---
title: Architecture Class Leaves Terps on the Edge of Their Seats
date: 2021-10-22T05:30:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/architecture-class-leaves-terps-on-the-edge-of-their-seats"
section: Articles
---
# Architecture Class Leaves Terps on the Edge of Their Seats

*October 22, 2021* — by [Annie Krakower](/author/annie-krakower)


> Design Course Challenges Students to Craft Comfortable, Usable Chairs—Out of Cardboard

*3 L0 A0763 1920x1080 — Sophomore Will Lee gingerly sits down in a cardboard chair crafted for a fisherman client yesterday as students in the architecture class “Design in Practice” test out their creations. Students have spent the semester measuring, cutting and altering their chairs (below), building prototypes big and small (at bottom) to nail down what ideas work best.*

Sophomore Will Lee took a tentative seat in the Architecture Building yesterday, but he didn’t stay down for long—one of his chair’s armrests popped off, prompting him to spring back up to avoid further damage.

But considering it’s a piece of furniture made entirely out of cardboard, being able to sit down at all was considered a victory.

The seating spectacle was part of “Design in Practice,” a course that challenges undergraduates to craft a chair that will hold a person using just six 30-by-40-inch sheets of cardboard, with no glue or fasteners. Throughout the first half of the semester, teams of Terps measured, cut and tested a series of prototypes to prepare for yesterday’s final presentations, when around a dozen architecture graduate students and other volunteers stopped by to take (careful) seats as guest critics for a contest that’s deeply seated in the profession’s basic skills.

“It’s kind of a microcosm of architectural design,” architecture Professor Madlen Simon, who teaches the class, said of the project. “It deals with materials; it deals with connections.”


*Students build cardboard chairs*


*Cardboard chair and mini prototype*




**Topics:** [Campus & Community](https://today.umd.edu/tags/campus-community)



**Units:** [School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation](https://today.umd.edu/topic/school-architecture-planning-and-preservation)