When first brainstorming a project we looked around for issues that pertained to our daily lives -- how could we make them better? We soon realized that storage is a problem for everyone, and specifically recognized this in our Invention classroom at school. In this classroom there are many ongoing projects and materials around which leads to minimal space for working or storing items.

We came up with the idea to create The Space Box. It is a pyramid style box that is attached to a pulley in the ceiling when the pulley is pulled, the box descends down from the ceiling and then lands on your table or workspace and you can resume your previous days work. The Space Box also has hinges that help it fold down flat so you don't have to remove your project from the box itself, it also features a see through plexiglass bottom so that when you are looking up at it in the ceiling you can see what is in it.

Our first prototype began with a flat sided regular square box. We found out that when hoisting it on the pulley system it would often twist on its way up into the ceiling and would not always fit into the square hole. (We had removed a square ceiling tile in the drop ceiling so that the box could “hide” in the ceiling.)  We recognized that the shape and size was the problem. To change this we decided that slanted sides would help guide the box into the ceiling if it twisted on its way up.That is how we came up with the pyramid styled shape.  

Another issue we encountered after building our prototype with slanted sides was we realized it was somewhat heavy which reaised concerns for us because it was hard to lift and if it were to fall, it could be dangerous. To change this we made the bottom of the “Space Box” plexiglass which made it lighter along with using the milk carton to counter weight it and make it easier to lift.  A benefit of this is the milk carton makes the “Space Box” descend from the ceiling more slowly, which is convenient and safe.

We made a box for ceiling storage because it's an efficient way to store things while also saving floor space.

Most other storing units are big and take up walking space, which in our classroom, is limited already. There are big machines that jut out or take up a lot of room, and a lot of the table space is filled with past projects or loose materials such as tools, papers, markers, etc. This is a big problem because not only is it hard to navigate through the room, but when we were working on a past project, we found that when class would be over, we would have to store our project in some random area and hope that no one touched or broke it. This is how we came up with the idea of ceiling storage, which we have called The Space Box. With The Space Box, you can store unfinished projects, tools, papers, etc. in a safe place, so that when you come back, they're in the same state as when you had left it. Not only that, but because the box is up in the ceiling, no floor space is used and the room itself doesn't become more cluttered than it already is. The box is also it's own display case -- the hole in the center is covered by plexiglass and anything inside will be seen, so it's easy for you to identify which project or what material is up there.

The Box itself is made of wood and each side has a brass door hinge. Ropes are attached to each side and are each equipped with clips, which can be clipped onto a big ring that's part of our pulley system. The hinges allow each individual side to lie flat and the individual ropes allow any one side to go down while the others can stay up, making the box versatile. For example, you could unclip the box, lie all the sides down and make the box itself, your own mobile working space. When you're finished, you can just clip up all the sides to the pulley system and pull the box up into the ceiling. 

The pulley system consists of two pulleys -- one is attached to a long wooden beam (that we inserted), which rests between two high beams in the ceiling. The other is attached to a high beam close to the wall, that way the rope with the ring goes up into the ceiling, runs towards the wall and then hangs down as a lever. A bigger clip is attached to the end of the rope that runs down the wall, so it can hook into a ring -- this makes it so you can keep the box suspended up into the ceiling without having to hold it down manually or struggle tying it to a cleat. A milk carton half-filled with sand is tied under the clip as a safety measure in order to slow the box's ascension down if your hand slips or you accidentally let go of the rope. That way, no one will be seriously injured if the box lands on them. Additionally, a separate security rope is up in the ceiling to catch the pulley in case it's yanked out from the wooden beam. Finally, for convenience, when the box is completely unclipped from the pulley system, there's a separate rope with a ring attached to one end and a clip attached to the other that we use to anchor the ring in the pulley system, so that it doesn't fly up into the ceiling.