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Japanese Students Assemble 15-Foot Cardboard Gundams
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
High school students from Osaka's Higashiyodo Technical High School assembled three 4.5 meter (about 14.8 feet) tall Gundam out of cardboard. The giant robots are leaving their school campus for an exhibition in downtown Osaka on October 10-11.
The idea was dreamt up in 2011 by freshman electric engineering teacher Yukiko Kamamoto when she was planning how best to spend the 20,000 yen (US$184) budget for the school's upcoming cultural festival. While researching ideas, she came across Miyagi Prefecture's Shiogama High School and their previous cardboard Gundam project.
Shiogama High School's project met a sad fate, however. The project was devised by instructor Susumu Ogawa in 2001 to teach students how to manufacture projects in a group. The students at Shiogama created blueprints for their three-meter (10-foot) cardboard robot, eventually creating 10 different varieties through 2010. After the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, the project was halted when the school closed. The lost time delayed the project and it was suspended.
Kamamoto contacted Ogawa for advice to create the cardboard robots for the festival and the finished project won the festival's excellence award. Surprisingly, its fame didn't stop there. The giant robot inspired fellow classmates to improve on the design and other classes added gleaming eyes, weapons, and rotating heads. A total of 11 robots were created at Higashiyodo Tech since 2011.
The school applied for the Osaka Canvas 2014 art event and were with five other applicants.
Source: The Asahi Shimbun
