Kim Karlsrud holds a degree in Product Design from Otis College, and has worked in the fields ranging from consumer electronics to soft goods. In 2007, she co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of Project H Design, a global social design non-profit. Since then she has gained extensive experience managing relationships and projects with a variety of private clients and non-profit partners. Her passion for social enterprise, her strategic multi-track mind, and perennial curiosity are at the heart of her approach and response to complex challenges. She co-founded COMMONstudio, a social design think tank, with Daniel Phillips in 2008.
In 2010, Commonstudio began the initiative by placing a series of prototype seedbomb vending machines in the Los Angeles area. For just fifty cents, the Greenaid machine offered instant access to the tools of the guerilla gardener in a variety of native wildflower mixes.
The idea was infectious, and soon Greenaid blossomed into a fully operational social enterprise. Working in partnership with Chrysalis, a local non-profit, Greenaid offered long term employment opportunities to formerly homeless and low income men and women from the Los Angeles area.
In addition to paying a living wage for hand making and packaging the seedbombs, Greenaid employees were encouraged to operate their own vending machines to earn extra income every month. Commonstudio managed this non-profit partnership, and the expansion of Greenaid into a national brand through a range of new packaging, seedmixes, social media campaigns, and retail partnerships.
Understanding the need to better facilitate the migration from teacher-centered instruction to student-centered and student-driven learning, The Pearson Foundation and The New Learning Institute approached Commonstudio as a strategic partner with a serious charge: How might we build creative confidence in young people by channeling their interests through the lens of design?
After many rounds of testing, iteration, and refinement, Commonstudio developed the “D3” process- a flexible methodology with three phases (Dream it, Design it, Do it) designed to allow for multiple entry points and ease of use for both teachers and students alike. Modeled on the same process used by professional designers across many creative professions, the D3 process encourages divergent critical thinking, creative collaboration, and civic engagement as participants channel their intrinsic interests and motivations into a design solution, and frame challenges as opportunities to impact the world around them.
The increasing contamination of the earth’s water has emerged as one of the greatest planetary challenges of the 21st century. Rethinking the ways cities deal with urban drainage is a significant part of this challenge.
(C)urban Ecology is a modular micro-remediation infrastructure that integrates seamlessly within our existing streets, supplanting the mundane utilitarian curb-and-gutter system to offer new levels of amenity. A versatile and performative design provides opportunities for water permeation and street vegetation, while sequestering small scale debris before it reaches the larger scales of the urban watershed.
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