The Nest is the garage and hale makerspace of Okada Design. It is a multigenerational tinkering and talk story space. It focuses on connecting community to their local environments and to science through their existing cultural knowledge. It aims to be a space for explorations blending design, biology, and engineering. It is a gathering space for shaping driving questions, storytelling with biology, and dreaming of sustainable futures.
A bit about me
Hi I'm Corinne Takara. I am a Oahu artist/STEAM educator who creates playful workshops that celebrate culture and creativity to empower community voices in conversations centered on identity, science and technology. My father introduced me to biomaking through culture via hands-on explorations and storytelling with indigenous plants on Maui, Hawaii. That deep engagement with biology instilled in me a passion for connecting to biology through creative making as I develop activities in my garage makerspace/biolab.
As a child, my bedtime stories swirled with my dad’s tales of his childhood on the Lower Paia Maui sugar cane plantation. One of his earliest memories was pushing a stool up against the kitchen sink so he could reach up and poke at the Bull Durham tobacco bag tied around the faucet. It was bulging with dirt, leaves, and insects which it had collected. When he poked at it, the insect legs sticking out would quiver. When he was caught in this activity, his mom or grandma would empty the small canvas bag into the trash and retie it onto the faucet and he would excitedly wait for it to fill again.
The fact that my dad had open trench water coming into his home kitchen faucet struck me as sad, even as a child. Today, many lower resourced communities have unsafe drinking water, just as my relatives didn't during the Hawaii plantation era of slash and burn sugar cane. These stories inspire me to imagine accessible biodesign workshops and innovation spaces that invite communities most impacted by biotech and agtech to innovate, dream, and ask questions that drive our sustainable paths into the future.
A bit about me
Hi I'm Corinne Takara. I am a Oahu artist/STEAM educator who creates playful workshops that celebrate culture and creativity to empower community voices in conversations centered on identity, science and technology. My father introduced me to biomaking through culture via hands-on explorations and storytelling with indigenous plants on Maui, Hawaii. That deep engagement with biology instilled in me a passion for connecting to biology through creative making as I develop activities in my garage makerspace/biolab.
As a child, my bedtime stories swirled with my dad’s tales of his childhood on the Lower Paia Maui sugar cane plantation. One of his earliest memories was pushing a stool up against the kitchen sink so he could reach up and poke at the Bull Durham tobacco bag tied around the faucet. It was bulging with dirt, leaves, and insects which it had collected. When he poked at it, the insect legs sticking out would quiver. When he was caught in this activity, his mom or grandma would empty the small canvas bag into the trash and retie it onto the faucet and he would excitedly wait for it to fill again.
The fact that my dad had open trench water coming into his home kitchen faucet struck me as sad, even as a child. Today, many lower resourced communities have unsafe drinking water, just as my relatives didn't during the Hawaii plantation era of slash and burn sugar cane. These stories inspire me to imagine accessible biodesign workshops and innovation spaces that invite communities most impacted by biotech and agtech to innovate, dream, and ask questions that drive our sustainable paths into the future.
Today I teach biomaterial design and STEAM education in Hawai'i. For over 18 years I developed STEAM programs for communities via school, museum and university programs in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Many of these programs have centered in East San Jose and in Salinas, California. I am a co-founded of BioJam a Stanford Department of Bioengineering program that engages teens in bioengineering and biomaterial design. I have led four youth teams in the international Biodesign Challenge, was the 2019 Biodesign Challenge Outstanding Instructor, a 2020 Global Community Biosummit Fellow, a 2020 National Public Interest Technology Innovation Fellow, and the 2022 Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Resident.
I have conducted sustainability design and biomaterial design workshops in Hawaii, Georgia, Los Angeles, and in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. I has served as a Board Member and the Program Director of the Salinas community biolab Xinampa. I am fascinated by the power of ancestral knowledge and storytelling in shaping the future of bio innovation and our understanding of our place as part of this world. Having moved to Oahu in 2022 to be closer to family, I am now exploring programming that is specific to sustainability issues in Hawai'i.
Websites: http://www.okadadesign.com/ https://nestmakerspace.weebly.com/
Social media: Instagram @corinnetakara Twitter: @CorinneTakara
Email [email protected]
I have conducted sustainability design and biomaterial design workshops in Hawaii, Georgia, Los Angeles, and in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. I has served as a Board Member and the Program Director of the Salinas community biolab Xinampa. I am fascinated by the power of ancestral knowledge and storytelling in shaping the future of bio innovation and our understanding of our place as part of this world. Having moved to Oahu in 2022 to be closer to family, I am now exploring programming that is specific to sustainability issues in Hawai'i.
Websites: http://www.okadadesign.com/ https://nestmakerspace.weebly.com/
Social media: Instagram @corinnetakara Twitter: @CorinneTakara
Email [email protected]