The Big Day

Assembly and setting up:

We had to get to the studio for 8am in order to load the van for 8.30am!

Once the van arrived at the Moor, we unloaded the van and started to assemble our structure. It actually didn't take that long to set it up, I would say approxiamately around 10-15 minutes.

Attention to detail:

It was great to see that all our efforts in paying attention to detail payed off and it was very satisfying to see the all our hard work finally standing!

Interaction:

Many members of the public stopped as they were walking past and were intrigued by what we were doing.

It was refreshing to speak to different people and I feel that our structure definitely initiated conversation.

Lots of people were genuinely impressed with  our pendulum concept, although quite a few did mention that upon interaction, they expected it to produce a sound. 

People were also impressed with how the majority of our structure was constructed from reclaimed materials, and how we planned to recycle these materials.

The Review:

At 1.30pm the reviews took place, where students, tutors and the public were able to participate.

The tutors commented on the attention to detail that our structure had shown, as well as the innovative way we had used reclaimed materials.

However they did suggest that we could have explored our material a bit more, as well as looking at sound (just as members of the public had said).

Disassembly:

At 3pm it was time to call it a day (after 7 hours which went past surprisingly fast).

Just as quick and easy as it was to assemble, our structure took 10 minutes to disassemble.

All the metal that we had sourced from the scrap yard and the skip, were bagged and returned back to the scrap yard.

1 Day to Go

So today is the day before the big day.

We managed to finish constructing our structure, including the frame.

Today really consisted of:

Filing the ends of each partitioning and and safe guarding them

Tightening the bolts that secured the lead bars

Finishing off the frame (cutting, drilling, filing) and putting it together

 

 

Assembling the structure to see if it would carry all the weight and work how we wanted it to

Exhibition Poster

Breakthrough

So today we made a breakthrough with our frame idea.

The idea is that we make four stands to hold the main bar.

For the frame structure we'll be using copper piping (which our material sourcers got from the scrap yard).

We also started to think about health and safety and how we could make the ends of the partitionings safer. So we filed them down and folded some edges inwards.

However, we're still thinking of placing a guard around the top, to perhaps make it even more safe.

By the end of the day we had placed on the lead weights, bolts and nuts onto all the partitionings and experimented with how many weights were needed on each partitioning depending on their height. 

(Although this is likely to be altered once we actually have all the partitionings on to the frame)

Making progress

So last Friday, was the first day that the two separate teams (A3 and D3) really merged as one to get the making of our installation underway!

Meet the new team:

Project Manager: Sam and Ian
Project Reporters: Dami and Gabriella
Project Makers: Joel and Angelos
Material Sourcers: Hadiya, Corinda and Jordan
Site Analysis: Ruth, Aatisha and Sanjeev
Health and Safety: Shamiq and Beth


So a few things happened on Friday

1. We made a rough plan for action!

2. Our material sourcers (Hadiya, Corina and Jordan) managed to get some metal from the scrap dealers.   One of the most useful things they came back with were lead bars, which have holes in them, making them perfect to be used as weights, as opposed to the washers.

3. We have cut the partitionings to size relating to the sounds of the hustle and bustle at the Moor that we recorded. 

4. We really started to think about what our frame would be and what kind of bar we would use that could carry the partitionings and weights, but so far we're still trying to come up with a viable idea/ solution!

Design for Disassembly

Today we had a workshop, which looked at the importance of having disassembly in mind throughout the design process and how we manage waste at the end of a building/ a piece of architecture's life cycle.

By the end of the workshop we came up with 5 principles for disassembly for our installation.

1. Avoid drilling and screwing in favour of friction and slotting where possible.
2. Sell our materials onwards after we have finished with them e.g. sell for scrap metal
3. Only join like metals
4. Negotiate to borrow materials as opposed to buying them
5. Utilise modular design.

Design Competition

As every two groups were assigned one material, a design competition was held (14th Feb) to see which group's idea should be completed for the final installation.

Our team won the design competition!

So.... that means our idea gets to be made for the installation!

Our tabletop presentation for the design competition

Our idea

Our idea is uses a  pendulum mechanism, only lots of them on a horizontal bar and we're looking to use the frame partitionings as part of our design.

We came up with idea to vary the heights of the partitionings and these would correspond to sound levels at the Moor ( which we will record).

The Mechanism

How it works is that they will be weights at the bottom between every two frame partitionings/ rectangle metal pieces (or whatever you want to call it), and this will stop them from swinging all the way round.

At the moment we're thinking that the swinging motion will be started by someone giving one frame partitioning a push, and this would trigger the others. This would work by us threading all the frame partitionings together by a single wire at the bottom.

Summary of the week

Here is my first post, summarising the first week of our P6 project - matter reality.

In this project, first year architecture students (at Sheffield University) have been tasked with designing 'a place for conversation' using an assigned material.

The project will end with a public installation and exhibition at The Moor in Sheffield city centre on Friday 24th February.

Hopefully this blog will be able to give you further insight into the making and thought process behind our design ideas.

Our group was assigned metal.

Meet Team A3

Project Manager: Sam

Project Maker: Joel 

Site Analysis: Ruth

Site Analysis: Aatisha

Health and Safety: Shamiq

Material Sourcing: Hadiya

Project Reporter: Dami (Me)

Tuesday 7th February

We were introduced to the project.

Immediately after our group went out to source materials.

We were pleased with the above find - partitioning frames, as all the widths and sizing were pretty much consistent and this put us off on a good foot.

We started experimenting with how we could join different elements together.

Friday 10th February

More experimentation...

We started to focus on the idea of a pulley system and so we experimented with how we could make pivots and moments.

R2 Research Project

Trip to Halifax: Elland Steel Structures
http://www.ellandsteel.com/index.htm

We had the amazing opportunity to learn about the design, manufacture, treatment and erection of steel structures. Also, we were shown some ways they maximise the value of engineering solutions and achieve cost effectiveness. It was really interesting to find out more about the architects' role in the whole process of construction.

R2 Research Project presentation

Generally based on our trip to Halifax, we made quite a good presentation about metal. The two METAL-groups made a poster each. They looked really nice.