This past Monday we hit the ground running doing some background research and precedent studies, trying to better understand the project itself, the culture of the area, and our limitations and opportunities. As part of this research, a group of us decided to take a trip down 17 N in northern Mount Pleasant to study some of the various sweetgrass basket stands along the road. We were excited to find that, while all of the stands had a similar feel, there were also a variety of sizes, designs, and materials being used.
My area of research over the past few days has involved temporary foundation systems, opportunities surrounding movable structures, material limitations, etc. Because of this, when looking at the stands along 17, I was especially interested in seeing how these stands were constructed, what materials were being used, and especially how they were anchored into the ground. We also made a stop by Boone Hall Farm’s farmers market and aside you can see an image of how their temporary tent structure was being anchored.
The plate and post shown resembles a lot of the details I have noticed in my research. However, most of the details I have found use anchors in the holes in the plate to hold the structure into the ground and stabilize it. This structure took a different approach. There was a fabric that created the tent like structure and the cables and stakes that were uses to hold the fabric in place, were also used as stabilization devices. This is just yet another option that we could use depending on what materials we decide on.
Some of my specific areas of research have been in mobile home temporary supports and temporary event structures. Each of these uses similar methods which you can see below, and it, along with the tent detail I observed on our site visit up 17, has started to spark some ideas for how we can tackle our design. More on that to come…..
