How Can I Create a Product from Recycled Cardboard?

UNIT Cardboard Furniture MYP UNIT QUESTION How can I create a product from recycled cardboard? SIGNIFICANT CONCEPTS To create a seating solution using cardboard. We have enough chairs but do we have the ideal chair for our purpose? We have excess cardboard in the school. Can we use the properties of cardboard coupled with what we learned about structures to build furniture that can support our audience? AREAS OF INTERACTION Environment (students create from waste rather than consuming and discarding). Health and Social Education (students consider the ergonomics of existing seating solutions and incorporate ergonomics into their own design) Human Ingenuity (students discover that basic structural concepts can be applied to something as seemingly fragile as cardboard and learn to look around for everyday solutions to construction problems). CONTENT BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: Structures (review columns and compressive strength, trusses, buttresses, triangles and static structures, loads and joints, center of gravity). INVESTIGATE: Explore chair design throughout world history, investigate designer chairs. DESIGN: Teach ergonomics and proportions. Review scale modeling, and orthographic illustrations. PLAN: Review Gantt chart or other step-by-step and block methods of planning CREATE: Review utility knife usage, measuring, scale, attaching methods such as gluing techniques (too much glue will weaken bonds). EVALUATE: Encourage students to plan how to test their product in the investigation stage and make sure they are looking back to their design specification in order to test it. Suggest surveys or questionnaires for their testing audience to complete. LEARNING EXPERIENCES 1.After reviewing structures with quick games such as who can build the highest tower out of five sheets of newspaper, or who can build a chair that supports them out of a stack of newspaper, talk about famous structures and what makes them stand (or fall down). 2. Hand out the What Is A Chair? sheet. Have students do a timed stream of consciousness writing in their books answering the questions. 3. After sharing their often-humourous ideas have students sit their classroom chair the most comfortable position to them. Ask if this is how they usually sit in their chair. Now have them assume a sitting position that makes them feel alert. Ask if it is different than their previous position. Discuss what they would change about the chair and what are some of the things the people who designed the chair had to consider as they designed it. 4.Hand out the Is the Chair You Are Sitting On Comfortable? sheet and have students complete the measurement of their bodies challenge. Discuss. 5. Talk about chairs throughout history using the Chairs of the World handout. Then guide students in their own investigation of designer chairs with the List of Suggested Designer’s Chairs handout. Students independently research these and others and sketch a minimum of three chairs that inspire them in their books. 6.Show PowerPoint of student chairs completed in the past. Talk about the properties of cardboard, as the students will probably be amazed at these examples. 7. Now the students are ready to create their design brief. They choose what problem they want to make their chair a solution for. Hand out Chair Design Challenge. 8. Students independently investigate, design and plan for their own design specification. They then create a mockup using a 2” scale. This is also evaluated by them to complete the design cycle. 9. Students then present their mock-up and design cycle finding to a group they are assigned to. They are trying to sell their idea. 10. The group chooses which design they want to manufacture. 11. In groups of 4 or 5 students produce the chosen chair using cardboard. Each student contributes to going back through the design cycle. Perhaps the design was modified to incorporate another group members’ suggestion. The plan will also have to be modified. 12. Chairs are the tested and evaluated by the entire group. EXTENSIONS 1. Have students make a plan for instructables.com about how to create their chair and post it there. http://photojojo.com/content/tips/product-photo-tips-for-ebay- etsy-instructables/ has a nice tutorial about how to take better photos for the Internet.

SUGGESTIONS Upload handouts onto a digital learning environment or email to students if school is laptop equipped to make this unit more environmental by saving paper. Another solution would be to display the handouts on the classroom LCD projector perhaps? INTERDISIPLINARY

Sign up by emailing your educational philosophy at http://www.salvadori.org/lessonplans/the_school.php and they will give you access to their lesson plans. They have great examples of ways to make the cardboard furniture unit cross curricular. Most handouts referred to in this unit have been taken/adapted from http://www.salvadori.org/lessonplans/lesson_detail.php?id=5 MATHS: The Lesson: Form and Furniture Make a scale drawing of a chair of your own design based on the dimensions of your body.

Content Focus Built Environment: Architectural Drawing/2D, Form, Measuring/Estimating, and Scale/Proportion Math: Calculation: Averages, Measurement: Angles and Distance, Ratio and Proportion, Scale Science: Human Body, Matter: Properties Technology: Engineering Design

DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY: The Lesson: Sit Right Design and build a strong, lightweight ergonomic cardboard chair proportioned for your comfort.

Content Focus Built Environment: Architectural Drawing/2D, Beams, Compression/Tension, Ergonomics, and Scale/Proportion, Stress Science: Human Body, Matter: Properties Technology: Construction Technologies, Engineering Design

LANGUAGE A: The Lesson: Design Writes Write a proposal for the patent of your ergonomic chair.

Content Focus Built Environment: Ergonomics Language Arts: Reading Comprehension, Writing: Technical RESOURCES: http://www.ergonomics4schools.com/ : This site encourages learning about ergonomics among secondary school students and their teachers. http://ditc.missouri.edu/index.html : This site appears to be a dead link now, but if it comes back it is a great resource as it had video of students creating a cardboard chair and some lesson plans to help you do the project with your students. http://baudandbui.free.fr/members/members.shtml: Contrary to what anyone thinks, cardboard is a very strong and cheap material. For these reasons, it always fascinates many generations of architects and designers all around the world. You can submit a lesson plan to this site to get access to other teacher’s lesson plans. http://nsdl.org/resource/2200/20061002135114016T : Many people have never attempted to build their own furniture because they feel it would be too difficult or too expensive to make anything worthwhile. In this video segment from ZOOM, a young designer named Nick demonstrates his process for designing and constructing attractive, sturdy chairs from cardboard. http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/nysatl/Technology/chairdesign/html/index.html : In this Learning Experience students learn about ergonomics as they design a chair based on the anthropometric measurements taken of their classmates. http://www.supernaturale.com/articles.html?id=198 : An article, Cardboard, Your New Best Friend By: Maggie McGinnis http://www.andrewsenior.com/gallery/design/cardboard_instruct.html : Instructions on how to build a cardboard chair. http://www.designboom.com/cardboard3.html : More illustrated instructions to build a chair out of cardboard. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/davidgraas_furn.php : Furniture from cardboard.

Leo Kempf: cardboard designer.