The Upcycle
The Upcycle, a semester-long collaboration between Engineering and Humanities classes, had the broad goals of recognizing and confronting our environmentally adverse consumption & production cultures that are entrenched in practices of planned obsolescence, materialism and disposability. During the course of this project, our team worked to develop an understanding of the waste that our personal & consumer habits produce, explored the principles & approaches of engineering that lead to more purposeful and sustainable building, and considered the benefits inherent in designing and building with upcycled, or repurposed, materials that would otherwise persist solely as waste.
At the outset of The Upcycle, students worked to develop an understanding of the basic methods, tools & technologies used in engineering. This work served as an important foundation for the design and build aspects required by the later stages of the project. At the same time, students worked to create an art piece utilizing repurposed waste from their daily lives as a means of recognizing the waste that they produce and exploring alternate uses of trash materials. With these foundations, students formed groups to identify & design a product with authentic purpose for a local non-profit organization. Upon completing their designs, each group gathered discarded materials before redesigning their product to integrate these materials.
Finally, each group prototyped and built their upcycled product, before delivering it to the organization they were collaborating with. In conclusion of this project, each group worked to archive the process of their work within a team-wide publication highlighting the design processes, environmental impacts, community interviews and the physical & philosophical practices that were explored during The Upcycle.