Urban Technology students showcase work at Milan Design Week for UNFOLD
Three urban technology students traveled to Italy in April to present their work at Milan Design Week. B.S. Urban Tech ’27 students Jack Bernard, Pranav Boopalam, and Elijah Stowell showcased their project “Community Energy Futures” at UNFOLD, a student design competition hosted at BASE Milano. They also presented their project to an international group of designers, professors, and fellow students during the day-long conference on April 23.
Project submissions were evaluated by Domus Academy, a globally recognized design school. Student designers were encouraged to move beyond buzzwords and embrace the generative potential of friction as part of this year’s theme, “Engage: Friction.” Twenty design schools from around the world participated in this year’s UNFOLD exhibition, with one project from each school accepted through a competitive review.
“Community Energy Futures” uses Interaction Design and UX/UI methods to present multiple, sometimes competing, scenarios enabled by renewable energy microgrid systems. Inspired and directly informed by the city of Ann Arbor’s pursuit of a Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU), the project focuses on unanswered questions about the “social” side of this proposed socio-technical system. Ann Arbor’s SEU envisions a community-funded, opt-in network of 100% renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind, and battery storage systems.
“I found inspiration in seeing the large variety of global design perspectives, and gaining better visibility into how other parts of the world approach design challenges and what factors shape their outputs,” Bernard said. “This international context helped me develop a stronger individual positionality as a designer, student, and global citizen.”
Although the project was initially a UI/UX proposal, exhibiting the work required a physical prototype. With support from the Taubman College SEED Fund, M.Arch ’27 students Shaguun Patel and Naman Desai joined the team to help create physical representations of the scenarios presented in their project.
“The collaboration really challenged and bettered both sides’communication skills to be able to find a common language and to trust the other’s decision-making in their expertise,” Stowell said.For more on Jack, Pranav, and Elijah’s journey to Milan, including photos from their trip, visit the Urban Technology at the University of Michigan substack.
