DesignPlus is a learning community open to MIT first-year undergraduates. It’s a space for hands-on experimentation and exploration, acquiring technical skills, finding mentors and mutual support, and having fun. Approximately 50 students join each year to discover different facets of design, both in theory and in practice. Layla Stanton, 27', says:

Over the 2023-24 Academic Year, DesignPlus students were split into different design “tracks,” such as materials science, building and construction, product design, international development, and more. This video is about students who engaged with metal smithing through the Department of Materials Science & Engineering (DMSE) in MIT's forge and foundry, located in The Merton C. Flemings Materials Processing Laboratory.

Advised by Kirk Kolenbrander, DMSE senior lecturer, and with the supervision of Rhea Vedro — metals artist in residence and technical instructor at DMSE — the small group of students designed and made individual silver rings. Vedro is a metalsmith creating at the intersection of arts and collective healing. Her research explores metalsmithing as a cultural signifier of values, power, and protection across belief systems and time. Trained first as a jeweler, her studio practice is primarily hollow-form steel sculpture.

Thank you to all the Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, staff and faculty involved in the making of this video.