Yonge Street recently
wrote that the
Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS) had decided to host their Student Design Challenge for a second year-in-row. This year's challenge, aimed at post-secondary students from across Ontario, was to design the interior of a new concourse at the Toronto Central YMCA.
Now, just a month-and-half later, the winning design has been announced.
At an event this past Saturday, a panel of judges awarded the prize to University of Toronto students David Garcia Gonzalez, Jessica Wagner, and Gregory Bunker. Not only will the students be presented with financial scholarships, they will get to see their winning design implemented at the YMCA concourse.
"The UofT team brought a mix of creativity and pragmatism to their design," says Andrew Horsman, executive director of OTS.
And they did it all, from the brainstorming to the final proposal, in just 24 hours.
The OTS challange used a 'design jam' strucutre, meaning that the eight participating teams worked side-by-side over an intensive two-day period to learn about the project and to come up with their ideas.
"I think overall the designs they came forward with, the fact they could come up with these designs in 24 hours was astounding," says Horsman. "They really were trying to, in a very short amount of time, come up with designs that had some 'wow' to them. They were dynamic and different and also took into account the needs of the YMCA. Overall all of the entries were excellent."
Students were asked to use of tire-derived products in their plans, and representatives from the product manufactures were on hand to answer any questions.
"The students were really trying to use the products in ways that were innovative and ways that were different and expand the use of the material by finding these new applications," says Horsman. "That is exactly the kind of the innovation that the project hopefully continues to bring. "
The winning design is scheduled to be built and ready for the public by the end of the summer.
"One of things with the designs is that as good as the students are, they have limited amount of time," says Horsman. "So now the winning design will go through a bit of a tweaking process to sort of make sure that it is in fact buildable. We have a professor from UofT that we work with [who] will work with the students on what those tweaks are."
Established in 2009, the Ontario Tire Stewardship is an Industry Funding Organization or IFO. IFOs, as establised by Ontario's 2002 Waste Diversion Act, are organizations comprised of industry representatives tasked with implementing rules to help their industry divert a particular product from ending up in landfills.
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Andrew Horsman, Executive Director, Ontario Tire Stewardship