As you know our studio is working on finishing up the porch portion of the Crop Stop, as well as getting the cabinetry for the Solar D up and running. In order to complete the Crop Stop a few things are happening, first up in Greenville some extra site excavation is being coordinated in order to complete the last bay of the decking/ stairs. Second, we have a few people working on creating the handrails which have been mostly fabricated and now just need to be cleaned up and painted. And last we are going to have a five man team go up to Greenville this weekend and install the last bay of decking and install the hand rails and the build phase for this semester will be completed. However that will not be the end of the Crop Stop project. We will be handing off the project to next semester students who will pick up where we left off on the kitchen phase of the project. We will be going up to present the Solar D cabinetry mockup and drawings with the main Solar D group up in Clemson and the on the following day go to Greenville to present the crop stop and introduce the project to the students who will be working on it next semester. The amount of collaboration not only between the students here in Studio V but also between Student in the Solar D studio, and other outside contributors has been intense to say the least. We have seen both great collaboration and poor collaboration, which I feel gives all of us a very realistic view of what commonly happens outside of the academic world of architecture, AKA “the real world”. this semester we are being exposed to two different situations of project collaboration. The cross studio communication that will happen with the crop stop will be Studio V now handing off a project for the next group to work on where as the Solar D project was handed off to us, Giving us a perspective from both sides of the fence. Hopefully we will learn from the strengths, and shortcomings of the communications with Solar D team, and apply them to our communications with the Next studio V in order to make the transition as smooth and painless as possible.
An update on the Solar D cabinetry, the Mock up design has been finished and turned into construction drawings that will be sent too a third party that will make the pieces for us. Today The order for all out materials, hardware, etc. was placed, so hopefully our next big move on this project will be actually building to mock up. Our very intense, fast, and meticulous begging push designing and drawing of the cabinetry will make the construction of them much easier making the the initial struggles well worth it. That has been a strong lesson in design as well, letting the end process of construction heavily influence the design from the very beginning which in the end has the potential to make a better product, as well as everyones lives easier.
We finished up today with most of studio finishing up the construction documents for Solar D cabinetry. Nick will and I went shopping for the rest of class! We picked up all the electrical, plumbing, sink, etc. from Lowe’s and then went to the shop and cleaned up the posts of the handrails to be ready for painting in the morning. Its all moving so fast and all at the same time, it almost feels like we are getting the hang of this!
Can’t wait to get some photos of our Solar D work up on here, but all good things come to those who wait. Here are some photos from the past few days, enjoy!
