Every May, SAAS’s 12th graders step beyond the classroom for their Senior Project, a month-long internship that builds on the entrepreneurial skills they’ve been developing throughout their education. We visit 7 project sites to learn more about the meaning and impact of this signature experience.
“We do want to embrace a healthy amount of risk,” says Matt Edenfield, Outdoor Trips & Travel Director. “We strive to offer trips where students can convert danger, fear, or anxiety into achievement and mastery through skill, cooperation, and hard work. The reality is that this is where real learning happens.”
With nearly half a century of in-the-field experience, Pakistan’s first female architect leads an ambitious nonprofit, the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan.
Knockoff furnishings may be cheap, but for the design industry, they come with a heavy price.
An experimental shop in Oaxaca, Mexico, is resuscitating the region’s ancient crafts traditions and bringing indigenous artisans’ designs into the 21st century.
In rural China, a treasured heritage makes peace with the future. “We’re trying to find opportunities for the Dong to improve their livelihood without completely altering their way of life,” says Wai Kit Lee, a professor of ethnic-minority culture. “I want to show that a village can be rich in other ways—in community, in self-reliance, in lack of anxiety.”
Inspired by the Seinfeld episode where Kramer rescues a Merv Griffin Show set from the trash, artist and professor Jon Rubin built a ’70s-style talk-show set in the back of a Pittsburg restaurant, aiming to “use waffles to lure people into public storytelling.”
In construction-mad Beijing, “development happens at a crazy speed, like a tsunami,” says Matthew Xinyu Hu. The 2008 Summer Olympics bore the brunt of the bad rap, but in truth, Beijing’s historic city center had been at risk for far longer.
If you close your eyes and block out the visual cues—the red ocher 18th-century buildings, the brightly colored bazaars, the monkeys scrambling maniacally over the dusty rooflines—you would still know you were in Jaipur, India.
My best-laid plans were scrapped the moment I arrived in Oaxaca City. “You want to see the real, authentic Mexico, right?” asked Alejandro Ruiz, one of the city’s most renowned chefs, as he giddily steered his SUV through narrow cobblestoned streets.