Here are the latest developments on our 6 (down from 13) chicken coop concepts, which we have to have ready to build by November 24th! Each of the concepts has been developed by a team of two, who took their individual concepts and combined them into one. We’re seeing all kinds of great form and functional moves, and in the next two weeks, will now figure out the technical construction (i.e. “should we use a screw or a carriage bolt here?” and “what type of

This afternoon, I went for a run, leaving our house on King Street in Windsor around 4pm. When I got back, Matt and I decided to make pancakes for dinner, and we needed milk. Matt hopped in the truck to run to the grocery store, and I sat at the kitchen table working. Ten minutes later, I heard hollers coming from the back yard: “Hurry!” – then laughter. I went to the back door to discover two of our students, with two of their friends,

CJ and Stevie: preserve tall, skinny proportions, and “cabinet” features After our successful table critique this morning, we were then charged with whittling down the 13 concepts to 6. Though, it wasn’t so much a paring down as a merging of similar concepts. By Thanksgiving, we’ll need to narrow down the 6 to 3, which we’ll build in December. In order to merge concepts, we looked at which students had similar approaches, materials, elements, or overarching themes in their coops. The goal is not to

After a full week of model-building and refinement (in other words, ripping apart cardboard models, talking about them, putting them back together as better versions of their previous selves…), we gathered around the table this morning for our first “table critique.” Each student brought their final-ish model and presented their core concept for a chicken coop that they had been developing for the past week. Issues of food, water, egg access, human vs. chicken interaction, protection from weather and predators, materials, and aesthetic concept all

The rest of this week, we continued the conceptual development of our initial chicken coop concepts through modelmaking. In practical terms, this meant a very messy studio, material everywhere, and a lot of ripping apart and putting back together many many versions of models. Some students ended up with models at the end of the week that looked nothing like they did on Monday, but the concept was much stronger and that much closer to a buildable (and beautiful) chicken coop. We kept telling students

Since we’ve spent about a week developing our modelmaking skills, and have now introduced the conceptual development process for the chicken coops, it’s about time we combined the two. Today we spent the day doing the first of a (long) series of “sketch models.” The sketch model is an important element in the design process, not focused on the precision of representation, scale, or material, but an initial way to start working through a concept. As its name would imply, it is intended as a

Yesterday we officially started our chicken coop design process, which will be four weeks of intensive research, design, prototyping, drafting, material studies, and more. As a morning stimulus after our Daily News, Matt and I will show one chicken coop design precedent each morning. These examples will serve as real world examples of coops that exist, that are beautiful, functional, environmentally and socially appropriate, and tailored to a concept. We’ll go through which are successful, which elements are not, etc. We hope that these daily

Today, our second project officially begins! Having spent a week or two developing some necessary modelmaking skills, we’re now ready to embark on the design and construction of three chicken coops for local clients. We should note that after Tropical Storm Nicole came through town, leaving many without homes, and businesses in ruins, we paused to re-evaluate our plans. We had wanted to do chicken coops all along, but spent a few days considering whether our skills could be put to better use, rebuilding specific

Here’s a quick video from last week’s Google SketchUp exercise. After spending three days learning how to build models by hand (first a cube with mitred edges out of foam core, then a cube with knee braces out of chip board, then a chipboard scale model of a wooden computer tower), we wanted to also introduce students to the world of digital rendering, which is complex and virtual, but a helpful design representation tool. Most students took to Google SketchUp like it was second nature,

Our third attempt at modelmaking, after two practice cubes, was a complex “computer tower.” The tower we asked students to model is an exact scale model (1″ = 1′-0″) of the actual computer towers Matt and I built for the Bertie Prep Academy (photo above). In real life, the structure itself is fairly complex, consisting of 24 facets of wood attached to a steel structure. The triangular facets are rotated on three axes to form a sort of geodesic “tree trunk” that reaches from ground