Professor, Sit Here! Rutgers-Camden Design Students Create Chairs from Boxes for Contest

CAMDEN - At least in musical chairs one has the option of sitting in a sturdy chair. On Monday, March 10 during the lunch hour, 45 Rutgers-Camden students enrolled in a 3D design showed off their engineering skills to the Campus Center by presenting chairs they created from 12 square feet of cardboard with only 24 hours notice. After the creations were judged for how they looked and how innovative the design, volunteer professors tested the structures by sitting in them, some even lifting their feet off the ground.

“In class, we make stuff while we’re learning fairly difficult concepts. Part of the great fun for students was watching their professors fall on their behinds,” says Elizabeth Demaray, an assistant professor of fine arts at Rutgers-Camden, who has organized the “Chair-Off” with Bruce Garrity, a part-time lecturer in fine arts.

Students worked in teams of three to five to apply what they’ve learned over the semester about engineering, architectural properties, history of design, and aesthetics into their weight-bearing chair design. The rules of the contest required that each seat measure 18 inches high and had a back and arms, though they didn’t need to be functional.

Ribbons were awarded for the best looking, strongest, and most innovative chairs.

Students Maurise Bell, Chung Te Hou, Michael Romano, and Katrina Clugh, won “sturdiest chair” honors by utilizing a cylindrical beam in their design. According to Demaray, that decision was a smart one, and perhaps learned in their lesson on the neutral axis.

“If you have a very small amount of material and you’re creating a structural beam, the strongest beam is made when you move the material away from what’s called the neutral axis – which is basically the center of the beam. You want your material on the outside of the beam because that’s where the beam absorbs tension and compression,” states Demaray.

Titled “Magical Princess Chair,” the most beautiful chair winner was awarded to students Leigh Beierschmitt, William Engels, and Suqhwinder Bhular. The most innovative chair was awarded to Nicole Caprario, Katherine McSweeney, Jamie Flannigan, and Michael Buonpastore.

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