OCTOBER 2016 | Chere Kenyon

TIM BIGGS, Director of the Tasmanian Craft Fair (TCF), in conjunction with students of the Architecture and Design School at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), have come up with an innovative drawcard for this year’s fair.

Tim felt that TCF really needed a portal to set off the main entrance to the fair, approaching UTAS to ask if its students could deliver “something that people can walk through, and be whimsical enough to engage them”.

He added, “It is a good collaboration as they are very enthusiastic and easy to work with. And it is a really good experience for them, having to project manage to a budget and to justify what they are doing.”

According to UTAS lecturer Mark Bagguley, designing a structure is a complex process, “Testing it is a mixture of digital and hands-on work.”

A plywood portal was decided because the material is cheap and flexible.

Students design it digitally in an architecture program called Grasshopper, performing many physical tests on different plywood weaves, material thickness and bending stress, and building models with each step to work out the number of laminates they will need.

“You have to understand how it is going to work from scale with the material. The main problem is the timber’s wind load: how far can the material go before it starts to fracture, de-laminate and break?” related Mark.

These real-world projects are very important for the students, as “some of them have not touched raw materials before. They get further and further removed as they advance”.

Tim added, “TCF is funding the entrance portal, but as we raise money for community projects and charities, we would like to get some assistance if we can.”

So please help fund this Rotary Club of Deloraine project. It provides opportunities for UTAS Architecture and Design students, as well as draw crowds to the Tasmanian Craft Fair.

To donate to this project, please visit chuffed.org/project/tcfportal.

Photo | Mike Moores