Taller Escuela de Diseño y Arte Funcional
Sharing the skills and touching lives through lifelong learning opportunities in design
Students of Taller Escuela de Arte y Diseño FuncionalFlamboyan Arts Fund
Taller Escuela de Diseño y Arte Funcional, or Functional Art and Design Workshop-School is unique place where anyone can experience the opportunity to learn about working with native Caribbean woods and creating functional art objects.
Founder, director and teacher René Delgado is an artist, designer and master furniture craftsman with 25 years of experience. He has a Master’s degree in furniture design and construction from the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York.
The designer also collaborates with initiatives to foster appreciation of Puerto Rican design. He has worked with the Museo de Arte y Diseño de Miramar, MADMI, in exhibitions like the retrospective on the work of industrial designer Duncan del Toro. For the occasion, Delgado was one of the designers who recreated works by Del Toro of which only the artist sketches had survived, but not the actual piece.
After running his professional design and furniture workshop for 18 years, in the same site to which the school was added, he thought of offering courses in design of functional art to people with the desire to learn and who had no previous experience.
Rene created his first courses based on his own learning experience, even without knowing about the interest that could develop in people. Today, 12 years after those first initiatives, more than 600 students of different ages, genders and with different backgrounds have successfully completed the courses that take place in Taller Escuela.
Students of Taller Escuela de Arte y Diseño FuncionalFlamboyan Arts Fund
In terms of curriculum, the school offers the creative experience of doing a project from A to Z.
In Taller Escuela anyone can experience the opportunity to learn about working with native Caribbean woodsFlamboyan Arts Fund
In a typical course, students are taught the many varieties of native woods, their characteristics, how to choose the material for a project, how to cut them, assemble a piece and also the correct and secure use of machinery and power tools.
"I have learned that most of my students come to Taller Escuela looking for the opportunity to learn something new, share time with others and also looking for that feeling of pride in bringing home a creative piece made with their own hands."
—René Delgado
