Students from around the world take on the Wood Challenges

The 2010 Wood Challenges in Epinal (Vosges)

Between mystery and self-improvement, the new challenges of wood are met!

From May 21 to 28, 2010, around fifty engineering students, engineers, architecture students and architects from universities around the world: Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, France... will take up the challenge!

They will have 7 days and 6 nights to complete, from imposed materials made available to them, inventive wooden works combining imagination, poetry, structural calculations and respect for the environment.
To add to the magic of the event, the theme of the production as well as the location where everyone will live together, strive towards the same goal, surpass themselves for a week, will only be revealed to them at the first hour.

Organized for the sixth consecutive year by ENSTIB Epinal (National School of Wood Technologies and Industries) and ENSA-Nancy (National School of Architecture), in partnership with ENSA-Strasbourg and CRITTBois (Wood Industries Resource Center), and with the support of the city of Epinal, the Vosges General Council and the Lorraine Regional Council and numerous industry partners, the Wood Challenges are not only a exceptional university challenge, an extraordinary human adventure for its participants, but also as a true proof of the dynamism and exceptional wealth of skills and intelligence in wood in the “Wood Valley” of the Vosges.

Participants, equally from engineering and architecture, will be divided by drawing lots into 10 teams during the presentation of the subject. Nationalities and schools will then mix, with architectural students from the Americas or Germany perhaps joining forces with Czech or French engineers...
Framed by a international teaching team (Architect and Engineer professors, etc.), the students will discover during their first day the location and theme of the challenge that they will have to carry out using certified wood and renewable materials available in deliberately limited quantities.

For 7 days and 6 nights, students will be able to concentrate diligently on their tasks, imagine, experiment, calculate, build, sleep and eat at the foot of their works.

Between a profusion of ideas, pooling and sharing of imagination, knowledge and know-how, the Wood Challenges will represent for all participants an exceptional opportunity to create bold and environmentally friendly works together, in the same dynamic.

website: www.defisbois.fr