When the day for the cardboard city activity came, I walked into the room excited because of how fun it sounded. We were given the simple instructions of making a house/building, try to add lights to it, and combine all of our buildings to form a small community. Our only paperwork was a reference page showing examples of ways to connect the cardboard. When assignments have such broad instruction as this, I find that it allows for much more creativity in the final product. This was why I was excited to get working on my building, I knew I could make anything as long as it was a building. I grabbed what I thought I would need and got to work.
Now here are the LED's I grabbed, intending to add to my building. I planned to either store the battery inside the building with holes poked throughout that LED's would fit and shine through, or line up on the roof or side of the building. However, I spent too much time assembling my building that I did not have time to work on getting the LED's set up. I wish I could have managed my time better because having them set up in the place of windows would've definitely helped with the final presentation of the cardboard city.
Here was the cardboard selection that I selected. I did not use all of it but in total I used about three boxes. I wanted to make sure that not only did I have enough, but that I boxes that were the same dimensions. This was because I knew that having boxes of the same size would greatly help with my building idea.
After gathering my cardboard, I began assembling two boxes of the same size together to form my skyscraper. In order to do this I opened the boxes all the way and folded the side ends over each other, using hot glue to hold them together. To make it aesthetically pleasing and to follow a rule stated in the material inquiry, I made sure that the labels on the boxes remained on the inside of the skyscraper instead of the outside. This way I didn't have to spend time taking them off like my classmates did.
Here was the original idea I had in order to make use of the open slits left on my skyscraper. I planned to add a fire escape that would help indicate that this building was like a downtown apartment building. Although I had this idea all planned out in my head, similarly to the LED's, I did not have the time to attach a ladder to it. Perhaps I could have decided on a smaller, faster house to build, but I was set on being original and making a skyscraper.
I began work on my fire escape by measuring and cutting cardboard rectangles that would fit into the slits on the skyscraper. This was where the bulk of my work started.
I proceeded to measure and cut smaller cardboard rectangles to go along the edge of the fire escape. At this point, the idea had transitioned into balconies. The hardest part was getting the small pieces to stay still but I made it work with hot glue and overlapping some of the ledges.
Although my final product was not what I expected, I did feel as though I did a good job on it. I wish I could've completed it faster and gotten to include the LED's and ladder. When working with my classmates we found the perfect spot behind several smaller houses that my skyscraper would fit in perfectly. Overall I felt accomplished in what I and my classmates made.
