Written by Kenzie James // Photo by Macy Cox
The freshman interior design and architecture studios designed and built hammock structures on the front lawn outside of the Olen Hendrix building April 5-6.
Designing a hammock structure has been a project for the freshman studios in the past, but this is the first year the studios have ever built their designs.
Faculty members Nikki Crane-Hasty and Mike Steelman, the co-teachers for the studio, decided to make the project a reality to protect the trees on Harding’s campus.
While hammocking is a popular student activity when the weather is nice, students will tie hammocks to a bigger tree trunk and a small dogwood, Crane-Hasty said.
“We don’t have good, beautiful thick trunks close enough for the hammocks,” Crane-Hasty said. “It causes that dogwood to bend really bad, and it does a lot of damage.”
The students started the design process for this project by designing a hammock structure individually.
Freshman Emma Luallen, who participates in the afternoon studio, said an idea like including benches on the structure was part of her individual design and was kept through each student critique and collaboration.
“We all came up with our own idea, and then over time, we gradually came together into pairs, to groups and then as a whole class,” Luallen said.
Two freshman studios each worked on their own designs, which resulted in two structures.
Freshman Madison Smith, a student in the morning studio, said that after their design was solidified, the studios spent a couple days building their hammock structures behind the Ulrey Performing Arts Center.
“I think it helped us get to know our studio a little bit better,” Smith said. “This is the first time they’ve done this element of building and, I think, the collaboration to that scale of the whole class.”
One of the requirements for students’ designs was the structures had to be built with nuts and bolts so the structures could be taken apart at the end of the semester. Originally, the structures were intended to be put in storage, but instead they will become part of the Searcy community.
Crane-Hasty said Searcy Mayor Mat Faulkner reached out to her about the long-term future of the hammock structures after the project was completed. The structures will remain on the front lawn until the end of the semester, and they will be donated and rebuilt in one of the public parks in Searcy after that, Crane-Hasty said.
