If you have ever attended the flagship Maker Faire Bay Area you know the event grows in acreage every year. Additionally, if you visited World Maker Faire in NYC last September you likely saw the WikiHouse made by SketchUp, a fantastic “collaboration between architects in the U.K., software engineers in Colorado, and woodworkers in Virginia.”
It’s simply amazing what is possible with the power of the internet and a few good machines. Making truly knows no borders.
And with the 9th annual Maker Faire Bay Area approaching on May 17th & 18th, now the challenge is upon you, wherever you are, to submit a design for a new type of Information Kiosk at Maker Faire. Together with SketchUp and ShopBot Tools, one winning entry will not only be selected — it will be built and assembled at Maker Faire Bay Area for all to enjoy!
Enter the Maker Faire Design Challenge presented by SketchUp
Get creative. Challenge yourself. Now is your chance to experiment with three-dimensional designs, to both explore how a kiosk functions as well as play with how visitors experience a Maker Faire. As SketchUp’s own Mark Harrison notes,
We’re looking for a project that’s useful, economical, buildable, reusable, and (for sure) fun. Oh, and it should be made out of CNC’d plywood. For inspiration see: Shelter 2.0, WikiHouse, AtFab, and beyond.
Complete rules and details are available over at the contest page but here are some important points:
- Contest starts … now! Get modelling!
- Entries will be accepted until 11:59pm PT on April 14.
- The design should be limited to a materials budget of $7,000 — design guidelines are available in the Rules.
- The winning maker/s will be reimbursed for up to $3,000 in travel expenses to journey to Maker Faire Bay Area and work alongside the SketchUp team assembling the winning design.
- This contest is open to international entries.
- The kiosk should be durable, construct and deconstruct easily, and ultimately provide wayfinding to attendees of Maker Faire Bay Area.
While the Maker Faire WikiHouse (below) used 160 sheets of plywood, designs for this Challenge are limited to 30 (for ½” inch plywood) or 20 (for ¾” inch plywood). You’ll have to think strategically about size and scale, but the future is now — now to help the public find that future at Maker Faire using your open-source design files and a CNC-made kiosk!
The Maker Faire WikiHouse that was on display at World Maker Faire 2013, rendered using 3D Warehouse’s embedded model viewer. The SketchUp team thoroughly documented the cutting & assembly of this structure and even produced a time-lapse video of it going up and being taken down.
Enter the Maker Faire Design Challenge presented by SketchUp
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