Student designers create Aiken's birthday cake

LANGLEY --- It looks like a big deck ready for summer barbecues, but it's actually Aiken's birthday cake. It's just not edible.

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Rainier Ehrhardt/Staff

Angel Gilmore, an Aiken County Career Center senior, is working on a project to help celebrate Aiken's 175th birthday.

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Aiken County Career Center seniors Angel Gilmore and Lauren Widener are heading up plans for the Celebrate Aiken! birthday finale in December. They have almost finalized renderings of the three-tiered platform that will hold 175 people to mark Aiken's final 175th anniversary celebration at the University of South Carolina Aiken Convocation Center.

The project is the career center's computer assisted design program, or CAD, at its best, said instructor Bob Molkenthin.

"It's involving them in the community and the real world; it will make the project more meaningful," he said.

The final project will include 175 people on the "cake" holding candles and leading the community in singing Happy Birthday.

It sounds simple, but 19-year-old Gilmore said many frustrations come with the job.

They found there weren't enough platforms for their original plans. They had to figure out weight distribution to meet safety codes, and they must eventually make the set-up look like a cake, with curtains instead of icing.

"You have to just sit there and wait on feedback," Gilmore said about pitching her ideas.

With any project comes research on a program's operation and history, Molkenthin said. Previous projects have included safety plans for area high schools, church additions and real estate design.

Students are also using the latest software tools for design, often bought with donations from satisfied customers.

Come senior year, all CAD students are working on individual projects to build portfolios for internships and jobs.

Gilmore's work already includes designing another career center instructor's home, which will be built in the next year.

As part of the Celebrate Aiken! project, the class will also create a three-dimensional design of what Aiken will look like in the future.

Gilmore says not much has changed since she was a child, but she would like to see one-way streets disappear. Their ideas will probably include Jetson-style flying cars, too, she said.