/materials was simply beyond the budget of our project and scope of the course. We ended up designing a low cost enclosure covered in a soundproofing material that included power, audio and LED lighting systems and an additively manufactured cardboard chair. Our team also designed a mobile application to control and adjust various audio and lighting parameters to allow users to create an engaging, relaxing, audio-visual experience.  This project experience taught me quite a bit about design objectives, system requirements, bill of materials, scheduling, budgeting technical analyses, testing, project management, and intrapersonal dynamics.