Weekly Response #4

When first tasked with the stool assignment, I didn't know how to go about the construction. I first thought the stool was supposed to function as a stepping stool, thus needing to resist two concentrated point loads. After I learned that we could sit on the stool I knew the project would be a little easier but not completely easy. As a structural engineer I had worked with concrete and steel but never cardboard. I next needed and inspiration for the design of my stool. Surprisingly, my original design for the stool came from the lecture about ornamentation. The structure lesson was secondary in my plan. I thought of the ornamentation because I realized that, when it came to this project, I thought that excess ornamentation that did nothing for structural support was frivolous.

I ultimately went through three iterations for this project: two of which were meant to hold weight and the third was meant to conjure up ideas. I made my first stool with he idea of a "solid" triangle. I took the cardboard and fixed it together with joints so that it was a seamless structure on the sides and woven on the top and the bottom. On the inside, this stool had cross braces to keep the walls from caving in and also carry the load from the seat to the ground. The structure worked but I wanted to do more. I built a second structure as a prototype. I folded more triangles made triangular cutouts to put triangular supports that spanned the width of the inside of the stool. With this idea in mind, I remade the first stool and put triangular holes in the side instead of the bracing. When I tested this out the structure collapsed along with my self-esteem. With this failure I realized that my original intent of no ornamentation was the best and I went back to that but I cut out triangles in the cardboard to make the structure lighter. From our lecture about "light" and "heavy" structures, I thought that a lighter structure that was able to hold my weight was more impressive.

My take-aways from this project is that experimentation is great but if it isn't broken then don't fix it. Through the different iterations I was able to realize was was unnecessary in my original design. I enjoyed doing the project because in structural engineering we don't get to model our structures as often as I want to.