Morning Folks
The woodshop is slowly but surely becoming our new home. In the past few days, we’ve been getting ready for site work as we wait for our documents to undergo review by the structural engineer. During this time, we’ve been tidying up the shop, designing formwork, and dedicating some hours to ITC. Today, in particular, was focused on ITC, given that we have another project due on Thursday. While I have your attention, I’d like to captivate you with details about my ongoing project.
For this project we were prompted to design either a vase or a planter “box” based off of a plant of our choosing. The only limitations are the size of the vessel, roughly 12 X 9 X 9, or 972 cubic inches as the max. I selected a cactus as an inspiration for my planter. The vessel itself isn’t inspired by any specific cactus, but the ribs of a cactus. Almost 50% of cacti have these vertical ribs that cover the entire surface of the stem. So this idea is translated into my design to create the appearance of this particular component of my plant. The shop drawings are a stab at how I plan to create the formwork and cast the material of my choosing for the final product.
So today I spent much of my time gathering materials I needed for my formwork (plaster part mix, rigid insulation panels, tape, string, and some glue). It’s crucial that I correctly measure and cut the panels at specific lengths/angles where the corners meet, so that the formwork structure creates a hexagonal shape (. Each of the points of this “hexagon” will serve as the edge of each of the ribs for the final product; therefore, resulting in 6 ribs total on the vessel. The final product will be made entirely of timbercrete, a material that I explored heavily with several weeks ago.
Oh and the other half of ITC toured a house on the peninsula that has a pretty cool staircase.