The FIBE2 Cambridge Festival games on “Nature-Inspired Infrastructure: building resilient Bridges and Buildings to counter Climate Change” at the Cambridge Festival Family Weekend on 23rd March was a huge success! The original game, ingenuously designed by Cohort 5's Ben Harris, comprised building a suspension bridge set made of laser-cut wooden interlocking elements that can be taken apart and sustainably reused to build a house and was part of other games happening on the Engineering site at Cambridge University.
The 15 students in Cohort 5 have been planning the games the last 5 months since Induction Week on October 2023 when they joined FIBE2 CDT. The Outreach event is supervised by Paula Block, the Centre Coordinator who has been running the FIBE2 Cambridge Festival games since 2018. It is part of the MRes course to learn about project management skills. As Cohort 5 were new to each other at Induction Week, the project kickstarted both cohort bonding and collaboration in teams as they planned and organised the different tasks before the project went live. Good time and task management was tested as they juggled multiple course deadlines in the MRes year. Cohort 5 spent 50 hours laser-cutting their free giveaway wooden bridge and house sets in the Dyson Centre workshop. Marketing skills were showcased in the design of their flyer and distributing flyers to the passing public in Cambridge town centre to garner footfall for the FIBE2 games. Sustainably saving on printed instruction sheets, they even created 2 videos with soothing background music. Playing on a loop, the instructional videos made it easy for the public to follow and assemble the bridge and house sets on their own during the games. Importantly, Cohort 5 had to learn about adaptability and problem solving when the first version of the laser-cut sets did not quite go to plan. They aced this challenge with their engineering skills by going back to the drawing board and coming up with a one-of-a-kind bridge design with interlocking elements that can be taken apart and reused to build a house. The public loved it! They were hugely impressed with the design and delighted they could take a free set home to keep.
While the families and children constructed their bridge/house sets, Cohort 5 explained how nature inspires buildings in child-friendly civil engineering terms. How the tensioned cables of a suspension bridge spread the load and keep the bridge up like spider silk from a spider web or how the foundations of a house provide anchorage like the roots of a tree. The students also explained Biomimicry in construction, through famous buildings inspired by nature’s strategies around the world. For example, the Gherkin in London is a biomimicry of the Venus Flower Basket Sponge capitalising on the strength and stability of its shape and lattice exoskeleton structure. By imitating the tried and tested ways nature evolves, new materials were synthesized, resulting in buildings constructed with both stability and resilience and yet built sustainably, thus, reducing carbon emissions and the impact on climate change.
The FIBE2 games ran in 2 lecture rooms, one focused on the bridge where the participants can test out the stability and seismic performance of their bridges at the self-constructed shaking table. The bridge set was then sustainably re-used in the second lecture room to build a house with the delighted children able to test the sturdiness of their house on a landslide of 300 mini bouncing balls being tipped from a box into a cardboard chute. The design of the sturdy house set was proven beyond a shadow of doubt through multiple landslides as the children happily yelled “Again! Again!” much to the bemusement of their parents. The games also incorporated building the Da Vinci bridge, laser-cut by Cohort 4 from last year’s FIBE2 Cambridge Festival games. See FIBE2 Cambridge Festival Game | EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment: Resilience in a Changing World (FIBE2) By joining multiple Da Vinci bridge sets, one family of 3 teenagers showcased their intricate creativity which astonishingly, was able to withstand multiple levels of the shaking table till it collapsed at the final and strongest tremors to cheers and claps from the captivated audience in the room.
The event was visited by many of the Engineering Faculty’s own staff who came with their own children. The games appealed to both young and old as many adults picked up the challenge of recreating the intriguing suspension bridge/house as well as Da Vinci bridge sets. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from the public was proof how much they enjoyed the FIBE2 games. Many families admitted they have been bringing their children or grandchildren to visit the FIBE2 games over the years and how much they look forward to it at the Engineering Faculty each year. The event showcased outreach in community and championed studying STEM subjects. And it evoked many a "When I grow up, I want to be an Engineer!" I know, I asked.
Well done Cohort 5, for an awesome FIBE2 Cambridge Festival 2024 project!