This past Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of reviewing studio work and giving architecture students feedback on prototypes they have been developing to reuse scrap materials from the woodworking shops at the School of Architecture, Building and Environment (SABE) at TU Dublin.

The students are helping support the circular economy, and learning to work together.

This is a vertical architecture studio, comprised of second and third year students.

Each team as allocated a collection of cast-off wood sheets or wood planks to use to make a small structure. The structure needed to be at least 3 meters in at least one direction.

This architecture studio is led by Marcin Wojcik and Kevin Donovan. The project is also tied to a grant from Ireland’s Housing Authority to study how to modularize materials brought to construction sites, but never used to allow them to be reused elsewhere. Marcin and Kevin are doing the grant-funded project with Noel Brady.

And I am an enthusiastic observer, doing what I can to help my colleagues get more involved in research.

Overall, the work I saw presented and the level of attentiveness and collegiality among the students were all highly impressive! They have done all this in just three weeks. 

I was excited enough about the work I saw to convince Marcin to draft a short conference paper, which he accomplished over the weekend. It’s about the outcomes of this three-week assignment, how it has evolved over the years, and the implications of Friday’s presentations for the grant-funded project.

Kevin and I are editing Marcin’s draft today, so I’d better get to it!

Hope you have enjoyed seeing the students’ collaborative work! I was thrilled they agreed to let me post photos of them and what they designed and constructed.