Charlie Cannon and the Rhode Island School of Design's award winning Innovation Studio present the premiere of Partly Sunny: Designs to Change the Forecast, at the Denver Pavilions. This showcase highlights innovative and effective environmental design, urban planning and social action projects; that are working towards a sustainable future. Partly Sunny's highlighted projects come under six topics- food, mobility, buildings, energy, water, and landscape including Denver regional case studies-examplifying best practices that respond to climate change.
Founded in 1999, the Innovation Studio at RISD invites students from all disciplines to collaborate on large-scale infrastructure and environmental issues. Cannon, founder and teacher of the Innovation Studio, describes innovation as "the result of solving for more things than you were asked to solve, when you were originally given only one problem". The Studio works to develop ecologically sound facilities such as; eco-industrial parks, power plants, and municipal waste systems through interdisciplinary collaboration. The interdisciplinary methods used in the Studio have been the subject of lectures before architects, engineers, historians, business people and policy makers in the United States and abroad. They have also been profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Metropolis Magazine, What the Best Teachers Do (Harvard University Press) and Archis Magazine
Cannon's architectural (Masters of Architecture, Harvard University) and anthropological (Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Anthropology) training is applied to the design of buildings, information systems, objects and experiences. In addition to his work at RISD, Charlie is currently teaching in the Landscape Architecture Department at Harvard University and spent four years as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Urban Design at Columbia University. Cannon is the recipient of a design grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (w/ Colgate Searle & Anne Tate), a Silver Design Award from Rhode Island Monthly, and a Collaboative Innovation Award from the Providence Business News/Rhode Island Economic Policy Council.
Download the exhibition guide for Partly Sunny: Designs to Change the Forecast (PDF)
