The work of 60 students from the Spring 2010 second-year architecture studio is currently on display at the Powers of 10 Exhibition.

The exhibition is named after a scientific movie called “Powers of 10” by Charles and Ray Eames. The movie is about zooming in from an universal scale all the way down to a molecular scale.

“The students were using the same concept of starting out at a very large scale; in this case it was the scale of the city, and then they did a series of representations that went into a smaller scale each time,” said Kimberly Zarecor, assistant professor of architecture.

Following the idea of zooming in, the students eventually zoomed to the unit scale. Each time the students zoomed in, they found new information was given to them to work with.

After watching the film, the students had to make a series of representations at various scales from large to small. They had to choose which scale they wanted to work on.

For instance, one student chose to build models showing an entire neighborhood while other students chose to focus on a single window.

“In their work, [the students] are expressing this creative interest that they have,” Zarecor said. “It shows how architecture has many, many different aspects, not just technical and not just artistic, but there’s a component of analysis, and there’s a component of experimentation.”

Zarecor joined Karen Bermann, Cameron Campbell and Patience Lueth in instructing the course. The instructors hope the exhibition will educate and entertain the public.

“We thought that it would be nice to show the campus community the work from the studio because it is a new project, and we thought the students did a lot of really good work,” Zarecor said. “Their level of output and the amount of work they did was of really high quality.”

Zarecor said this work shows what potential the students show for the future.

Zarecor and her colleagues hope to continue the project next year. They plan to teach the same project in Spring 2011. Unlike last semester, the instructors plan on teaching the project the whole semester, not just two-thirds of the semester.

“Next year, we hope to get even farther with the work, so the students end up with even more than they had already this year,” Zarecor said.

Powers of 10 Exhibition:

The exhibition is being held at Gallery 181 in the College of Design Building. The public can view the students work from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays through Sunday, Sept. 5.