There’s an element of ‘big kid’ in Kyle Mackie’s newfound fascination with 3D printing, along with equal parts historian, techie, theatrical designer, and educational explorer.
Here’s Mackie’s plan: He wants to reconstruct Central Public School – a scale model of it as it used to be. Not the bunker-type building that it is today, but the majestic and stately structure that was built in 1875 and demolished in 1968, replaced with something that certainly won’t make the pages of Architectural Digest.
Mackie is an educational consultant who works primarily with universities and colleges in the area of exploring approaches to teaching and learning through technology.
But his educational background is in theatre. He holds two drama degrees from the University of Guelph, with a focus on set design and stage craft. Therein lies the model building side of his 3D fascination.
“That is one of the things that turned me on to the possibilities that 3D printing allows,” he said. “I’ve found some interesting links to the work that I’ve done in theatre.”
He said a focus of his graduate work was on the idea of place, and how places reflect memories, as well as build and express community.
Three-dimensional printing, he said, offers a kind of bridge between virtual realities and concrete realities, taking a design from a computer program and turning it into a real thing. Even if a building is gone, the model can have special value in a community.
Lately he has been spending a lot of time at the downtown branch of the Guelph Public Library, working with library staff to learn the fundamentals of 3D printing. Now, he is pushing himself to acquire the advanced skills.
Along with his 10-year-old son Leo, Mackie has attended 3D workshops at the library on Meshmixer, TinkerCAD, and Autodesk 123D. He has also been hitting the books on additive fabrication technology, and learning about the great potential of 3D technology.
Creating a 3D print of Central Public School, the way it was, is the impetus behind his own learning. Mackie’s wife Kate is the teacher librarian at Central Public School, so there’s a family connection.
There is also an element of newsworthiness related to the school. Plans to build a multiple storey building on Dublin Street, just up the street from the school, have sparked concerns about traffic intensification and other issues.
“I’ve always been interested in that school,” Mackie said. “It’s one of the oldest schools in Guelph.”
The original school on Catholic Hill, he said, was majestic, a building with grand spires, several floors, and elevated on a high-point of land. He imagines it would have been an amazing experience for students to go to the school.
“I’m generally interested in the architecture of Guelph, in what we’ve lost, and what remains,” he said. “And so I thought, wouldn’t it neat to put together a model of the original building.”
The plan is to make a model and display it in the school as an artifact and memory, so that the school community could reflect on what used to be. The model may inspire children to learn 3D printing, local history and architecture. Small versions of the print could be sold to raise funds for the school to invest in 3D printing equipment.
So far, the 3D school project has not been an easy one. Architectural drawings of the original building no longer exist. About all Mackie had to go on was a postcard photograph. But he was able to find a tech savvy designer who used available visual and written sources to create an image that could be 3D printed.
One of the challenges now will be to learn how to scale up the printing process.
