Just because the architecture stands doesn’t mean the architects have to.

That is what sophomore architecture students keep in mind each year when Kevin Lair, lecturer in architecture, challenges them to think creatively.

Lair’s challenge is no idle invitation. He wants them to make their mark – literally.

Students make their mark in the “motion machine” project, an important element of Architecture 202, Architectural Design II.

Motion machines utilize the input of some kind of body movement to mark out a representation of that movement on an architectural surface.

Designing and demonstrating motion machines helps architecture students consider the role of motion in design.

“Everything we are doing this semester is dealing with movement, so it is a good warm-up to the semester,” said Emily Wulf, sophomore in architecture.

Students are free to choose any motion, then capture and mark it in whatever way they imagine.

“We were supposed to make a machine that marks a surface,” said Dane Pigott, junior in architecture.

“All of the other rules were kind of there to be broken.”

Students’ final creations run the gamut of motion from major actions, such as walking and using a pogo stick, to such subtle actions, such as blinking.

Groups created their motion machines from a hodgepodge of every imaginable type of material. Students said one of the major challenges of the project is learning to use imagination to improvise and experiment with materials.

“A lot of the things we use in this project you can’t just buy, you have to modify,” said Andrew Temeyer, sophomore in architecture.

Each contraption is a MacGyver-esque piece of engineering genius, a fact that often leads to difficulty explaining the project to friends.

“They’re like, ‘aren’t you an architecture major?'” said Christopher Cummings, sophomore in architecture.

Temeyer and his teammates were interested in creating a machine that demonstrated the transfer of energy in human movement.

They created a wearable machine that fires ping-pong balls using energy transferred by movement of the wearer’s arms and legs.

The machine, dubbed “The Bazooka,” received a lot of attention during construction and testing phases of the project.

“We had people stealing from our desk all the time to put it on and go shoot it,” Wulf said, “They would come up and ask us how much it would cost to make one.”

Temeyer believes “The Bazooka” may have more than a one-day legacy at Iowa State.

“I have a feeling you will see more ping-pong cannons around campus,” he said.

Another group’s design drew part of its inspiration from animated temperaments.

The team built a machine that uses the motion of making a fist to trigger a mechanism that circulates hot water through a mask on the wearer’s face, making it red.

“We kind of based it off cartoon shows – like when they get mad, their face gets red,” said Kurtis Wolgast, sophomore in architecture.

Although group members couldn’t exactly agree on the impression of their machine’s aesthetic, they agree the final product is ominous.

“It was originally like a serial killer look. Now I think of it more as ghetto bling,” said group member Megan Lueneburg, sophomore in architecture.

Participants say the trial-and-error aspect of building motion machines helps develop a sense of community and forces students to try things and learn skills they may not have otherwise.

“We essentially taught ourselves how to do a lot of things,” Wolgast said.

In addition to challenging inventiveness and creativity, the project also gives architecture students a chance to demonstrate their talents outside of their student community.

“Second-year and third-year architecture students [are] kind of holed up in the armory, and no one ever sees what we do,” Pigott said.

Temeyer agrees the project allows participants to do something different and even leave a new impression for their major.

“When someone says, ‘Architecture students are making something that shoots stuff,’ that doesn’t really mesh,” he said.