We put the fun in fundraising.

In honor of St. Louis Design Week, we got the boss to dress up in a chicken suit and throw eggs off a 25-foot lift in the parking lot for an old-fashioned egg drop to raise money for Adams Elementary School.

Competition was fierce. Six teams from JEMA, Mackey-Mitchell, Falk-Harrison, HOK, Elasticity and VThree Studios took one hour to build egg capsules alongside a team of students from Adams Elementary. SPACE Cap’n Tom Niemeier donned a chicken suit to do the honors from a lift in the parking lot, under the close supervision of dapper emcee Michael Allen and our panel of esteemed judges: Cat Neville, publisher of FEAST Magazine; John + Cathy O’Brien, proprietors of Three Flags Tavern; Phillip Shinn, engineer and Senior Lecturer at Washington University School of Architecture; and Cameron Coleman, principal of Adams Elementary. Watch the creativity fly in this video produced by the singular Once Films:

Our pal Erica Smith tweeted a play-by-play of the drops, and the dramatic “parachute removal” because the capsules were so well built, they weren’t breaking. The kids from Adams took home first place, VThree Studios won second place, JEMA earned the “Golden Huevos” award, and HOK was the “Judges’ Favorite.”

Special thanks to all of our competitors. Because of their generosity, we raised $500 for Adams Elementary. Their students had a blast learning about science, design and architecture. (We have a stack of adorable thank-you notes to prove it.) Thank you also to Michael Allen for lending his personality as emcee, our judges for sharing their time with us, SystemAire for letting us use their lift for this tomfoolery, and Urban Chestnut Brewing Company for providing “creative juice” for the adult competitors.

Here are a few more pictures from the evening. We hope you can join us next year!