Carnival Gateway Special Project

In partnership with the Architectural Crafts Collective (ACC), this course focuses on the fabrication, construction, documentation, and repurposing of the 2026 CMU Spring Carnival Gateway Pavilion. This course is designed for students who would like to join the build team.

Carnival — a century-old tradition at CMU — temporarily transforms the campus into an improvised urban ecosystem each spring. Students gain hands-on experience by working through the logistics of constructing a full-scale pavilion, from prefabrication and on-site assembly to installation, documentation, and eventual reuse. The semester concludes with the transformation of the pavilion into an outdoor tea shop in Pittsburgh, prompting students to consider the full life cycle of a structure from conception to reuse.