This past spring semester I had the chance to pair up with a Strategic Design and Management Master’s student, Isata Yansaneh, from the New York campus while I was at the Parsons Paris campus. I applied towards Isata’s project and we began working together. We worked while school was in session solely over Google Hangouts. We set our own deadlines and developed our idea into a final product to be pitched to the Cathay Foundation at the end of the semester.

Our project was Koutré, design based collective encouraging the advancement of cultural preservation and sustainable growth. We wanted to pair existing French textile designers with traditional textile makers in Southeast China. We were inspired by the Chinese textile making traditions that were slowly on the declining because less women were being taught and the consumer market.

We pitched our project at the end of the year in front of the Cathay Foundation and a board of judges. Our project made it to first place!

To read more about the project and the collaboration between Parsons and the Cathay Foundation, here’s a link to the Parsons blog.