Last semester, the 13 students enrolled in Architecture II were presented with a serious challenge: to research and design a bird-viewing structure to be built in a former commercial cranberry bog immersed in three feet of water.
Several months’ worth of research, sketches and models later, the assignment has culminated in a real-life, tangible structure. The final result—a bird-watching platform entitled “Split Frame” that is located at the Helen Carlson Wildlife Sanctuary in Portland, Conn.—was officially unveiled on Sunday to the general public. Though “Split Frame” was set to be opened last semester, construction delays caused the class to wait until this semester for the first public exhibition.
“We actually needed extra time to work on it, so we had to work through reading week,” said Becca Parad ’09, who helped with the project. “We waited until everyone was back on campus and for homecoming so parents and alumni could come out.”
Interest in the structure has spread far beyond the immediate realm of the greater Middletown area. Various well-known blogs and newspapers, including The Hartford Courant and The Chronicle for Higher Education, have all picked up news of “Split Frame.”
The ceremony provided an opportunity for the University’s budding architects to schmooze with members of the Mattabeseck Audubon Society, a Middletown-based chapter of the National Audubon Society that funded the project. Standing on the much-heralded structure, those who attended the event looked out over the bog, scanning for the beavers, redwing blackbirds, herons, salamanders and snakes that inhabit the area. According to Parad, this culminating moment was the end of a very long process in which an idea slowly transformed into a reality.
“The biggest conceptual leap for us to make was that we actually had to build it,” she said. “Most of the things in architectural design you don’t get to build. We had to come to terms with the fact that our drawings had to come to life.”
At the beginning of last semester, the students embarked on the vast, original project with an intense research regimen. During this preliminary stage, students were split up into four groups: site, technology and construction, materials and precedents. Parad was part of the site team that researched the topology and wild life of the site, among other factors.
“Even though we were all inexperienced, [the professor] was able to hone in on what each of us could contribute, and elicit that from us,” she said. “The division had to be done and it was done well.”
During the research stage, Assistant Professor of Art Elijah Huge also divided his class into two teams: north and south. Each team was then given one week to design a model based on research booklets and site-strategy maps they had created to present to their clients. The next week the teams switched models, and were assigned the task of developing the other teams’ model further. Finally, the students presented all four schemes to their clients.
“It was very clever of him to have us switch models because there was the possibility of us feeling a sense of ownership, and only one model could be picked,” Parad said. “By having us work on the other, it made us feel like we were all equally contributing. It created a very good class dynamic because we all brought different things to the table.”
Throughout the process, Huge also brought in outside critics and University faculty to evaluate the models and progress. Some of their reviews were highly critical, mostly because many of the designs were more feasible in theory than in practice.
“We all had these lofty construction ideas, but they asked us the probing questions of how we would be able to build this,” Parad said. “We all came to the conclusion together that one was more feasible in build-ability.”
With the research and design components done, most architecture students would call it a day (or a semester, in this case). But for the students in the research-design-build studio, the real work was just beginning. Many parts of the project were built in class, so as to limit on-site construction time and impact on the natural surroundings. Because the area had been taken over by beavers, the students had to break open dams every day for a week, so that the site would drain enough in order to put the structure’s foundation in place.
“The beavers were very ambitious in their dam-building skills,” Huge said. “Even if we cleared them out in the day, they would rebuild them that night. It was a losing battle with the beavers.”
Based on the four components of research compiled during the first stage of the project, green building materials, such as American Cyprus, and recyclable metals, like aluminum, were used to construct a floating observation deck and elevated viewing platform that was both structurally and ecologically sound.
With a limited budget, time frame and experience level, the construction stage proved particularly challenging. Henry Ellis ’10, who was responsible for securing crucial materials for the project, said it was Huge’s hard work and commitment to the project that motivated them to persevere.
“Snakes in the bog were a surprise, but we quickly assembled a snake management team, and they readily took care of the problem,” Ellis said. “I would liken it to a sports team: when the coach runs with the team, the team runs faster.”
$$arad said it was the jump to the tangible that truly tested the group’s intellectual might. Before starting construction, the class attended a workshop on building, For those, like Parad, who had never touched a power tool before, the experience provided the means by which abstract designs could be tested for their practical value and feasibility.
“Academia has a fear of manual labor,” she said. “They think the first part is the intellectual stage, but you see the flaws in your design by actually realizing it. Even the professor didn’t expect something of this scale, so it’s immensely satisfying to have a product like this after one semester.”
Now that the work is finally done, the bird-watching platform is being put to use. According to Parad, the site has already hosted 10 educational field trips as well as a number of local bird-watchers. To Huge, the children’s interests can be as rewarding as the attention they have received from the popular press.
“Kids love it,” Huge said. “The lower platform floats, so they are very close to the water. They treat it as an outdoor classroom.”