This project made me think about materials and 3-dimensional construction in a very different way than how I’m used to creating. The major shift for me was focusing more on function and less on aesthetics. The majority of our group’s design and learning process was throwing out concepts we’d seen on marble runs before and trying to see how our structure and materials could support these additional pieces. I think the entirety of the project mimicked the design process in asking by assessing our materials and the parameters of the project, then imagining how we can use the materials we have in a creative and fun way. From here we began experimenting with materials and sharing building techniques, then a lot of testing and adjusting, finishing with a whole class share. After the class share our group easily could have gone back and added/applied some ideas from other groups to our own marble run and begun the process all over again. I think the largest challenge with this project was getting trapped by the way we had started building our structure which made it more difficult to add less stable pieces. My favorite part of the project was seeing how unique each group’s projects were and the ways we each focused on different parts of the requirements.

This project made me think of an ice breaker activity I did in Design: Form as a freshman. It involved building a a tower out of clay, the tallest tower wins. It’s interesting and important to step away from aesthetics at times, and to focus more on the best structural decisions. I found this project fairly different from the glitch art activity because in the glitch art activity I was almost entirely focused on how my photo looked whereas with the marble run I was only concerned with the functionality of the structure. I could imagine giving this assignment to an early high school art class at the beginning of the year and telling them not to worry about aesthetics. Then once their structures are complete I would ask each group to trade marble runs with another group and to try and make the structure as visually interesting/appealing as possible. This would allow students to focus on each aspect of design separately before moving into more complex wholistic design work later in the year.