ENCINITAS — Aviya Afra, a junior at The Grauer School, has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2023 National High School Design Competition presented by Cooper Hewitt, a Smithsonian Design Museum. This year’s competition theme was “What Would You Design With Data For Your Community?” The competition had 707 entries from across the United States, with 3 finalists and 12 honorable mention awards, so Aviya’s entry was ranked in the top 2% of entries submitted. The competition challenged teens to use design and data to support their community, encouraging them to be creative storytellers who can share powerful information in innovative and compelling ways, translating complex facts and figures into beautiful imagery and captivating stories—all by visualizing data.
Aviya’s entry was titled “The Loneliness of Aging” and was inspired by one of her favorite movies, “Up” and her passion for architecture and design. She wrote this description for her competition entry: “My design brings awareness to the loneliness and isolation epidemic that seniors face. It highlights a story that represents millions of seniors who lack friendship and companionship. The 4D rendering is comprised of two data sets. Data 1 shows the amount of time one spends with others throughout a lifetime from Our World in Data. Data 2 is a music visualization from a spectrogram extracted from the song “Married Life” by Michael Giacchino. I used color, amplitude, and time to connect Data 2 to Data 1 in my design. The color spectrum correlates to emotions of loneliness throughout one’s lifetime. The blues and purples represent feelings of loneliness and isolation in seniors. My design brings seniors together, providing them with the comfort that they are not alone in these feelings. It also inspires compassion and empathy in younger generations. This will raise awareness and motivate young people to connect with seniors. Regardless of gender, race, or religion, my design can bridge generations.”
Morgan Brown, Grauer Physics teacher, said, “Combining STEM and the arts allows our students to connect STEM principles and concepts learned in class with their passions outside of school. Aviya is a perfect example of this, as she came to office hours to learn beyond the scope of the standard curriculum so that she could incorporate design elements and artistic practices into the creation of her project.”
The Grauer School requires students to perform community service each year. At 13, Aviya was named the youngest KonMari consultant in the world and is the official KonMari teen ambassador, teaching others how to achieve their ideal lifestyle through the KonMari method of uncluttering a home. As a community service project, Aviya used the KonMari techniques with her 80-year-old neighbor “Mrs. B.,” whose husband had recently passed away, to rediscover what truly “sparks joy.”
Alicia Tembi, Grauer assistant principal, said, “Aviya exemplified The Grauer School’s core values of Intellectual Curiosity and Compassion in the development of her competition entry. She is one of those students who also embodies these values on a daily basis in her classes, while acting as co-president of the Girl Rising Club and when planning events with the Grauer ASB. She did an incredible amount of work in her free time over the span of several months, solely because she wanted to delve deeper into the process of designing graphical representations to call awareness to an important social issue that impacted her neighbor.
