Name: Ryan Wakat
Home University: University of Colorado – Boulder
Summer Courses at DIS: Design and Society in Denmark, Furniture Design in Scandinavia
So after being in Denmark for about three weeks now, I can honestly say that coming here has been the best decision I’ve made during my college career. To start, Copenhagen is an amazing city; I have met some amazing people, I’ve learned a ton, and this is only the start. To end my first three week term, I took a tour of the Carlsberg City development with my class. This was a project that I actually had to give a lecture on for class, explaining about how a former brewery can rebrand its site to attract a new generation. After the tour, our instructor took us to a ropes course within the development and we got to spend the afternoon climbing through the trees, and swinging around on zip lines.
Two of my class mates and I did the black ropes course, which required us to maneuver our way through some challenging obstacles, while hanging in our full body harnesses about 50 feet up in the tree top canopy. It was an amazing experience. To end the day, and to celebrate our accomplishments in not only the ropes course, but that we had finished classed, about 10 of my classmates and I spent the evening hanging out at Amager Beach, reflecting on our time here in Copenhagen and Denmark, before sending a bottle full of personal messages out to sea.
While the first session is now over, and some new friends are on their way home, I cannot wait to see what the next 7 weeks will bring me. I am still learning new things about the city of Copenhagen and the Danish way of life. The next class I am in, is Scandinavian Furniture Design and will go until August 3rd.