Today, the studio made major progress. We’ve officially finished up most of the remaining shop work! The columns, truss, cross bracing, and rafters are all complete, and over half of the purlins have been sanded and stained. We even loaded up the first truckload of pieces to head to the site. All left to do [...]
Tag: Construction
Half-Scale Model Complete & Shop Drawings Underway
This week, studio made significant progress on the Plymouth Park pavilion. Today, we completed the half-scale model of the truss system, letting us do a test run of construction to learn from and better understand how the structure comes together. This not only helped us refine our construction process, but also prepared us for the [...]
Enjoying the Charleston Sun
The studio prioritized time outdoors this weekend... at the worksite! Working Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, our team spent many hours on site this weekend building the Old Towne Creek Donor Wall. On Sunday, some students went back to the site to finish the rafters and purlins while three of us went to the [...]
Site Visit!
We’ve officially started transporting materials to our site! With both beams cut, assembled, stained, and finished, it took the whole studio to get them loaded onto the truck and hauled them out for placement. Over the past few weeks, we’ve gained valuable experience in the shop, and now we’re ready to dive into the next [...]
Shop Days!
We are well into the process of shop construction for the Old Towne Creek Donor Wall! This has been a great experience, learning our way around the shop in the cigar factory and the making and usage of shop drawings. I have enjoyed seeing how things worked and didn't work in the shop drawings that [...]
Fine-Tuning Our Design: Meeting with the Structural Engineer
Yesterday marked a huge milestone for our studio. We had the opportunity to meet with a highly respected structural engineer, diving deep into the mechanics of our truss and cross-bracing systems. Since structure is the backbone of our project, this meeting was very important in refining and elevating our design. We began by reviewing column [...]
Steel & Stone
This week marked a significant milestone in our community build project: we completed the foundation work! This step is essential in any construction project, setting the groundwork—quite literally—for everything that will be built on top. Here’s a look at the process we followed and what it took to bring this foundation to life. 1. Excavation [...]
Hearts of Steel
Our community build project has been coming together piece by piece, and it’s thrilling to see real, tangible progress as we prefabricate various structural elements like columns and rafters. This hands-on experience has been packed with challenges, but it’s also been incredibly rewarding to learn so many new skills along the way. One of the [...]
It’s all in the Formwork
Today, we completed one of the most challenging parts of our build, the formwork! We have a total of 8 forms that will mold our concrete "feet" for wooden columns to then support the structure. One of the most difficult parts of building the formwork was to have flush edges and strength, and doing so [...]
Everything Everywhere All at Once
To wrap up this week, we’ve been working in the shop most nights on cutting down material for formwork then assembling them. The process of cutting the material down and getting them ready to assemble started off rough but we now have a system in place to make things go more smoothly. For our ITC [...]