Elaboration Studio 48-200 Grow Collective | Friendship, Pittsburgh

Studio Professor: Mary-Lou Arscott; Coordinator: Josh Bard | Fall 2015

MATERIALS

Metal conduits

Screws

Clips

Heavy duty plastic 

TEAM

Anirudh Anand

Caitlin Donnelly

Jai Kanodia

Veronica Wang

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PROBLEM

Design a hoop house to be installed at the Montessori Pre K-5 in the Friendship neighborhood of Pittsburgh that is kid friendly, will protect the plants from harmful weather, and can easily be opened to allow students and teachers to tend to the plants. 

OVERVIEW

We designed the structure, created construction drawings, and fabricated our design so that it could be easily assembled, transported in a truck, installed on site, and attached to the existing planter beds at the elementary school.

We CNCed a rig for bending the conduit pieces and heated the plastic with a heat gun to stretch over the metal structure, protecting the plants from the elements. Our design is easy for the kids to access with the latches close to the ground. The modular nature of the structure makes it easy to break for transportation, storage, or relocation. The flexible nature of the design meant the two modules could be loaded onto one long plant bed or separated to cover two different beds, as was the final configuration during installation.

EARLY MODELS

INSTALLATION PROCESS

CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS