The Studio Percussion’s music room is a noisy place.
Drum sets, bongos and hand drums clutter the space at the non-profit music school on the corner of Northwest Sixth Street and 10th Avenue. But amid Friday night’s usual cacophony of grunts, bangs and crashes, none of the instruments made so much as a mumble.
Instead, the noise came from five UF architecture seniors, who were pushing, kicking and pounding together a minivan-sized jigsaw puzzle.
The five students, who called themselves “Recreate 121,” designed, built and donated a nearly 8-foot-tall kiosk to the Studio Percussion music school. The kiosk will serve as a business counter and storage place for the studio.
Before it went to the music room, however, the Recreate 121 team assembled the kiosk on the Plaza of the Americas on Friday, where it stayed from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The kiosk was constructed out of recycled and reclaimed materials. A large portion came from old UF studio desks destined for disposal. Only $60 worth of non-recycled desk materials were used to build seven surfboard-sized pieces that were assembled into the kiosk.
“There were 12-hour days working on the project,” said Breanna Rossman, one of the builders. “We came up with the idea near the end of April and have been working toward finishing since then.”
After spending two months gathering materials and constructing the kiosk, Rossman, along with fellow students Dylan Rinda, Kyle Altman, Jeff Glad and Nicole Paul, finally finished and installed their summer project at its new home at the music school.
Studio Percussion was founded eight years ago by Tobin and Jill Wagstaff, who were members of the featured family on the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” TV show in February.
Although their house got a makeover, the studio where they give free drum lessons six days a week did not, Tobin said.
“I kind of felt like I did when the Extreme Makeover people came to our house,” he said. “It’s wonderful to see someone take the time and effort to help us. It’s been amazing to see them design and build something and then just give it away.”
