Materiality has been a major focus for Studio V. The materials used and the manner they are utilized form the backbone for whole Bluesphere kiosk.
This weekend was spent with hours of work on developing a material count and trips to beautiful Kiawah Island and Folly Beach. Before you get too excited I should note those beautiful areas where seen from the inside of dumpsters, wood piles, and a big white cargo van; quite glamorous right? Our efforts in these areas led to the collection of more lumber for our structure and to an educational realization (mostly on my part) to the importance of wearing gloves while rummaging through a construction dumpster. While the blood was drying and the wound being stitched-up, the rest of the studio began to work on starting to take the step from design to construction.
After a brief discussion outside under the great shade trees outside the Old City Jail, the studio broke into small groups to pursue the transition from design to reality. The five groups worked on:
Signage: This group explored the material to be expressed on the Signage within the structure. They also have set up an appointment to pick up donated Plexiglas to etch this information on tomorrow.
Steel Structural Support: The supports and foundation for this structure were explored today. These studies will be used to determine the size of the supports needed to support the structure physically. This group will meet on Wednesday with a structural engineer to hash out the size and compression needed to support our structure.
Material Search Party: This small group (aka Becca Cook) continued to light up the phone and emails in order to find us more dumpsters to dig through and more wood to remove nails from.
Structural Design Group: A few students also worked on the layout of the walls and pilasters for the kiosk. This group focused on the notching for sturdiness and the angles of the walls in order to get a firm number on the amount of materials needed to complete this project.
Board Cleaners: John Lindenmuth and I worked on cleaning the giant pile of lumber in order to use it for our structure. This included removing the thousands of nails from the boards and cleaning up the edges of the wood. A special note to be made is that since the beginning of the project we have already filled a three-gallon bucket with all the nails we have pulled!
These five groups worked extremely hard to push forward towards this busy week. Today really set momentum towards getting a test wall erected in the Jailyard by this weekend. Keep checking back to see our progress towards this goal. Now I am off to work on other classes I have neglected because of the work put into this project.