Three main buildings

Bridges Photo Updates

Bridge Update

Here are a few pics of tonight's bridge construction.  More are to come!!!

Drexel C.O.R.E Project Overview

For our Freshman Design Project, we are creating a theoretical living-learning community for graduate students and PhD's. We are calling the community Drexel C.O.R.E, which stands for Collective Opportunities for Research and Education. The community will feature three distinct areas for research and discovery: Engineering, Medical, and Arts. Additionally, the community will have a plaza that  contains buildings for recreation and leisure as well as areas for living. These four sections of the community will be connected by a bridge that meets in the center of the city. The bridge will therefore literally unite the different concentration areas and symbolically encourage the spread of ideas. In terms of deliverables, we will be designing a scale model of the bridge out of Erector sets. The bridge will then span a scale model of the city.

We have researched the philosophies behind communities that are centered around a common ideal and have implemented these ideas into our own design. The basis for our community is the belief that learning should be inspired and should span multiple concentration areas. Consequently, our entire design is based upon the idea that by creating a community that is conducive to research, inhabitants will be motivated to make advancements in their fields. The layout of the city is such that inhabitants can focus on their own concentration areas and also be inspired by the research of those in other concentration areas. By designing the city in this way, we will create a positive environment where knowledge is spread and discoveries are made.

In order to complete the project, we have decided upon hard and soft constraints for our bridge and city design. We are going to make accurate scale models of the bridge and city that are also aesthetically pleasing. Additionally the bridge will have to be able to hold a certain amount of weight. In order to make sure that our bridge is a realistic model, we are researching different bridge types and constructing our bridge accordingly. We will be presenting our model at the end of the term and will also be explaining the theory behind our city.

Reflection: Katy

Working on our Freshman Design project throughout this term has been challenging, frustrating, and ultimately, rewarding. At the beginning of the term it was difficult to see how the K’nex bridge competition was related to our final design project. Looking back, I can see now how everything we learned in the first five weeks prepared us to take on our own project.

               It has been so exciting to see how our project has evolved from a concept to a feasible design. We definitely had an uphill battle, from convincing Dr. Aktan to let us work on our Drexel C.O.R.E project  to incorporating a bridge design to finding an advisor last-minute. However, it was completely worth all the struggle and hard work to have a project that we are proud of. Our initial concept has become a scale model that is influenced by consideration of structure and aesthetics and serious research. During the K’nex competition, we learned first-hand the importance of meeting all constraints, and as a result we have been very careful to not overlook any details in our final project. Throughout this course we have all grown as a team and as engineers.

Reflection: Bader

This course has had its ups and downs but one thing is certain: my group was solid and hard working throughout the entire experience. The group of individuals i am working with make me feel productive and active as they all have a passion for the goal we were accomplishing. Overall i learnt a lot about the internal structure of bridges and the general infrastructure of these kinds of buildings. Most importantly we saw the idea go from concept to CAD to reality and seeing that bridge go up against physics and actual weight was very insightful. We also had a passion for our C.O.R.E portion of our project and although it is hard to find a project that is worth accomplishing we have the support of our professors, T.A’s and our advisor. They have helped us understand the gravity of our project and to help us reach our goal. Overall this has been a great experience, and i have learnt a lot about infrastructure and structure theory.

Reflection: Melissa

   At the beginning of the term when this class first started, I was very confused. I had no idea that it was different from the other engineering lab sections and I felt that details were poorly communicated. After a couple of weeks, the communication between the professors and students definitely approved and I felt that more people were on the same page.

                The first five weeks was focused on the bridge competition with the K’NEX. I really enjoyed this part of the course. Throughout my freshmen year I have not really done anything that relates to my major, civil engineering, so I really enjoyed learning about bridges.  Over the past couple of weeks we have been working on our freshmen design project. I wish we would have had more time to work on our design projects because I think we could have made our project a lot more detailed. Overall, I really enjoyed this class and liked that we were able to focus on our majors.