The Ramp Shade is designed to extend and cover the area on the side of the school's pedestrian bridge that connects Perkins and the Academic Commons.

Foster, an academic building that used to be a popular hangout spot, is no longer accessible to students. A ramp shade would give students a much-needed place on campus to hang out or do homework outside. The aim of the Ramp Shade is to encourage students to study outside of the classrooms and in the fresh air. The Ramp Shade has two states which are full extended for shade and the other is tucked away under the bridge for storing it. We have to states because our shade is not meant to go through really bad weather so when weather is bad is can be tucked away.

This project started with a cardboard replica of what we thought would be such a great model. We couldn’t get it but unfortunately, the mechanism that moves the shade up and down did not work. This did not work because of the way the strings were attached the shade would not be able to go up. Also, it was not deployable to it could not be tucked away.Then we made another replica out of cardboard, this time we got help with what our shade could be. We decided to go with origami because we were told it would be more bendable and easier to tuck away.  We began researching origami and types of folding techniques could be used for a shade. Although it was challenging and time-consuming, we started to learn how to fold the origami shade. Once we got that we tried connecting it to our model. We still didn’t know how we were going to make this retract and expand. We thought maybe running a string through it would work. Then we realized that the origami wouldn’t just stay up on its own. 

The next task our team worked was a structural frame for the origami and the connections between components. Once we laid out the finalized parts in Rhino, a CAD software, the frame was ready to be laser cut. We also laser cut fabric to fit in each frame, creating the shade. Then we created tape hinges on the cardboard model to experiment with the folding mechanism. We to show that. Then we moved on to laser cutting a wood frame and the fabric sections. Metal hinges were then added to the frames to connect them and allow the shade to fold.

The origami is one that took a long time to research and figure out what to do. To finally realized that we didn’t need to just be folding paper that the origami needed to replica a frame was hard to get to. Once we got there is made it a lot easier to work with and see where to go from there. This project in the end would be great for student's and faculty. It would be easy for anyone to deploy and a great addition to the campus.