Carnegie Mellon’s Carnival weekend is finally here, and with it comes my final opportunity to witness the entirety of the spectacle that is ‘booth’. Booth is an annual (other than the two Spring semesters recently taken by Covid) tradition at the university, in which student organizations - but really mostly the campus’ Fraternities and Sororities - each build their own small wood framed structures on a small parking lot near the center of campus.

 

The 24 page long Environmental Health and Safety document titled ‘Spring Carnival Construction Standards’ shows just how serious the whole event is taken, and covers all the school’s bases should a student happen to pierce their leg with a nail-gun, chop their finger off with an unbalanced miter saw, or to fall off the top of the 20’ tall framed wall they happen to be standing on for no reason. I must say, even after just a quick look, the standards paper is rather impressive in its’ approachability - at least as far as a specifications document can go - to the point where one might think it appropriate to give to architecture students for their first attempt at post-rationalising their second year box-based design - to finally show real proof of their construction chops, usually getting no farther than sardonic comments from their interviewers.

 

I’ve had, like most things in my life, an ever-changing opinion on this annual event. In my first year - the one carnival I was able to experience before covid - I was not particularly a fan of the entire thing. I was certainly outwardly confused and skeptical about the event, and if you would have pressed me I may have said something about how it was no more than groups of business and humanities students with too much free time cosplaying as normal people for the first time in their lives, or if pressed a little further said something about how it truly is just an entire parking lot filled with a couple hundred people who each think they’re their own Will Hunting, except they were all each even smarter than him and chosen to go to school too - or have maybe even made a small observation that the same people wearing ripped Carhartt jackets and pants twice a week now seemed to have left them at home for the clothes that better show off their quads and shoulders when working.

 

But today, I think there is certainly something more to it. The Covid years must have really mellowed me out, or at least made me miss it enough to buy into the entire spectacle, which is really what the entire thing is - a 10-day spectacle for the entire campus, or at least those willing to look. It’s too bad the public is only really around for the end, after everything is done and the best part has already ended, and that the students not participating in the thing are often the ones whose heads would remain down even if an asteroid hit - for them this whole story isn’t really happening at all. Who can blame either group though really, there is plenty to marvel at, but often it is all masked behind a chorus of a dozen saws whirring away on a drizzling Pittsburgh afternoon and the dueling speakers of each group’s self-styled DJs, blasting everything from James Taylor to Jason Derulo for hours on end.

 

Those sounds of saws and songs also come along with a series of sights. The many cases of Red Bulls and Gatorades lying between the booths, the spent cans rolling down the hill and gatorades sitting in the sun, cap off, warming up into a fresh Lemon Lime, Riptide Rush, or Glacier Freeze hot tea. Next to them sit countless plastic milk-crates, filled with what seems to be a hastily organized collection of construction paraphernalia from each decade since its respective student organization began. Particularly eye-catching though is often the amount of mis-cut boards. Piles of them litter the lot, each of them having not been re-cut for a smaller necessary piece, because that piece has already been accounted for and cut, or maybe just as likely miscut too, and sitting in the same pile. This is the nature of construction for those who may actually have never been told to measure twice and cut once.

 

Their efforts are now annually contested by the architecture students - having realized that they ought to be the ones getting the most attention for a construction-based event on this campus. Although this, like most architectural endeavors, exists as a reflection of the increasing elitism of architecture. Instead of competing in the same contest and having the same fun time as the rest of the students interested, they would rather feel separate (and of course much more sophisticated), by creating a pavilion from which the entire carnival begins, and which everybody must walk through in order to get to the rest of the booths themselves. I mean, what architect would ever want to engage such a low and meaningless craft as the framing of standard timber walls, it would be much better to repeat a single impractical joint 200 times just to show that we work harder than everybody else. This year more than ever, it also reflects even the deepest issues here, and is being run by a new professor: an expert in bamboo construction. The pavilion has become exactly what the profession wants, a master creating the basic outline of a design and following up by using the labor of their students to make their own vision come to reality. I’m sure the images in each of their portfolios will look very nice though, and will certainly be paired with a description accurately reflecting the part that each played in its construction :).

 

I think maybe instead of making a pavilion for the duration of the carnival, the architecture students ought to be out there a week before the booth construction even starts, and make a viewing platform of their own out on or near the parking lot, so that they can go out there and relax, and actually watch people construct something. Imagine dragging out a few lawn chairs and some beer and watching everybody else have fun with their own work. Certainly any of the Design-Build studios which have taken place on this campus in the last five years hold little learning value compared to the experience one might gain from watching a single week of booth construction with a little vigilance. For all of the criticism I might ever have given to the builders of the booths, the fact is that I really do think that if I asked each graduating Fraternity or Sorority member questions about how to frame out a house, I think that more of them would answer correctly than graduating Architecture students. The experience of doing something, even if small and only one time, is certainly more valuable in my opinion than completing a wood framing project for a single Materials and Assembly course. And, as somebody who graded those assignments, I can say that even those who completed it could not have answered most questions even directly after turning it in.

 

From the open window next to my desk in studio I can hear the cheers. Winners have been announced. Top threes in separate categories for fraternities, sororities, independents, blitz (mini booths), doghouses (mini-mini booths), and an assortment of at least five individual awards are all divvied out, and by the time they’re done, there are certainly more awards than there are booths. Of course this is how to retain motivation for the students who have plenty going on already, and if this is the way the university can present itself to the public, then they may as well give everybody both incentive and reward.

 

Not much needs to be described about the finished booths themselves. Each full sized booth is 400-odd square feet, and if the student org is big enough and daring enough, can be two floors tall. The walls are all sheathed in OSB, and on the inside and out painted full up with modern-day frescoes. The paintings all correspond to the themes of the booths, which themselves are meant to fit into a larger annual category. I couldn’t tell you what the category was this year, or any hear even, but what I can say is that it serves as a little annual reminder about how out of touch I am, since each booth is seemingly always themed after a T.V. show, movie, or video game which is new and popular or undergoing a nostalgia-driven bump in popularity that I have missed out on.

 

I think through the process of writing I have learned just how much I’m going to miss this tradition. Seeing others participate in collaborative construction - with the sites and sounds and sometimes smells of the work going on, the somewhat comforting feeling of walking home from the studio at 2 in the morning knowing that there are still people out there working too, or even just seeing the real care that some of the people put into their work - sometimes much more than can be said for even the best crafted architecture models. Till my next carnival, so long booth.

 

- C

 

4/18/2023