果冻影院

Engineering &听Architectural Design MEng (ARB/RIBA Part 1, CIBSE & JBM)听is based across three 果冻影院 campuses 鈥� 22 Gordon Street in Bloomsbury, Here East听and 果冻影院 East鈥檚 new Marshgate building in Stratford. As a result, the students have access to the campuses'听full range of facilities, but are not often all together as a complete group across all four years of the programme.听The MEng Winter Feastival, which took place in January, provided an opportunity for all years and tutors to come together for two days to take on a fun, low-pressure design brief. 听

Students and staff from across the programme gathered at Here East听to embark on听a novel and collaborative building challenge: to build edible bridges that could bear weight and still听satisfy听the taste buds. Tutor-led design cooperatives gathered students from years 2, 3 and 4 to take on the challenge, while first year students worked on a separate Living Bridges challenge.

To approach the main challenge, co-ops were formed with six to nine students, with students randomly selected from each year group to collaborate on each project.听Design tutors were also randomly assigned to each co-op from all years and across three 果冻影院 departments - The Bartlett School of Architecture, the Civil Environmental Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) and the Institute of Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE).听

Each bridge was required to span one metre and withstand rigorous testing. While the event was just for fun, with no assessment involved, it offered students and staff an unusual way to showcase their inventiveness听and design skills. Through model-making, drawings and conversations, tutors and students developed their edible bridge designs.听Working to a maximum budget of 拢50 per co-op, students bought most of their ingredients from a local supermarket.听Some sourced just past sell-by-date food and others raided their lunchboxes for likely building materials.听They improvised a form of glue by melting sugary condiments and sweets like marshmallow in the studio's microwave, while fresh vegetables were woven and interlocked with Japanese joinery to create unique听load-bearing structures.听

After designing and building their bridges, the MEng students pivoted to the task of judging the winners, testing their designs by using bags of sugar as weights to discover each bridge鈥檚 breaking point and to evaluate the weakest point of each bridge.听They also worked out the carbon footprint of each bridge, using metrics like the materials鈥� air miles from their points of origin, and finally subjected the bridges to taste tests.听
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Three bridges were awarded sustainably-minded prizes for structural elegance, environmental innovation and the best-tasting bridge, with the winners being given first choice of any remaining, unused food from the challenge, ensuring听nothing went to waste. The challenge also resulted in some unusual engineering evaluations afterwards. One group determined that their bridge collapsed because they 鈥渉adn鈥檛 baked it for long enough鈥�, while others attributed structural failure to a shortage of confectionery 鈥� 鈥渨e ran out of marshmallows and so the bridge collapsed鈥�.

鈥�I thoroughly enjoyed the Winter Feastival event! It was a great social event and a fantastic way to kick off the second term. The event provided an amazing opportunity to meet and work with students and staff from all years. It was a fun design challenge, bringing everyone together. It was a very enriching and enjoyable experience.鈥�

鈥擝eliz Gurman, Engineering and Architectural Design MEng student,听Year 4

More information

• Find out more about Engineering and Architectural Design MEng
• Read about 果冻影院's new Marshgate campus
• Find out about The Bartlett and the Faculty of Engineering Science's joint campus at Here East

Images:听Luke Olsen