With finals approaching, students from the Knowlton School of Architecture have traded in their pens and paper for styrofoam plates, iridescent wrapping paper and a parachute filled with rubber balls.

Through Wednesday, the final projects of students in their second year of architecture studio are on display throughout the school, converting Knowlton Hall into a living gallery.

“The project is called Dancing with the Stars,” said Bart Overly, lecturer and studio critic for the school. “Students are looking at dances or the notational systems of dance. Their installations are a transformation or reorganization of those ideas.”

Each student’s piece stems from his or her unique interpretation of the assignment.

“We wanted to take the idea of dance and create our own sort of dance,” said Natalie Shovlin, a sophomore in architecture.

“The Duel,” constructed by Shovlin and fellow architecture students Steve Dinnen and Alex Belkofer, appears monolithic as it hangs at the back entrance of Knowlton Hall. The focal point, a wall of black foam suspended in air, will twist and bend as individuals stand on the platform below. The result is a sort of forced dance as participants react to the shifting mass before them.

This study of tensional space is just one interpretation of the assignment. Passersby might also feel inspired to walk through a field of precisely organized styrofoam plates or bear witness to a 50-foot-tall parachute hanging from the school’s oculus as it glows at night.

From conceptualization to construction, the more than 20 installations found throughout Knowlton Hall are the culmination of a quarter’s worth of work, which regularly kept students on campus well through the night and into the early hours of the morning.

“The past two weeks have been hardcore construction,” Shovlin said. We were here three nights until 5 a.m. I can’t even fathom the amount of hours it took in all.”

“I think it’s really amazing to see the energy that went into each piece – not because we told them to do it, but because they’re really engaged in the project,” Overly said. “A number of the installations are very simple in terms of materiality, but quite powerful in terms of the impact that environmental issues play on the piece.”

The installations are not just for show. After the pieces had been assembled, each project was evaluated by a professional architect.

John McMorrough, assistant professor at Knowlton, was issued the challenge of evaluating the widely varying projects with a critical eye.

“The most productive evaluations had to do with not the dance (the pieces) were imitating, but rather the qualities they possess,” McMorrough said. “To what degree does it sustain the theme? How well is it doing what it set out to do?”

Overall, students like Shovlin said that contributing to this series of installations is a learning experience that will prove invaluable over the four remaining years of the program.

“It’s been really exciting,” Shovlin said. “This project has been a really good collage of everything we’ve learned this year.”