Building Bridges

The first week of University: build a bridge. Sounds easy enough.

For the first week we were put into teams. Our teams included architecutre, interior and product design students. All of us approached the task differently, in a good way.

Like any design task there was a brief which limited our materials. We were given a sheet of corrugated cardboard; a sheet of foam board; 20 paper clips and 5 elastic bands. We also needed this bridge to support itself accross 3 meters and hold a weight minimum 0.5Kg

The next to days were filled with sketcing ideas and testing them. Until we came up with tis crisscross idea. where we found the cross to be the strongest outcome of all our ideas.

We tested this idea in a small scale, unfortunately the weight of it accross the 3 meters just didn't hold. We asumed that the foam board was the strongest matrial however, it was thin and so when put togeth the edges kept breaking. We ended up replacing the foamboard with as many of the card pieces we could spare (which wasn't alot). Eventually we ran out of material and so our finished product came kast as it couldn't hold any weight.

Silver lining: Our bridge won best aesthetic (and as said by all teachers adn 2nd year students it was the most innvoative and interesting) Our design took a unique stand definitely had potential.