Cal Poly Design Village Competition
School: Allan Hancock College
Affiliation: American Institute of Architecture Students Allan Hancock Chapter
Team Members: Daniel Pena-Sosa, Ariel Alcaraz, Eduardo Perez, Louie Mandap
Year: 2013-2014 School Year
Design Village is an annual competition hosted by Cal Poly SLO. It is a competition to design and build a
habitable structure based on a yearly theme; one must live in the structure for three days and two nights. This competition is a competition that the members of the American Institute of Architecture Students Allan
Hancock Chapter attend yearly. The competition allows students to go beyond the classroom setting from
designing on paper and computer to making their designs come to life. It's a hands on approach allowing the
student to work and familiarize themselves with materials and shop tools.
Our 2013-2014 competition entry was a three-quarter geodesic sphere made out of electric conduit piping. The length of each strut on the sphere or dome were calculated in order to cut conduit struts at a precise length. Once the struts were cut the ends where flattened with a vise in order to drill holes at the ends. The struts were then labeled according to how they would be assembled. The struts were simply assembled together with a nut and bolt tightening the corners of each strut in order to hold them in place. Once the frame of the 3/4 sphere was completed, the next step was to develop sleeping. We used sheets of fabric and tied the ends to make them into hammocks, the hammocks were tied to the corners of the sphere and to the top center of the sphere. For the skin we used painters canvas attached from inside the sphere along with strong paper sheeting.