As this week gets ever closer to the end we get closer to presenting our design to the City. Today in studio we started to think about a few minor changes we might be able to make in the design. The main ones were changing the height of our truss members and switching from a stair/landing type of bridge to more of a ramp structure. The reason for the height adjustments in the truss was to make our structure more ridged. We have known all along that this dome and bridge structure is not going to be rock solid. It’s made out of bamboo and bamboo flexes under certain loads more than conventional construction methods would. However anything we can do to make the bridge not deflect as much will be greatly appreciated by anyone who crosses it. Including myself. Right now our truss in 11 inches high and we are proposing to lengthen that to around 36 inches. After the decision is made on which way to go we will get to work building more full size mock ups like the ones seen previously in this blog. Turning our stairs into a ramp structure does a few things for us. First we all agree that it would look better because the arch would complement the shape of the dome and also we thing it would make our structure more stable by connecting the two trusses more often than the stairs would allow us to. After Pastre meets with the city tomorrow he will let us know if we can forgo stairs and expand on the ramp idea. So basically it all comes down to finding out what we are and aren’t allowed to do and the sooner we know that the sooner we will be able to continue moving forward on this project.. not that we are idling right now. Digital design, model design, and structure experimentation are all in progress as I am writing this so I will leave you with that and we will see tomorrow in what direction this project will go.
If this stands up I don’t think we have a thing to worry about.