Classrooms are generally a place where students learn how to develop their ideas and practice craft, but it is not limited to that at SCAD. Students in various majors are working outside their classrooms to design and build sustainable micro homes, called SCADpads.
“Students in the School of Building Arts designed the SCADpad project,” said Holly Elliott, a SCAD spokesperson.
In fall 2013 architecture students teamed up to design the SCADpad structure. The Dean of the School of Building Arts, Christian Sottile, worked with students to create the SCADPad.
“Dean Sottile led a pilot project, in which students had to come up with ideas and develop a project which eventually became the SCADpad,” said Gabriela Orizondo, a fourth-year architecture student.
Just one week before winter quarter service design, industrial, sustainability, furniture and interactive design professors were told that their classes would no longer do their planned curriculum, but instead they would work on the SCADpad.
“There was a little hesitation at first,” said Eric Green, a second-year service design student involved in the project. “Getting thrown into something that you didn’t sign up for — so it wasn’t very organized in that manner.”
SCAD chose one class from each of these five majors to work on the project, totaling about 50 or 60 students. These students were asked to get involved in the functionality of it.
“They just randomly picked classes,” said Green. “I don’t know if that was the best way to do that — probably not.”
Students from a range of years — sophomores to seniors — are currently working on this project. Each class is focusing on different aspects of the SCADpad. Students in the furniture design class work on the shared outdoor spaces while the industrial design students tackle the interior space and storage. Since the space is so small — the structure will fit in a parking space — it needs to have the optimal storage and people need to be room to stretch. So the furniture design students are trying to get more community interaction in the outdoor living area. They don’t just want individual units; they want a micro home community.
“It doesn’t really do anything if it is just one person in one little micro house by themselves,” said Green. “It would be cool if we could have 15 of them and they could have a micro house neighborhood.”
Students working in sustainability focus on ways to incorporate recycling and figure out what they can to do with solid and energy waste as well as water collection, according to Thread, SCAD’s official blog. Service design students want to raise the residents’ awareness of their consumption levels, by finding ways to visualize data.
They are also working to make these micro homes into smart homes. They want the SCADpads to be compatible with electronics and interact with their residents in a new way. They are talking about things like unlocking the door with an iPhone, turning on the air conditioning with an iPad and making the walls change colors — which is where the lines overlap with the interactive game design students, who are working with projectors and light displays to gamify the space. They are looking for ways to reward residents for doing certain tasks. These students want to do this with an environmental mindset. They don’t just want to make it fun; they also want to educate the tenant.
“How can we teach people to reevaluate the way they live?” Green asked.
Students are constantly working together to figure just how they can do that. They all have to go to a regular class twice a week and have additional meetings every couple weeks to check the progress, because these houses have to be finished by the spring quarter — when students will go live in them temporarily.
“It’s turning out to be cool and a really good opportunity — to have money put into your ideas and have something tangible.”
According to Green, SCAD is providing all of the tools and resources for the students to actually build the things they are talking about.
“Not just ideas, actual objects,” said Green. “Tangible things that are actually being built. Not just ideas, not just a model or a prototype — things that are finished and real. People will use them when they live here.”
Students don’t always get the chance to keep working on their projects and develop them into real products. The SCADpad is an opportunity for students to do just that and everyone involved is learning along the way.
“Teachers are working just as hard as you are to understand this stuff. It’s new to all of us,” said Green. “We’re learning together.”
These micro homes aren’t just supposed to be trendy homes; the students involved are actually trying to help cities by building them. Green said they want to use them as conversation starters, to get people thinking.
“This garage, like parking structures across the country, is reaching the end of its life span,” said Elliott. “SCAD wanted to demonstrate how the space could be repurposed into something useful and fill the growing need for urban housing.”
The SCADpads will be moved to Atlanta, where they will occupy spaces in a parking garage. Students can apply to temporarily live in a SCADpad on their website. The deadline to apply is Feb. 17.
“I think the idea behind the SCADpad is great,” said Orizondo. “Everyday architects are trying to find ways to reduce the harm done to the environment by new construction, so recycling a space which is no longer in use and giving it a new and useful purpose seems like a great opportunity to take advantage of.”