materials project - a place for conversation

le roi est mort, vive le roi

coffeedubs — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:25:10 +0000

As P5 finished we needed to mark somehow this rite of passage. So, we welcomed P6 by making Banoffee Pie aaaand caramel sauce.

Yes, I know it’s totally irrelevant to any of the projects.

Still…

‘

Review day

coffeedubs — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:16:49 +0000

Friday was review day in Barnsely. It started with a healthy run to get train tickets and then to actually catch the train, followed by arrival in the beautiful Barnsley and unloading the modules and turf from the van. Everyone started taking off the moulds and cutting the turf, while Rachel, Lecky and I went to The Civic to put up the exhibition sheets.

From 12:30 onwards every group presented their sheets(ours were the only landscape ones, in a sea of portrait A1s…whops), followed by reviews from 13:30. After we finished loading the van we went to a well-deserved pint(or tea), to say bye-bye Barnsley around 16:30. We got back, unloaded the van, recycled the soil and obviously, went for another pint.

This project required loads of hard-work but I think that everyone had fun in the process. We will definitely miss working in a big group, and as a sad fact, this is our last group project as E3… .

P.s.: We should work in more projects with the engineers. They don’t bite.

Show must go on:)

Thursday updates

coffeedubs — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:31:09 +0000

The past 3 days were probably some of the most exhausting days of the first year. We replaced sleep with coffee, social activities with mixing mud, while ‘going shopping’ was a translation for ‘I’m going to Wickes to get more top soil’. Today(Thursday) we have put the final layer and then loaded the modules in the van, along with the turf.

After weeks of tutorials were the problem of lifting and moving the modules was discussed over and over again, Occam’s razor proved its relevance once again.

So, how do you move heavy objects? Simple answer: you lift them. No rope systems, no platforms, no ramps.

We have also finished the two presentation sheets for tomorrow’s exhibition, but unfortunately only one was printed today, the other one waiting to be picked up tomorrow morning.

I would keep on writing, but there’s a possibility of falling asleep on my laptop in the next 5,4,3,2,1….zsx234$#%^TRFDXavr345678o

Claytastrophe

coffeedubs — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:02:00 +0000

Tuesday started off by watering the second hand turf(please stay green till Friday!), finishing the moulds and the additional supports for them and making the earthen mixture. The problem of transporting the modules has been discussed and partly solved, the sun was (not) shining and the birds were (probably) singing outside when we faced a major problem.

The name of the iceberg that sunk our muddy Titanic was ‘lack-of-clay’. It appeared for the first time on the radar just before noon, and it was perfectly visible around 14:44 pm. We googled possible brick factories that would have dry clay as a waste product but everyone was just too busy, we tried calling pottery shops and contacting the brick suppliers for the brick groups. We also tried to arrange a delivery from Womersley’s but we had just missed the delivery van and the next possible delivery would be Thursday and we got so desperate that we even tried to contact the architectural department from Sheffield Hallam. The universe seemed to conspire against us, so that’s why I am using the verb ‘try’ instead of ‘succeed’.

The boys went on an Endcliffe trip to try and get subsoil with clay from one of the building sites(fingers crossed) and a worst case scenario includes using a mix of baking powder and flour instead of clay.

It’s 16:05 pm, our moulds are almost half full and we’ve got 48 hours until we have to load our finished modules into the van that will take them to Barnsley. Impossible is nothing, ay?

Monday morning or earth surprises

coffeedubs — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:47:53 +0000

Before lectures we checked the state of our tester and we were surprised to see that the end product was quite crisp and that we had two layers coloured differently:

Over the weekend some of us had cut the shapes of the moulds so Monday afternoon we started screwing and taping the moulds together so we were able to inaugurate the mixing of the first official layer by Monday evening.

At that time we were planning on spending the rest of the week by making the mixture, ramming another layer of mud and then going to the pub while the layer dried. We had no idea that everything was about to change…

Friday tutorials and back to the drawing board…

coffeedubs — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:33:36 +0000

At the time I am writing this, the concept of an interactive wall that rests on the existing brick walls and flower bed on the site is long gone unfortunately. Health and safety reasons do not allow us to place a 300 kg installation on a wall from where it could easily fall and even kill a child.

So after a long group brainstorming session, we came up with an array of different ideas…

We finally settled on a revised version of our original concept. We decided to create a group of stratified elements that would be placed in a crescent shape. The spaces between the individual bricks would direct people’s lines of vision with turf triangles on the ground to emphasise these. The reduced height of the modules meant that people would need to bend down to look through them, so we came up with the idea to make them double as a seating area.

We then continued to source materials and building formwork to begin making our bricks!

Steaming the wood

Second hand turf

We made a test and left it to dry in the girls toilets over the weekend…

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Barnsley field trip

coffeedubs — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:32:37 +0000

Thursday we went on a trip to Barnsley and surveyed our site…

Design competition

coffeedubs — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:31:30 +0000

Tuesday was an intense day. After the PBJ lecture and an introduction to the design competition, we started working. Many ideas were considered, but in the end our main idea was a wall of mud and aggregate, cast into a timber mould, using the rammed earth and cob walling technique. The wall was supposed to have different circular holes(or conic holes) to enable the users to see and speak through them, making the wall an interactive installation.

Presenting our ideas

And let’s not forget the clapometer – incredibly intelligent device that was used to judge the popularity of designs…

Material experiments

coffeedubs — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:59:46 +0000

We have been playing around with different mixtures last Friday, to see what would be the best one to use for P5.

We left our bricks to dry in the girls’ toilet because it’s usually the warmest room and therefore, our tutorial was held in the toilet.

R2 presentation

coffeedubs — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:44:02 +0000

to be updated