Welcome Week!

So, to begin with we were presented with a challenge in which we had one week to complete. We had to construct a bridge that would span 3m, and only use the materials provided.

When I was first told about the brief I was eager to begin and start designing, but then noticing how little material we had it proved to be quite a challenge. We had 3m of fishing wire, a small sheet of foam board, a 2m cardboard triangular pole, and in total around 2m of flat pieces of card.

Not only did we have to make it span the 3m gap and hold its own weight but also hold extra weight by adding couple kilograms to it to see which bridge can hold the most.

There were 3 objectives we needed to achieve.

1. Is is asthetically pleasing?

2. Can it hold its own weight plus more?

3. Does it span 3m?

Okay, so the first objective wasnt that hard, but trying to incorporate them together was another matter. As a group we decided to come up with some designs that could work. On the second day we decided to use the triangle, as its the most structurally stable shape. So we thought if we tesselate them it would be stronger holding the weight.

From here I measured the amount of card we had and divided it by the area of each piece we need and it was achievable with what we had so we began cutting them up and putting them together like so.

We managed to get it to span the 3m but holding weight was a problem as the amount of card we used to tesselate it was heavy enough.

On the testing day our bridge did not hold weight well...

But we did win on the most asthetically pleasing category which was good, having a very 'innovative' design.

This challenge helped us all work as a group and overcome some obstacles in the design process similar to that of real building designs in the industry.