The past few days have been primarily demolition and construction. This is the first time for everyone in our studio that we are building something we have designed ourselves. We have moved from models, drawings, and the computer into the real physical world.
This experience has been an eye-opening one. Understanding the practicalities of building a physical structure is something that I was brand new to, especially coming from Autocad and going into real life. In Autocad, you see all lines from a plan view and you operate everything with full control with the only problems being what buttons to press. In real life it is not like that. For whatever reason, I did not think that the construction process would be too demanding; on Monday, I discovered otherwise.
Monday was a long day. First we had to craft a jig mechanism that would be used to make the four posts stand in place, supporting each other while sitting in their footing holes. I never thought about that stage as a part the design process even though it seems utterly obvious. Moments like that filled the entire day. My mind was thoroughly getting blown. This process reminded me of the 7th grade was the first time I understood the function of scaffolding. Before that I never really saw it being used or being built, it was just there above sidewalks and such. But in the 7th grade, when they were adding a new wing to my junior high school. But I realized the function of scaffolding as the building that builds the building. Coming full circle with that experience on Monday by actually doing it was something special.