Did you get to do an egg drop when you were in grade school? WE DIDN’T EITHER. That’s our flimsy pretext for hosting an old-fashioned egg drop during St. Louis Design Week. We (and by “we,” I mean SPACE’s staff and you, dear reader) are going to have a blast, and sweet cherub-faced children are going to get a boost from our tomfoolery. (This is what business wonks call a “win-win.”) Here’s the plan:
- You form a team of your best egg-capsule making coworkers, friends, bowling buddies, or whomever, and register here. Do it before September 8, so you save a few bucks. As soon as you’re registered, we send you rules and the list of approved building materials you’ll receive the night of the event. You can use this to try your ideas before the big day. Just as importantly, you can make sure you can do it within an hour.
- Come to SPACE the evening of Tuesday, September 23rd. Between 6:00 and 7:00 PM, you will build your capsule with materials we provide. It will be everything on the list you received at registration plus one mystery item you must include in the design.
- At 7:00, give your capsule to the esteemed judges for launching. These delightful people are generously donating their time to grade your egg apparatuses:
- Cat Neville, Publisher of FEAST Magazine and chicken owner
- Cameron Coleman, Principal of Adams Elementary School
- John + Cathy O’Brien, Proprietors of Three Flags Tavern (Named Best Fried Chicken of 2014 by Ian Froeb of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
- Phillip Shinn, Architect and Senior Lecturer at Washington University School of Architecture
- After the egg capsules have been collected, we’ll take to a lift in the parking lot to see how they fare. The survivors of the first round will be chucked again from a higher lift position. We will award a grand prize to the team who designed and built the capsule to best protect the egg through multiple drops. Since this is all in fun, we will have a series of goofball awards including “Best Splat,” “Best Modernist Design,” “Longest Flight,” etc. (Nobody will go home empty handed.)
WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN? In all seriousness, they’re the reason we’re doing this. Sometimes it’s hard to get kids excited about science and design, so we’ve been working with teachers from Adams Elementary to make them an important part of Eggs in SPACE. The teachers are working the egg drop into their curriculum, so the kids will learn about velocity, acceleration, [more big science-y words we don’t understand because we’re architects, not engineers] and design while building their contraptions. A group of students and teachers will come over earlier in the day to see how well their capsules do. (Never fear; a “responsible” adult will be in the lift, not the kids.) The winner will go head-to-head with the grownups in the evening. The proceeds from your entry fees will be donated to Adams Elementary.
We’re limiting registration to a dozen teams (see what we did there?), so get your group together before the slots are filled. Even if you don’t plan to make an egg capsule, please come by to see the silliness in action. This is going to be an eggciting community event — and hopefully an annual one — so the more the merrier.
Questions? We’d love to hear from you. Email Shelley at shelley@spacestl.com
Special thanks to our fine neighbor, Urban Chestnut Brewing Company for the generous beer donation that will fuel our shenanigans.
PS: Does anybody have a chicken suit we can borrow?