College of Architecture + The Arts student Andrea Perelli was selected to exhibit her work at the Miami Mini Maker Faire at The LAB Miami on November 16th. Under the supervision of Associate Professor Alfredo Andia and Associate Professor Eric Goldemberg for her thesis, Perelli has been working with the Digital Lab at the Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture building to study the design of prosthetics.
As part of her applied research for her MAA, Perelli is interested in the shift from “mass production to mass customization,” in which technology allows for objects to adapt to an individual’s needs and desires. In the case of mass customization, the user is in control. Perelli takes this notion and applies it to the subject of prosthetics in her project “The UN-STANDARD,” which she presented next to 60 other chosen presenters at the Miami Mini Maker Faire. “Rather than [individuals with prosthetics] being forced into scenarios and conditions [in which they] have little to no say in how they must function,” said Perelli, “the goal is to empower them, allowing them to decide [on] how to adapt to their unique bodies and, at a larger scale, how they fit and function within their environment.”
Besides her accomplishment at the Miami Mini Maker Faire, Perelli collaborates with Professor Eric Goldemberg’s MONAD Studio. With MONAD Studio, she said, she is able to “[work] with experimentation in architecture, and [produce] extensive formal explorations at the macro- and microtectonic level.” Perelli intends to apply all that she has researched through the FIU Department of Architecture and MONAD Studio to her future career in in the field. She wants to work in a firm that focuses on different types of material and architectural research, and she is interested in starting an organization that aids people through design and manufacturing.
The featured images are provided by Andrea Perelli.
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