Design students get to grips with SterlingOSB

Students at Kingston University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture have once again been getting to grips with Norbord’s SterlingOSB as part of an undergraduate assignment.

Working in five studio groups, a total of 115 students used the OSB, which Norbord donated free of charge, to design and build full-size (1:1) structures exploiting the physical characteristics of the material.

Each group was assigned a limited quota of 50x50mm softwood lengths and of 18mm SterlingOSB sheets. With these materials and encouraged to use basic hand-tools only, the students were asked to make “beautiful, coherent, precise, quality timber installations”. The challenge was to consider the properties of the materials employed, issues of waste, economy of materials and how to use every centimetre of the material supplied, says senior lecturer Aoife Donnelly. “Questions such as framing, structure, how to stabilise, connect, support and brace the constructions had to be addressed”, she says.

Norbord sales director Maurice Fitzgibbon says that Norbord welcomes the opportunity to sponsor this project.

“This is the second year that we’ve supplied the University with material for this assignment” he says. “We’re very pleased to be able to help – after all, these students are the future designers of our built environment”.

Aoife confirms that the students “put the OSB to great and widely-ranging use”. She adds: “It became a great hands-on learning experience and was very much enjoyed by students and staff alike”.