t is also a space that is accustomed to traffic.
With projects in hand, a parade of makers often gathers in the hall, and weekly themed sessions are offered to the campus at large on topics from rubber mold making to centuries-old Vietnamese embroidery technique.
“I have seen students waiting for it to open up, and there always seems to be activity. It has a good balance of craft-friendly working areas and a heavy-duty fabrication shop,” says Thomas E. Ask, professor of industrial design and – like Gregory – an early proponent of bringing the maker movement to Penn College.
The makerspace is named in memory of Dr. Marshall Welch Jr., a local orthodontist with a knack for tinkering and a penchant for philanthropy. It is outfitted with equipment provided by a roster of beneficence, divided into The Gilmour Tinkertorium (including computers, 3D printers, sewing machines and vinyl cutters) and The Logue Fabritorium (lathes, CNC machinery, saws, routers, drill presses, welders and the like).
The overall space was laid out by assistant professor Rob A. Wozniak’s architectural design technology students, from whose presentations the winning configuration was chosen. (Even the runner-up ideas showed an intuitive grasp of the project’s intent. One of them carried the working title of “Broken TV,” a pointed reminder to turn off the television and do something with one’s hands.)
“The students were trying to encourage, by their delightful designs, a space where students who wouldn’t normally come into a ‘shop’ would feel comfortable to enter this space,” Ask says. “And I think they succeeded!”
Long interested in the underlying motives for the human desire to build things, the faculty member (and advisor to the college’s Society of Inventors and Mad Scientists) wrote a paper for the 2016 International Conference for Design Creativity in Atlanta. His “Philosophical Foundations of the Maker Movement” explored the interlocking concepts of usefulness, beauty and fun.
“The joy of the designing and building process can be of greater importance than the object’s utility. The world of hands-on design teaches the heroics of the nail gun, the intimacy of the soldering iron, the magic of casting and the crunching sound of failure,” Ask wrote. “Makers know the dance of deep thinking and wonderful journeys.”
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