Christiana O'Connor, along with a group of 30 high school students, recently attended the QuakeCraft Challenge workshop. Christiana describes her experience.

This workshop was developed by University of Canterbury's Quake Centre in Partnership with Ara Institute of Canterbury and Fab Lab Chch, who wanted to create an event that could inspire the next generation of designers and engineers.

The first day we were introduced to the Pacific Island coastal lying land areas we were building for, and shown how this applies to designing for extreme environments. 

Special guest Martin Luff from Wikihouse, showed us how their traditional values of community building are being amplified by technology. 

Then in groups, we were challenged to build a part of a scaled down version of a wikihouse. This design thinking approach encompasses resilient community building with reference to New Brighton, South Pacific Islands and many other areas in high need of housing.

On Thursday, we were put into teams of four and asked to design and prototype a sustainable tiny house for extreme conditions and natural disasters, including earthquakes. By using 3D printing, laser cutting, and Computer Aided Design, at Fab Lab Chch, we were able to create our very own model house and test its structural integrity on a shake table at the University of Canterbury Structural Engineering Laboratory. 

The next day, our family members were invited to watch the shaking of the models and attend the awards ceremony followed by an afternoon tea.

I was a member of the team “infinity” that designed the house pictured. While it wasn’t awarded any major prizes it stood up to major shaking from both directions.