Antropos Design Institute Edmonds, WA

Vlad Kunko ACADEMIC DIRECTOR / INSTRUCTOR

Inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, Marshall McLuhan, Stewart Brand, and Edward O. Wilson, Volodymyr Ihor Kunko-Bohoslavetz achieved his Master of Arts Degree in Whole Systems Design at Antioch University Seattle where his focus was Social and Cultural Cybernetics – Mnemetics and Semiotics in Systems Design Interactions. He studied under: Dr. Rodney E. Donaldson, cyberneticist and Batesonian archivist scholar; Dr. Harold G. Nelson, organizational systems design [President, International Society for the Systems Sciences]; Dr. Farouk Y. Seif, wholistics, architectonics, design, and visual communications; and, Erik Stolterman, visiting interaction design faculty from Umeå, Sweden.

He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Industrial Design in 1985 at the University of Washington in Seattle with high scholarship. He had the fortune to study with an international faculty: Dr. Norbert Roozenburg visiting from TU Delft; Dr. Tadao Shimizu – Tama (Japan) and Cranbrook; Paul Rook – Royal College of Art, London; and, Jim Hennessey - IIT/Cal Arts and Richard F. Dahn – Yale. In his junior year, he was awarded a First Place prize for a multi-functional credenza design at the 1984 International Furniture Fair held in Atlanta. His multi-media senior thesis was 400 Years of Industrial Design History, the Renaissance to Post-modernity.

Native to northern Ohio, he previously studied art and design at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Ohio State University. He went on to complete an apprenticeship in aerospace research and display model making at the NASA-Lewis Research Center. His display work showed at the Paris Air Show, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASA Headquarters, and the Glenn Visitor Center. Research projects included: Space Shuttle; Ion-Drive; EPA air-quality sampling; solar energy and wind-power generation; and the Cleveland Clinic cancer research cyclotron.

Recruited to Seattle by the Boeing Company, he contributed on design projects at the Kent Space Center, the Aerodynamics Lab, and the Flight-Test Center. General Dynamics of Ft. Worth, Texas, contracted him for projects on the F-16 jet. His furniture designs for Lunstead/Haworth showed at Neocon in Chicago and were in production for 12 years. His custom furniture showed at Seattle’s Northwest Gallery of Fine Woodworking.

His exhibit design work for Aimex, Inc. included lobby displays for the Boeing Hi-Tech Center; a Sea-Tac airport kiosk for the Washington Agricultural Commission; clients for the Chicago Housewares Show, and the Magic Fashion Apparel Show in L.A. His exhibit firm also created a half-scale traveling replica of Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial for the Adolph Coors Company. This experience prepared him to design and produce the exhibition Icons of Ukraine for the Seattle Museum of History and Industry that opened cultural events ahead of the 1990 Goodwill Games. In 1989, the U.S. State Department’s – United States Information Agency invited him to accept an honorarium to serve as Industrial Design Specialist-in-Residence with the exhibition - Design USA - that was to travel to the USSR in a decennial tradition of cultural exchanges beginning in 1959 when Charles and Ray Eames first served.

He is a published photographer, poet, and typographer, and has exhibited his art, design, photography, graphics, and given readings at Seattle’s Richard Hugo House literary center. His avocation research contributions in linguistics and philology merited membership in the renown Ukrainian Academy of Arts / Shevchenko Scientific Society. He is also a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He also completed a Graduate Certificate in Marketing Management for understanding business criteria and constraints.

The years 2000-2007 were served as core faculty in Industrial Design at the Art Institute of Seattle where he instructed primary design foundation and advanced subjects from a systems context viewpoint in addressing urgent adversity trends of climate change, resource depletion, species extinction, poverty, and equality - ultimate Human Factors towards a sustainable future. His paper on enhanced design education was published by the Advanced Design Institute. He also founded the Antropos Design Athenaeum - a salon circle for critical inquiry and exploration of emergent design issues in light of current global realities and their inter-disciplinary implications. His credo is that an immanent and pragmatic visual literacy and whole systems design methodology is integral and imperative to life and civilization in this yet new millennium.