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Designing Green '09 overall winner trophy designed by Aran Mun.

Auburn University’s student IDSA chapter once again hosted their annual Designing Green competition with the Department of Industrial and Graphic Design. This year, after a couple of lectures on sustainable design Thursday morning, Industrial Design and Graphic Design students were divided into 11 teams of 12-13 members each (including a faculty adviser). The teams were given five 4′ x 8′ sheets of 1/8″ cardboard, some scrap fabric and carpet padding, and a spool of industrial thread and asked to design and construct a chair in 24 hours. Summer Classics in Montevallo, AL provided the fabric, carpet padding and thread.

Designing Green '09 materials

I was assigned to team six along with Olivia Dean, Will Durham, Bob Everett, Christopher Gould, Matthew Harbison, Stephen Jackson, Phillip Lewis, John Pascoli, Amanda Wilson, and Clark Lundell (Department Head & faculty adviser).

Group 6 final concept sketch

After much deliberation and discussion we decided upon a sideways arc design that would make the most of the cardboard’s strength. Construction began immediately and was clearly a team effort by all.

all hands on deck

After a late night pizza run on Thursday we had a 90% complete design that seemed promising. Friday morning saw the addition of a few final touches before the judging began at 11:00. Aubie did the functional testing of the the designs and provided general comic relief for the crowd.

Crunch!

Unfortunately, not all of the designs fared very well. Fortunately, this was all for fun and not for a grade ;-)

Success!

Most of the designs, including ours (shown here), worked surprisingly well. After all the judges’ votes had been tallied our design was chosen as the overall winner! It now resides in the front lobby of Wallace Center for all to see.

Group 6's victorious chair and loot.

I see people building furniture out of non-traditional materials like this all the time on design blogs like core77 and it was really fun being a part of it myself! All told it was a very cool project, an awesome team building exercise and a great way for everyone to let off some steam before Spring Break while raising awareness for sustainable design. War Eagle!

Here’s a gallery with all 329 photos that I took during the event.

March 14th, 2009 | Tags: Alabama, Amanda Wilson, Aran Mun, Aubie, Auburn University, Bob Everett, cardboard chair, Christopher Gould, Clark Lundell, core77, Department of Industrial and Graphic Design, Designing Green 2009, fabric, ID, IDSA, INDD, John Pascoli, laser cut, Matthew Harbison, Olivia Dean, Phillip Lewis, Robert S. Donovan, school, Spring Semester 2009, Stephen Jackson, Summer Classics, sustainable, trophy, Wallace Center, Will Durham, Winner | Category: Design, INDD | Subscribe to comments | You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed