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University of Windsor
Building relief shelter valuable experience for VABE students
The victims of earthquakes in Chile and Haiti may be thousands of miles away, but they were front and centre in the minds of a group of students designing shelters for them for a class project in a new program that combines visual arts and architecture.
First-year students in the Visual Arts and Built Environment (VABE) program had to design and construct a temporary relief shelter from found or recyclable materials that was:
- collapsible and stackable,
- lightweight and easily transportable,
- could be assembled in less than 30 minutes with few or no tools, and
- could accommodate two people
all for less than $30.
“There were a lot of challenges that came up after the design process was over that we didn’t expect,” said project manager Chris Zahaluk. “By the end of the construction we realized that our project had really changed.”
In addition to learning about the role architects play in society, the students learned a great deal about the differences between conceptualizing a project and actually building it, said Veronika Mogyorody, academic architectural advisor, who watched the students assemble their structure at the LeBel visual arts building Tuesday.
“Every action has a consequence,” student Leo Nichol responded when asked what the exercise had taught him. “If you don’t think things through, it may be really hard to execute.”
This is the first year for the program, which provides a joint educational opportunity between the University of Windsor and the University of Detroit Mercy. Under the agreement, students will pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts here, but at the end of their third year, University of Detroit Mercy will accept top students with qualifying portfolios into the fourth year of its B.Sc. in Architecture program.
From left to right students Jarrett Sorko, Chris Zahaluk, Trong Nguyen, Krysia Bussiere, and Rishi Parsana assemble their temporary relief structure.