AIA Architecture month has come to a close and NarmourWright participated in many events throughout the month including AIA firm crawls – in uptown and south end, AIA socials, Sketchy Tuesday and the Bike Crawl.

During the South End Firm Crawl we hosted over 60 industry professionals in our office. It allowed us the opportunity to network with other business and design professionals and to showcase our office space.  BHM Architects and Vision Builders also participated in the firm crawl and Shook Kelley hosted the reception after the tours concluded.

The final AIA Architecture Month event was CANstruction. NarmourWright set out to build an AT-AT Walker (all-terrain armored transport) from the Star Wars Trilogy. After modeling the concept in SketchUp, we were then able to design a plywood “skeleton” as the structure that would support hundreds of cans in the shape of an AT-AT. The bones of the structure were primarily made up of plywood platforms, along with some wood supports. In the end, it stood about 8 feet tall! We laser cut pieces for the legs so they could have a kinetic appearance, and we had some hidden reinforcement to carry a rather large cantilevered head…in the end our design won “Best Structural Ingenuity”.

Our CANstruction description below:

Episode IX

A long time ago, in a brewery just up the street, NarmourWright designed an AT-AT Walker (All Terrain Armored Transport). Standing over 6 feet tall and made from famine impervious can plating, these massive can-structs are used by the ground forces of the Second Harvest Empire to battle hunger and combat malnutrition.

This year, 15 teams participated in CANstruction. Those 15 teams and their sponsors donated 33,864 pounds of food (a new record) to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina, that’s 28,220 individual meals for neighbors in need!

Special thanks to our sponsors, McVeigh & Mangum Engineering, Shaw Contract Group and Moisture Intrusion Solutions!