On June 6th and 7th, 2015, 2015 Tongji International Construction Festival & 2015 “Ablues Design” Corrugated Cardboard Design and Construction Competition was successfully held at the square of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji University. This year’s International Construction Festival has attracted 15 famous Chinese architectural universities and colleges nationwide, recording a new high level of participation since its founding. In addition, 8 overseas colleges from North America, Europe and Asia participated in this competition as well. The number of participants in total reached 500 (450 students and 50 teachers).

 Eight freshmen of the College of Design and Innovation (D&I), YAO Qizhe, HUANG Zihao, ZHENG Chen, GAO Yixin, MA Peiqi, LI Zhihao, DAI Xinyue and DING Yangyang, engaged in this competition, under the instruction of three D&I teachers, LI Yongxu, LIU Yang and YAO Xueyan. Each participating team was required to create a corrugated cardboard building with inner functional space within the prescribed time, by using the materials provided (corrugated cardboard, bolt, hemp rope, sticky tape and so on).

 After eight-hour-long constructing activity in an orderly yet intense manner, the cardboard building work “YOU” designed and completed by D&I team stood out from 60 works of different styles, and received compliments from the Jury Committee in terms of its structure, space and configuration. Finally, this work won the Second Prize in this competition against Chinese and foreign competitors.

 Through the construction practice, the participating students managed to gain a grasp of material properties, the mode and process of construction, and they formed preliminary understanding of architectural function, dimension of human figures, space form, and the basic requirements in physical and technological aspects of architecture.