School Projects: Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction

As we look ahead to the new school year, let’s revisit one of last year’s school projects! During Spring 2022, Beam Project Designer, Rose, led a meditation-related project at UASDC. The project involved two elements that helped contribute to mindfulness: calming audio and meditation rugs.

Students from the 10th and 11th grades were learning about the brain, mindfulness, and meditation in their biology class. Wanting the students to experience something physical and understand mindfulness more thoroughly, the teacher decided the students should build something. In collaborating with Rose, the teacher helped design the two part project, called Tufting and Audio for Meditation. 

“A big part of meditation for many people - but also for me personally in my own practice - is to become more grounded,” Rose said when asked why she decided to combine tufting and meditation. She continued to say, “I know a lot of times during meditation people will sit on the ground or be closer to the ground when they meditate. So sitting on the ground is nice if you have a little cushion or a carpet to sit on. We decided that if they are going to be learning about mindfulness, let’s try and make something that also could be a prop that encourages that practice, too, of sitting,” 

First, students created original calming audio compositions with the digital software Audacity. They recorded as many different sounds as they wanted and were able to decide on the length and frequency, as well. Students then made a visual key to track all this information and assigned corresponding shapes to each sound. For example, if their audio included three bird chirps and two wind chimes, students made a key to track those chirps and chimes. They represented the sounds in their audio through varying shapes and colors, then used these shapes to create original designs out of their data visualization.

The second half of the project, the meditation rugs, provided students with an opportunity to create a physical representation of their audio. To make their carpets, students learned a process called tufting, which requires stretching fabric over a large frame and using a tufting gun. The students learned basic woodworking skills to create their tufting frames, too. From there, students learned how to use a tufting gun and, guided by Rose, created their own carpets using the designs they made from their audio recordings. 

“I think the coolest part of the project was how we intertwined both the audio and the tufting components because their tufting designs were actually a physical version of the data visualizations of their audio that they created,” said Rose.

Speaking about the work students put into making the carpet and audio for meditation, Rose says “The students are super awesome and creative and great problem solvers, and I am really proud of them. I would say my favorite part was seeing the students helping each other and teaching each other.”

Each of our school projects aims to have some of these core tenets, including the collaborative design process, specific technical skills to be learned, and opportunities for fun and exploration. As we kick off another school year here soon, we can’t wait to share more of our projects!