Case Studies

Combine learning with drinking, and university students will really engage...

Annie Block -- Interior Design, 10/1/2010 5:30:00 PM

Combine learning with drinking, and university students will really engage. Germany's Detmolder Schule für Architektur und Innenarchitektur put that hypothesis to the test when professor Marco Hemmerling, who also practices under the name Marco Hemmerling Studio for Spatial Design, asked the 10 graduate architecture students in his course on digital design to collaborate on what he calls an "experimental intervention with a human-centered approach, exploring architectural concepts that amplify the interaction between user and space." The stunning result was Boxel, a temporary pavilion proposed by a student with sustainability and sociability on the brain.

Working part-time at the town brewery gave that student, Henri Scheynoch, the idea to build a pavilion out of used plastic beer crates. He and his classmates designed it with Rhinoceros and Grasshopper software programs and constructed it with the help of a system of invisible slats and screws inserted in the corners of the donated crates. The students and 20 volunteers spent a week assembling the undulating 19-foot-high canopy. Similar in shape to a manta ray, it comprised almost 2,000 yellow and red crates alternating like "free-floating pixels," Hemmerling says. 

Besides earning the students the top grade for the course, Boxel was also the site of the semester-end summer party, where-you guessed it-pilsner and lager were served.

Photography by Dirk Schelpmeier.