Kinetic Sculpture

In our first session of Fall workshops at Artscape Youngplace and in the second week at the TP Loblaw K Club we issued a mash-up design challenge, asking the kids to come up with a kinetic sculpture that is also a sign. 

After a planning phase, we gave the students a table full of materials and the ever popular glue guns and they set to building their prototypes.

Quite a few of our young designers made classic mobiles. This bedroom sign used some interesting sculptural elements. 

This sculpture took inspiration from Minecraft and used a nice range of materials to point the way.

We liked the striking use of colours and the strong graphic design of this video game sign.

In this idea, the student made a table-top yard sale sculpture mounted on a flexible base with wobbling faces on either side.  

And this kinetic sculpture had a windmill feature made of plastic spoons, that could either be wind-driven or could be hooked up to a motor to make it spin. 

Both these designs used a full range of materials and included lots of interesting elements. 

This sculpture sign was for a skateboard store. The sign was mounted on a skateboard that moved down a ramp.  A fully thought out prototype! 

Give me shelter

This week we gave the kids quite a limited set of building materials and asked them to construct a hideaway, with enough space for at least one person and sturdy enough to withstand a storm. 

                    

One industrious team used rolled up paper rods and cardboard tubing to construct a rectangular frame structure.

They had to deal with some classic construction issues caused by compression forces. What to do when your frame buckles in the middle? Either add more crossbars or "maybe we should use stronger material?"

In the end turning the frame on its side helped a bit- broader base, less height. Once a canvas was flipped over the frame it made for a cosy two person hideaway.

Another student decided to use the corrugated cardboard to construct a hut with curvilinear sides. This bypasses the need for a rod-based frame and has the advantage of creating a self-supporting wall.

Secure joints are important in a rod frame.

This student constructed a rod frame to make a pod like lean-to. He hung joined paper rods from the coat pegs on the wall and used a cardboard tube as a supporting strut. Next he put a layer of paper as a covering and then draped a sheet on top to enclose the structure. Pretty neat.

These students made a shelter with cardboard tubes, tape and blind frets and a corrugated card cover. Peek underneath and you can see a good structural detail: the addition of stops at the frame base to prevent the tubes from slipping out. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the testing stage of their design: turns out this structure can withstand a serious tornado!
                                   

Camping out!