Co-Lab

Every year the Design + Technology lab collaborates with Toronto Metropolitan University's RTA School of Media to provide curricular fabrication services for Co-lab (RTA830).

Co-lab (opens in new window) is an advanced studio course in which students partner with mentors from a cultural institution to develop real-world solutions to creative challenges. These designs are then fabricated with support from our workshop staff. Check out this year's student work below!

Co-Lab 2022

Students were asked to students were tasked to create their own bug-themed educational installations as part of the travelling Bug Lab exhibit showing at the Ontario Science Center in April 2022.

Instructor: Mark Argo (opens in new window)

Moth Melody

A student project features a glowing table surface depicting a pond. Someone's hand is hovering over glowing lanterns at the edge of the table.

Moth Melody is an interactive musical experience that encourages players to reflect on the effects of artificial light on moth behaviour. By placing their hand on a lantern to turn it on, players will guide the moth over the flowers to play their own melody.

By: Anthony Baloukas, Stacy Cernova, David Robert, and Alexander Verni.

A student smiling mischivously, looking at the camera between 2 glowing lanterns.

A round grey object is surrounded by grass. There is an icon of a hand in the center of the round object.

A hand shrouds a glowing lantern. The lantern is surrounded by short grass.

Bugzilla

By: Tia Cape, Xiyao (Miranda) Shou, Lina Elsaadi, and Sam Lam.

A group of students stand around a lit-up arcade table, playing the game.

Bugzilla is a 2-player cooperative arcade game where players took a role of tree-hoppers, where they were tasked to fight through waves of enemies to get to the end safely! By playing BUGZILLA, players were able to understand how tree-hoppers utilize mutualism, mimicry and camouflage in their everyday lives.

A student team stands proudly beside their project. There is a hand-made arcade table with multicolored lights and buttons. The students stand in front of an information poster of their project in a dimly-lit room.

4 objects are gliowing different colours on top of a dark table.

An Ant's World

By: Yungha Lee, Emma Seston, and Helen Chen.

A student team stands proudly beside their anthill project in a dimly-lit room. An information poster for their project is displayed beside them on an easle.

An Ant’s World depicted the inner workings of ant colonies by fabricating a larger-than-life sculpture of an ant tunnel. Painted styrofoam was used to sculpt the exterior of the sculpture, while 3D printed objects that depicted ant tunnels were showcased in the interior.

A close-up image of a student project. There are 3 magnifying devices on top of a slice of wood, surrounded by wooden plaques containing text of fun facts.

Dragonfly Operation

By: Shelby Murchie, Emily Wu, Justyn Cao, and Kirsten Rowe.

Students interact with a project. Someare looking at a screen, others hold wooden blocks.

Inspired by the iconic board game 'Operation', DragonFly Operation tasked players to piece a dragonfly back together. By placing the body parts of the dragonfly back into their correct places, information about their exciting anatomy was showcased.