Cal Poly is hosting its annual Design Village Competition this weekend.
Students from Cal Poly, as well as other universities and colleges across California, will be building temporary shelters in rural Poly Canyon.
This year, there will be 52 projects, including 23 from Cal Poly students.
The structures have to be built or reassembled within 12 hours using hand and battery-powered tools.
They have to shelter each student team for the weekend. On Friday, students carried and pushed the building materials from campus to the construction site.
“These guys are first years so a lot of what they’re doing is learning structure by doing this and learning to see what stands up and what doesn’t,” said JoAnn Moore, who is a full-time lecturer with the Cal Poly Architecture Department. “Our students are in welding, in wood shop, in metal shop. They’ve done all sorts of things by hand, and then this whole experience. There’s no way to compare it to something they would have read in a book.”
This year’s theme is Synthesis. Students are encouraged to create designs that integrate into the natural environment.
The competition is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
All of the materials used for the buildings will be repurposed after the competition.
