SustainabiliTree

INTRODUCTION

Going into this project, we wanted to create a kinetic, captivating, robust art piece that the Olin campus could interact with that would invoke some sort of feeling from the Olin student body and would encourage campus-wide discussion. We decided that since Climate Change and Sustainability are very relevant to current discussions on campus, we wanted to make an art piece that would demonstrate energy usage of the Olin College of Engineering campus. We thought quite a bit about how to create a tangible model after gathering Olin’s energy consumption data, and decided on a building a sculpture of a tree that would:

a. move up and down to show how much energy the campus used

b. light up LED flowers that would change color depending on if the campus was doing better or worse than the day before

Our goal was to provide an art installation on Olin’s campus which was thought-provoking and stirred a sense of responsibility amongst the students and staff members to cut down energy usage and create a more sustainable campus!