Designers Jesse Silver and Joerg Student met at IDEO roughly a decade ago, but the two have more common work experience than that: They are the cofounders of FoldHaus, an art collective that has designed and built several large-scale, LED-festooned kinetic sculptures for Burning Man.
Student is now Executive Design Director at IDEO and Silver is now Vice President of Product at PAX Labs, but they maintain Foldhaus as a going concern, powered by a small army of volunteers. We spoke with Silver and Student about both of their careers, and also to get the skinny on what it’s like to design and build something for Burning Man’s famously dusty playa.