So it’s getting to that point in the project where the rubber meets the road. Up to this point, we’ve thought up, tested and drawn many concepts that we hope to integrate into our project, and now its time to get down to the nitty-gritty of the design for the Pulse Dome structure on the fountain in Marion Square.
This past weekend the class took the drawings for the design and began to create some important parts of the structure, particularly the truss design for the walkway that spans the fountain. We created two trusses using bamboo as our material, and lashed them together with 3 mm cord and rubber recycled from bicycle tires.
Today we met with John Moore, a structural engineer here in Charleston, to get some educated guidance in some of the more crucial aspects in our design. He helped us with many things including providing us with information to make the design stable, strong, and safe, as possible. His help is extremely important to us, in the design in particular, but also as students learning trade.
The class learned a lot from John Moore’s visit to the shop. He brought up new concepts for us to review, as well as improvements to the old ones. We hope that he can help us learn as much as we can as this project moves on to full scale construction. Now that the Giants have won the World Series, he should have some more free time anyway.
