Tiny house phases
Building the team Before having an official tiny house group every student was assigned a partner to work on sketchup with. When we were done with that we had the choice to stay with that partner or to write on an index card our best qualities and have the other team members choose you anonymously. When I got assigned to my group things were not the best, there was a lot of tension between certain members of the team, I ended up having to be the “mediator” whenever things got rocky with the team. It took us a while to get over that rough patch but once we did I believe we did get to a point where we were all working well together, and got everything done right.
As a team we had to collaborate in a lot of things,the first thing we did was create questions for our initial interview with the artist we designed the house for. The second of course was the actual interview. We also had to create blueprints and sketchup models together which was the tricky part. We all had different opinions and sometimes people forgot how to compromise and that made things difficult at first, but of course we eventually got past that and created some amazing final products. |
Learning to live tiny We have been learning to live tiny pretty much the entire year. During one of the first few weeks of school we walked into class and there was a large blue tape rectangle on the ground. We were all curious about what the purpose of the strange rectangle was. I strongly remember being asked if the space within the rectangle was enough to live in and having the whole class say that there is no way that anyone could live in the rectangle. The look of confusion on most of the teams face when we were told that there were people who did live in these miniature houses is something I will never forget.
Throughout the rest of the year we continued exploring the world of tiny homes. We learned all of the pros and cons of going tiny and found a lot of “innovative” furniture that make living tiny easier. After building the lifesize home out of cardboard a lot of the team made the realization that it is completely possible to live in a home of that size. |
Learning to build a park I would say building the park was the first big thing we did as a ninth grade regarding building. It was very exciting to a lot of the team because most of us had either had a lot of building experience or none at all and we were all happy to bring back our old skills and of course develop some new ones. The things we learned while building the park really came in handy when we began to build the tiny home.
We worked with the people from Space4art who guided us and taught us everything we needed to know for the park as well as for the tiny home. Building a park is not easy so obviously it took a lot of work. We took week long field trips one class at a time to work on the park and towards the end we went as a team. I am insanely proud of all the work we did for this park, in all of my years at a project based school I had never done a project like this, and the park was only the beginning. |
Team banner/Logo Sempiternal- Adjective- Eternal and unchanging; Everlasting
Sempiternal to me always meant either that one album by Bring me the Horizon or of course everlasting; I never thought it would mean this group of people, that I would be spending my whole Freshman year with. The 9th grade may not last forever, The memories I’ve made and skills I’ve learned will; and that to me is what the Sempiternal building co. is all about. I remember sitting in groups of four with the wall open, everyone pitching their suggestions and deciding on Sempiternal. At first, the name didn’t really appeal to me much, but as the year went on it kind of stuck. In groups of 2 the whole team created ideas of what they thought the banner should look like. As a team we created the finally design by merging some ideas together. The building of the banner was the first building session of the year, so everyone was very excited. Every couple of people were in charge of a certain element of banner which was great because that made it so that everyone had something to do. I am very impressed of how our banner turned out, it looks very well done and it incorporates elements significant to us as a team as well as bmth in a very clean and professional way. |
Interviewing and designing with artist Presenting Blueprints to our artist
Before we were able to actually conduct the interviews with our artists we had to create a series of questions to ask about their work and what they look for in a house. We also studied open ended questions so that we could get more from the interview than just a couple of one worded replies. When we arrived at space4art for the interviews we were introduced to our artists for the very first time, we then went on to begin the interview and basically as soon as we returned to school we started to design the tiny home. Towards the beginning my group was sending out a large amount of emails to our artist and began to grow impatient when we didn’t receive a response soon because we honestly didn’t get it through our heads that our artist probably had different priorities and couldn’t answer whenever we wanted them to. Once we understood that we were able to successfully communicate and work together to create a design that our artist loved and that we were proud of. |
Presenting blueprints to our artist as well as the people from space4art was a very different experience from any of my past project, it just felt very professional and kind of made me realize how important and real what I was doing was. I’m very grateful I was able to have so much support and critique from professionals to guide me and my group. Sometimes things they would say in response to our plans were not rude but very straight to the point and I am very grateful for that because there wasn’t much sugar coating. If something wasn’t up to code and/or dangerous they would tell us.
