PROBLEM
Design a hoop house intended 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 alike to tend to the plants.
TEAM
Anirudh Anand
Caitlin Donnelly
Veronica Wang
Jai Kanodia
For this project, we designed the structure, created construction drawings, and fabricated our design so that it could be easily transported in a truck to be assembled and installed on site, attaching to the existing planter beds at the elementary school. We were limited to a material pallet of metal conduits, screws, clips, and heavy duty plastic sheets.
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