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Students make and break it for design competition – Metro US

Students make and break it for design competition

For students in the architecture program at Dalhousie University, the goal of their last assignment was to fail.

Students were asked to build a smaller section of a roof structure and then load it with weight until the scale models collapsed.

Ten teams competed in the School of Architecture’s annual Structural Bay Week. Third-year students were asked to design a “structural bay” based on cost, weight of the structure, the total load carried and structural elegance, said Hudson.

An array of innovative designs were gathered on the school’s front lawn during the last week of June. Everything from wine boxes to pop bottles were used to created the best structure.

The winning team carried a fraction of the weight some of the other designs, but racked up points for elegance and cost efficiency.

Highlights

Wine-o’s
Wine boxes were cut into hundreds of short and flat interlocking pieces that created a shell-like structure.

Good news
Heavy duty cardboard tubes from news print paper were donated to create a low-cost arch structure.

Recyclable design
More than 400 empty two-litre pop bottles were used to create an arch-type structure.