It’s a yurt! 
(That’s cool - I thought you were talking the big black plastic garbage bags, which would have meant a lot fewer panels! Great job on it!)
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Oh, I love BigLots! I am most intrigued by the oddball bits of food they stock. Always gives me ideas for cooking. That reminds me to make a trip there sometime to get some laser fodder for future projects.
I admire your diligence and tenacity. Any burns from the heat seamer? I still have the scars from a project, hot gluing catalpa tree leaves all over a Halloween costume. I went as “Mr. Catalpa”, the actual name of the school’s math teacher.
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@printolaser you’re telling me!! When we modeled it digitally we were envisioning something half that size haha. 
@Jules It is!! Someone also threw around ‘igloo’ at one point during our review. Oh man, we were so tempted to use big garbage bags, but we set a goal for ourselves to only use old bags from grocery/shopping trips (plus my apartment’s under-the-sink cabinet was literally overflowing with bags that needed to go lol)
@marmak3261 when we realized we could make one full panel with the BigLots we loved them as well 
Thank you- and surprisingly, no burns!! The heat seamer had a pretty good safety guard on it, which really helped. That costume sounds like so much fun! (Minus the burns of course)
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I’m hugely impressed. What a fantastic idea–I never got awesome assignments like that in school. Did you study engineering?
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Thank you! 
The studio it was for was definitely my favorite; we had to make full-scale prototypes every other week of something three dimensional that pushed the boundaries of typical flat materials (paper, wood, bags etc)- much like the discussion happening in the ‘transcending the medium’ topic.
I studied architecture! Though I sometimes wished it had been engineering instead lol…I feel my school had a huge missed opportunity separating our architecture program from our engineering one (they’re literally on opposite ends of the campus). So many great collaborations could have come from it!
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I have architecture-program envy! When I was chewing on grad school options, architecture was in my top 3, but my local program would have been a 5-year bachelor/grad program, and I wanted to be out sooner. I still think about going back for it. Your program sounds great, though, and you clearly continue to translate all that 3D education into your current pursuits.
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As an art student at CU Boulder, I was not allowed to take the architectural drawing/rendering classes. But Architecture students could take art classes. Almost ten years later, and I’m still upset about that.
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That completely blows. I’d be pissed, too. Both places I’ve studied art allowed me to take any class I wanted. I ended up in some fantastic ones–Gross Anatomy (i.e., human cadaver dissection) and Geology were at the top of the list.
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My son went to Syracuse for his undergrad - loved the weather so much that he overloaded on classes and finished in 3 years. Unfortunately (for some things), the best laid plans and all that…he met a girl who is on the 5 year architecture sojourn so he’s now doing his grad work in the Syracuse snow for 2 more years 
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That does sound gross.
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Recycling trash for creative projects ftw! When I was in undergrad, one of my projects in my 3D design class was to create an article of clothing using anything but cloth. Dirt poor as I was, I decided to make a floor-length skirt out of AOL CDs. It was that time when they were stacked at nearly every store’s cash register and I got least one in the mail (in a nice tin) every week. It was pretty spectacular, haha!
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Something they never tell you about when you start is the actual benefit of a 5-year program…to become a licensed architect (meaning you can sign off on your own plans to get them built) requires either a 5-year program, or a 4-year program plus a masters degree. I won’t even start on how strange it is that one extra undergrad year is apparently worth just as much as 2 years of a higher degree, but long story short- that’s why the extra year could be worth it!
Thank you! As with any program there are some parts I wish had been different, but in the long run, I like to believe it was my school and classes like the one I did the tent for that allowed me to discover the digital fabrications world! 
@jbv That stinks!! I know certain classes required for our major made sure all the architects were accepted first, but I don’t think any were outright banned from non-majors. Their loss in the end for not having your talents in the classes!
@bhspalinger That sounds awesome!! I bet it looked so cool when the light hit it. I totally bombed the ‘wearables’ project for the same class as the trash tent- bit off way too much more than I could chew with only a few days’ worth of time!
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I worked at AOL for 14 years - I had tons of the 3½ disks from the DOS version - should have kept them… Still trying to find a use for the few thousand 3½ disks I do have … Even pinterest doesn’t have too many ideas (coasters and pencil holders).
Are the disks different colors? You could use them as “pixels” to create large-scale wall art/designs!
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That would be neat but all the DOS and Mac ones are/were white. I’d peal the labels off, drill a hole in one side (since they were low density) so I could format them as high density and then use them in my PC.
When I started working at a University, one of the major perks that drew me in was to take any class at $5 per credit, up to 2 classes per semester.
Unfortunately, most of the classes that interest me are languages (which I haven’t had the time for), and virtual art & design. But the VTD classes require that you have them declared as your major, and if you have them declared as a major, you have to pay $1,000+ per semester in extra fees, even if you only take ONE class.
So… can’t take those classes >< (it does make sense though, most of those fees go to licencing for major software)
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