Robyn Wishna/University Photography

Stephanie Gitto, left, and Shuping Liu, both first-year architecture students, weld part of the dragon's body outside Rand Hall on March 17.

Robyn Wishna/University Photography

"Burn" is spelled out in the second-floor windows of Rand Hall on March 17.

A swooping dragon will meet a flying phoenix this year during the annual Dragon Day rite of spring.

The dragon, designed and constructed by first-year architecture students, will be paraded through campus Friday, March 19, starting at 1 p.m., cheered on by hundreds of costumed students and then burned on the Arts Quad.

About 50 architecture students are involved in Dragon Day, a springtime tradition at Cornell since 1901. Their studio instructor, visiting critic Aleks Mergold, B.Arch. '00, has assembled an exhibition in East Sibley Hall showing dragons from previous years.

Many of the students, supervised by adviser Brian Beeners, have been working long hours inside and outside of the Rand Hall Shop, welding, hammering, sawing, fabricating parts and making their scaly creature function as intended.

The 2010 edition will be "an angry, swooping dragon," said Dragon Day 2010 co-president Erin Pellegrino '14, interviewed March 16 in Rand while other first-years gave one another special Dragon Day hairstyles.

Mounted on a Volkswagen bus chassis, the dragon's steel-frame body pivots on a fulcrum "that essentially makes the dragon into a big see-saw," construction manager Jake Rudin '14 said.

"It can lower into a dive and then lift into a takeoff position," co-president Kevin Alexander '14 added.

Meanwhile, a group of about a dozen Phoenix Society volunteers has been assembling the dragon's challenger in the Risley Hall Shops out of wood, wire, PVC pipe, duct tape, chicken wire, plastic foam and fabric.

University Police and Environmental Health and Safety officials have asked that Dragon Day participants and spectators enjoy the festivities in a safe fashion and not engage in behavior that might result in injury to anyone.

The orange, red and yellow phoenix will fly down a zip line from the top of Duffield Hall to a tree near Carpenter Hall on Dragon Day, a stunt aided by Cornell Outdoor Education volunteers. The society is also displaying a large phoenix image on the north face of Duffield.

"It will be awesome to have it flying again," said society treasurer Bennett Wineholt '11. The last airborne phoenix was suspended from a crane while Duffield was under construction, he said.

"For the future, we're looking at aerial robotics," he said. "We don't have that all worked out, but we can dream."

The number of phoenix supporters "really blossoms on the day of" the parade, Wineholt said. In addition to first-year engineers, the society welcomes upperclassmen and students from other colleges, said Kim Adams '11. The Risley Kommittee provided support for materials, and the Student Assembly Finance Commission gave funding for tools, Wineholt said. (The architects fund their annual effort through T-shirt sales.)

Firefighters and campus Environmental Health and Safety personnel will be on hand at the burn site near Sibley Hall when the dragon meets its inevitable end. The architects have spelled out "BURN" in large letters on the windows of their second-floor Rand Hall studio.

The burning itself now follows strict regulations. Since early 2009, the state Department of Environmental Conservation allows open burning of wood and agricultural products only -- limiting the use of materials and which parts of the dragon will burn. The DEC regulation means "no glue, no fasteners," Pellegrino said. What will go up in flames, she said, are "two-by-fours and hay, and a large heart carved out of a tree stump."