Open AccessTHE CHAIR PROJECT: FIRMNESS, COMMODITY, AND AN EMPHASIS ON DELIGHT
Author(s) -
Elizabeth English
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
proceedings of the ... ceea conference
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2371-5243
DOI - 10.24908/pceea.v0i0.3720
Subject(s) - coursework , construct (python library) , computer science , architecture , folding (dsp implementation) , curriculum , object (grammar) , mathematics education , software engineering , engineering management , engineering , psychology , pedagogy , artificial intelligence , visual arts , art , programming language , electrical engineering
This paper will describe the theoretical approach and methodology and show the outcome of a pedagogical experiment that has proven to be highly successful in motivating architecture students to master structural analysis and design. The Chair Project is the term project for the last of the sequence of three required Structures courses in the curriculum of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Each student is required to design, construct and structurally analyze a folding or take-apart wooden chair for a specific "client". The choice of his/her client is up to the student, but should be a well-known creative personality who can serve as a term-long inspiration for the design of the chair. By being assigned a small but structurally provocative design-build project as part of their structures coursework, the students are provided with an immediate need-to-know application while they are learning the techniques of structural analysis. The folding wooden chair as a design-build and computational analysis project has the additional benefit of being an object that the students are able to construct, analyze and load-test at full scale.