Architecture students enhance sights and sounds of Unsilent Night

When Cambridge puts on its annual Unsilent Night Christmas festival, students at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture plant themselves in the thick of things.

It’s a one-night event of art and sound that typically draws 2,000-2,500 toqued and mittened participants on a walking tour through Cambridge’s historic Galt core.

Five teams from the school — each with about five students — are involved in this year’s Dec. 17 event, creating installations combining light, wood, cardboard tubes.

“The wow-factor is the out-of-the ordinariness of what they do,” says Colleen Lichti, the city’s recreation co-ordinator. “They’re able to look at locations and say, ‘This project we’re doing would fit perfectly here, or perfectly there.’ They are able to tailor things to a space.”

Communities around the world have been holding Unsilent Night festivities since the mid 1990s. They all start with a piece of music by New York musician Phil Kline that people download or burn onto a compact disc.

Press play and enjoy

Participants hit the start button at the same time on their musical players, and head out to enjoy the mood created by sight and sound.

School of Architecture students have participated since Cambridge staged its first Unsilent Night in 2008. Their work this year was among almost two dozen exhibits, including a pyrotechnics show at Cambridge City Hall.

“They always want to push the bar up every year,” Gemma Selvanera, graphics manager at the school, says of the students. “They want to do something that’s bigger than the year before.”

The school’s installations this year included a curvy creation of plywood and light that people could sit on, and an equally robust piece made of cardboard tubes.

Students learn about installations, Selvanera says, and how to manage deadlines and budgets (each team gets $500 from the city). They have to bear in mind that people wander from exhibit to exhibit.

“You have to be good in 10 minutes,’’ she says. “You want people to still be talking about it the next day.”