POL’s were very interesting and different this year, it felt a lot more real. I really liked the fact that there was a purpose other than showing you parents and teachers what you learned. Getting feedback from all these people who obviously knew what they were doing was very helpful. I think for me the most satisfying part was whenever my artist or someone from space4art would like something I had personally designed/ though of, I would feel insanely accomplished. |
Fundraising A building company is born
Fundraising for this project was a very intense time period in the project. We called many companies, organizations, radio stations, we even called the white house, asking for help in our project. Although we got rejected many times we did end up gathering all the money ($18,000) with the help of all of the people who helped out with our kickstarter. We originally thought we were not going to make it seeing as we had around $5,000 and only 4 days left. But as a team we managed to pull through because of the people who interviewed with Qualcomm and reached out to the children's museum. Actually finding large companies to donate to our kickstarter was rather difficult. Most of the time when we would call it would either be too short notice or they would tell us that they only accept causes to donate to in a certain window of time and that we just missed the deadline. Over all I’m very proud we were able to reach our goal even when many people doubted us.
Our kickstarter was not open for any longer than about a month, which is a relatively short time to raise that much money. So whenever we would reach a large milestone in our campaign we would record a silly video of us dancing around with excitement and post them for the people who followed our campaign to see. It was so much fun to incorporate these videos into the project, because something that I personally enjoy to do is perform and that is what I was essentially doing through these videos. I am very glad the team was able to express our gratitude this way because I think these videos really showed who team Sempiternal is. Exhibition Preparing for exhibition is always a stressful jam packed point in the year, and it's hard for everyone, but the final product is always great, and it is worth all the work. You spend an entire week writing reflections, decorating your exhibit space, and figuring what you will respond with when asked complex questions. During this time of year whenever you waltz into a classroom all you see is students and teachers buzzing around like busy honey bees, hurrying to get their work done. The afternoon of exhibition is hectic, but a good kind of hectic. All the projects on display and proud teachers and students describing what they've done all year.
Exhibition in the past has not been a fun time for me. I become stressed and panick about not getting my work done on time or not remembering what I'm supposed to say. This year I have to say, went rather smoothly for me. Of course there is always going to be some amount of stress during exhibition time, but this year it didn’t weigh me down as much. I completely believe that it is because I was actually very excited about this project, I felt like having a year long project really worked in our favor because we were prepared for most questions that could have been asked. Also since we had been working on the project for so long, our final product was quite extravagant. Of course every year I have been at one of High Tech schools, people from the community have been really interested in our projects, but this year it was different, in a good way. People were shocked, proud, confused, etc. about how big our project was, especially because we were only 9th graders. Everyone kept saying how they would have never been able to complete a project like this in Freshman year, and to be honest at first I didn’t think I would be able to, until I did. I am so incredibly proud of what I have accomplished this past year with team Sempiternal. |
Shortly after reaching our kickstarter goal we went back to space4art and began to construct the tiny house. Even though we all already had building experience at S4A at this point, we were all super excited to begin working on our final product for this project. We showed up to S4A very excited to begin and worked on making the dream a reality. We all worked really well as a team and got things done fast.
For me personally it was very hard to do all the building because I strongly dislike getting out of my comfort zone, and even though I´ve had small amounts of building experience in the past, never as high stakes as this. Of course I helped out while we did the park but I stayed in my comfort zone and worked more on the art side, this time around I did a lot more of the actual building this time. Even though I didn't get out of my comfort zone as much as I wanted to but I think I did really good at trying new things. Another thing is I complain a lot, like a lot a lot. Because of working at Space 4 Art I think I learned that I'm not always going to be doing something I love and that sometimes I just have to deal with it. I also learned however that if I feel uncomfortable doing something, to speak up because feeling uncomfortable and not enjoying what you´re doing are 2 different things. |