The Red Room: A New Hope in MSFEA
The Red Room: A New Hope in MSFEA
Written by Dimitri Saad and Raphael Sabbagh
Not so long ago, in a galaxy far, far away… the Jedi, having defeated the Sith, decided to cultivate the force in the people. The Jedi are student volunteers with exceptional making skills trained to invite, support, teach, support and guide citizens thirsty to make. They scattered across the galaxy and established spaces capable of bringing out the best in students. One of these settings is found in AUB and is called the red room.
The red room is a technological pillar of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (MSFEA) that lies at the heart of the Bechtel Design Hall, where most students study or hang-out. It is clear in the eyes of the room’s passersby that something is always cooking inside.
Students also always seem to be excited to enter its premises, almost as if there’s something magical inside. This space presents students and faculty members alike with the opportunity to freely brainstorm and execute their ideas in a cooperative, creative, and innovative way. Supported by a team of enthusiastic and trained students, the red room also offers the means for inventive prototyping and design through its wide array of available equipment.
The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture that such settings promote dates back to 2001 at MIT. Today, 40 US universities have adopted this idea in an effort to unleash the creative potential of students. These spaces in the US mostly comprise of 3D printers, laser cutters, wood and metal shops, electronics, computers, and of course, white boards. With some of them being fully student-run, there are Makerspaces that even operate 24/7. The red room in the MSFEA adopted these Makerspace values when it opened its doors in March 2019.; this initiative was founded by Professor Mohammad Harb and supported by the Dean, and the MSFEA labs, and machine shops, namely by Mr. Khaled Joujou and Mr. Ghassan Deeb.
Being “A Makerspace: For students by students”, this room became centered in the spotlight of the MSFEA Engineering and Architecture faculty, as it opened from 10 AM to 10 PM with the sole purpose to serve and inspire course, research, and competition projects. The room continued to function during the following Fall and Spring semesters, adding to its repertoire of tools and machines, as it attracted more Jedi and more students.
The red room houses several advanced machinery and equipment suitable for rapid prototyping.
These include 3D printers, a portable CNC machine, a scanner/copier/printer, as well as electronic devices, mechanical tools, and basic office supplies that encourage low-resolution prototyping. The reason behind the presence of low-resolution material is which to encourage hands-on fabrication that lets loose of one’s imagination loose through hands-on fabrication. The red room adopts a design-thinking philosophy, which preaches that there are no wrong designs, and exploring ideas without restrictions only leads to a better finalized design.
The 3D printers are often viewed as the most seemingly the room’s most exciting aspect of this room, as it’s not a common sight present in the engineering labs and shops. There are two types of printers: resin (SLA) 3D printers and filament (FDM) 3D printers, of which there are a total of 6. The difference between them is that the former uses ultraviolet laser to cure the resin into layers of a part, while the latter melts a filament and extrudes it onto the printed part’s layers.The traditional electrical and mechanical components, on the other hand, have also attracted people to the red room. The electrical power supplies, microcontrollers, and jumper wires have allowed students to experiment and debug their electronic circuits or mechatronics projects. Furthermore, the mechanical drills and tools have seen great usage, as students also used the mechanical drills and tools to polish and perfect their prototypes. The presence of these tools has empowered students to pursue and test their ideas, since students are more at ease comfortable in seeking help and going the extra mile when accompanied by the Jedi, who are students like them.
It’s these little things that make the red room such an empowering and accessible initiative, since students are now excited to work on projects in the red room. Such an initiative has kept students in direct contact with engineering and with their creative inner-selves, and its positive impact is increasingly rippling through the faculty and its atmosphere after each passing semester.
Education grounded in “making” has the capacity to transform the way we think about pedagogy and learning, and the latter happens best when learners construct their understanding through a process of building things to share with others. The key to the success of the maker movement in education is the shift away from ready-made knowledge to a classroom environment ripe for exploration, creativity, innovation and collaboration with hands on materials and real-world problems. The presence of the red room in the MSFEA, coupled with the recent induction of the Human-centered design course into the student curricula, have become increasingly vital and necessary elements that carry and propel the determination, independence, and creative problem solving into an authentic preparation for the real world through simulating real-life challenges .
“The MSFEA Makerspace fosters innovation, ingenuity, and creativity through the exploration of new and emerging technologies in a collaborative environment. It is a place where formal and informal learning comes together to provide users with hands-on experiences that help them refine their ideas, be more engaged with problem-solving, and develop teamwork skills. The AUB Makerspace is available to all students, faculty, and staff regardless of their major.”