Q and I would like to keep this place ‘in the family’ so we’re offering the place to our friends and friends-of-friends before we list it on craigslist and elsewhere.

Here are the details:

$1450/month
1 Bedroom
Incredibly high ceilings
Brick wall in living room
Hardwood floors
Subway tile in the bathroom with pretty, modern fixtures
TV in bedroom
Full kitchen with kitchenaid fridge, double sink with garbage disposal, kitchenaid dishwasher, stove/oven and microwave
In-suite laundry (freeeeeee!)
GIGANTIC SEMI-CIRCLE WINDOW!!!
Just under 800 square feet
Big storage closet (for all your crap)
Hallway closet (for coats, shoes and storage)
Stupidly cheap to heat
Bike locker downstairs
Elevator in building, with secure entry/key fob system
Great neighbours who are super friendly

Gastown is a great neighbourhood, and anyone who lives in the city doesn’t need to be convinced of how great it is to live right next to Waterfront station, or to walk across the street and grab a panini from Brioche.

If you’re interested, email me (hello@stephanievacher.com) or call, or tweet, or send smoke signals.

The apartment is available August 1st, or a few days before then if you’re flexible.

Note: Our landlord is currently reviewing applications for the people who have applied.

During my time at Emily Carr I was assigned a number of textbooks and coursepacks, most of which were really excellent and worth the cost. For the most part, though, my instructors used Moodle to distribute coursework and links for online readings. In my last two years of school, the majority of my coursework was done online and I don’t think I bought any textbooks. For that, my bank account is thankful.

I know that my education wouldn’t have been complete without help from a few hard-copy sources. I’d like to introduce you to a few who have helped me to expand my world:

Before University: Nicolaides -  The Natural Way To Draw

This book belongs to my mother, and she used it during college. Though it was written in the 30′s, the information is current and the teaching methodology is sound: it’s all about the experience of drawing, and creating with all of your senses. Even before I started University, I learned that creativity is not about working from divine knowledge, or a special ‘gift.’ Creativity is learned, and practiced, and that your style is developed from your experience.

Foundation: Tufte -  Beautiful Evidence

In my first semester, my drawing teacher dragged me by the arm to visit the design school and introduced me to some of the instructors. At some point, Tufte’s name was mentioned and I decided to embark on some independent research. This book is incredibly good propaganda for encouraging young people to decide their major.

Second Year: Hofstadter – I am a Strange Loop and Turkle – Evocative Objects

I bought Evocative Objects on the suggestion of a communication design instructor who used it as a textbook for her design core class. The book was also one of my first introductions to MIT’s Media Lab, and became a motivating force in the development of my grad project.

The impulse to read I am a Strange Loop actually came from an xkcd comic. This might seem almost entirely tangential, but I’m not lying when I say that the book is the leading motivating factor behind being willing to navigate the infinitely silly complexities of bureaucracy at University. It’s the tome that taught me how to keep a smile on my face.

Third Year: Sowa – Conceptual Structures

There is nothing more important in design school than being able to justify and defend every decision you make. I didn’t buy this book solely for its practical components. You can get an O’Reilly book if you want to learn how to program. Conceptual Structures contains a philosophical and scientific defense for programming and knowledge representation. Design can learn so much from this kind of critical and analytical defense.

Senior Year: McLuhan – Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and Buxton – Sketching User Experiences

There is one paragraph from Sketching User Experiences that I want to highlight:

“…you must foster an overall culture of creativity within your organization–one that not only has good ideas, but also understands them, is receptive to them, and knows what to do with them. Otherwise, you will lose both the benefit of the ideas that you paid for as well as your most creative people. Good ideas are not sufficient and innovation and creativity cannot be compartmentalized.” (p. 223)

That says it all, I suppose. This book is about much more than teaching the designer new ways to sketch.

Admittedly, I read Understanding Media well before my senior year. I would suggest this book to everyone, ever, and think that it should be mandatory reading for anyone who has ever used technology. It wasn’t until my senior year that I began to apply the learning from this book into my work, and I was delighted to watch my designs grow and change rapidly with the advent of each new medium.

- – - – -

Each of these books is special to me, in ways that are more profound than what I’ve described. I wouldn’t call this list definitive, nor would I ever guarantee that these books would help a design student to become a better designer. I really believe that your education will only become what you make of it, based entirely on your willingness to learn and grow. Books help, though- whether digital or hard copy, they contain the ingredients for learning.

I’m graduating on May 1st, with a Bachelor’s of Design (BDES). You should really join the party, and check out the work done by my grad class. We’ll be exhibiting our work from May 1-16, and the Industrial + Commercial Design work is being exhibited in the South building on the Granville Island campus.

If you’re curious about what it’s like to be an industrial design student, this could probably sum it all up. My day undulates like a sine wave, fluctuating between superduperbusy and mundane, and back again.

You too can bask in the glory of attending meetings, working in illustrator for hours on end, and buying stickers of smiling milk cartons!

The article, written by Matthew Power for Slate’s ‘Dispatches’ section, did a good job of jostling my brain around and helping me to articulate some of my feelings about Insite and the homeless population in the Downtown Eastside. The DTES is a subject that a lot of people in Vancouver don’t want to discuss, are soured by, or simply pretend will all go away. The latter part of that statement is maybe the most troubling of all, because whenever a majority becomes deliberately ignorant to the plight of the minority population, social stability begins to crumble as a whole.

The service that a place like Insite provides to the already-marginalized population of drug users in the DTES should be difficult to criticize, but the critics exist both online and off, and in numbers larger than I could ever fathom. The article in Slate, and its subsequent commentary, cemented the last brick in my mental wall of defense for the users of Insite, and the greater population of the DTES. I can’t possibly find any reason why it would be helpful to dismantle social services like safe-injection sites, or the free distribution of clean rigs for shooting up. Doing so will only cause more harm, and more death.

Supporting a system that helps drug addicts to stay safe is one of the first steps towards de-marginalization. The most important element of care is awareness, and as Insite saves lives, it sends a message to the community that people are being given the ability to live. Insite is not an advocate of drug usage, if anything, it’s an advocate for the safety and security of every person living in Vancouver. As we provide care to the most marginalized citizens of our city, we are also caring for ourselves and future generations. If we re-define what it means to be criminal, fewer people will languish in prisons on charges of drug possession. If we give addicts the option to escape dangerous environments, we will see a significant reduction in the number of deaths and drug-related homicides in the city.

This is part of the reason why I find it so difficult to criticize Insite, or anyone who is homeless or addicted to drugs. Maybe a part of my personality is just hard-wired to be empathetic, as I can’t help but feel that people deserve safety and shelter regardless of their social status. Having lived in the DTES and Hastings-Sunrise, I’ve witnessed first-hand how quick people are to harass or criticize their homeless neighbours, or to pretend that people are simply invisible just because they do drugs. That a person shouldn’t be considered equal, just because they do drugs or are poor, is such a foreign concept to me. This behaviour spits on the Canadian charter, and as well the United States bill of rights.

Vancouver is lucky to have a place like Insite, and the services provided therein. As long as Insite survives, people will be made aware that these problems exist in our beautiful and ‘most-livable’ city. Perhaps the grandest service that Insite provides is that heightened sense of awareness, which may lead to a realization for every person living in Vancouver that we need to lend a hand to our neighbours, and help them to thrive.