Design Students' Digitally Fabricated Furniture to Benefit Native American Childcare Center
April 18, 2005
In a collaborative service-learning effort, Penn State students from three departments have developed digital design/build furniture that will be used in a childcare center on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana, which was constructed by Penn Staters as part of the American Indian Housing Initiative. The furniture will be revealed during a public reception at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in the second floor gallery of Engineering Unit C on the University Park campus. Guests are encouraged to bring their children to try out the furniture before it is sent to Montana.
The student teams, from the departments of architecture, architectural engineering and landscape architecture, created the furniture as part of the College of Arts and Architecture's new Digital Design and Fabrication initiative. The course is taught by architecture faculty members Peter Aeschbacher, Jason Boris and Loukas Kalisperis.
Students completed an intensive development process for children's furniture prototypes using cutting-edge, computer-based design and fabrication technologies. The integration of digital design and fabrication technologies for the furniture represents an innovative approach to computer-aided design that focuses on the end-users, the tectonics of construction and the qualities of the materials used. The students began the design process by investigating the nature of children's activities, the options for materials and the logic of construction. Their designs were first realized entirely in a virtual arena, then via small-scale models and finally at full scale. A single computer model was used for all scales of fabrication.
The furniture project completes the first part of a two-phase course that will extend through the summer with a collaboration with renowned New York architects Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (SHoP). In the second phase, students will design and fabricate elements for the new Stuckeman Family Building for the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which will officially open this fall.
Any questions about these projects may be directed to Peter Aeschbacher, assistant professor of architecture and landscape architecture, at 814.231.4890 or pja12@psu.edu.
For more information on the American Indian Housing Initiative, which is a collaborative program of the departments of architecture, landscape architecture and architectural engineering, visit www.engr.psu.edu/greenbuild. For more information on the departments of architecture and landscape architecture, visit www.artsandarchitecture.psu.edu.
Contact: Peter Aeschbacher, pja12@psu.edu or 814.231.4890