Blogs as a teaching tool

What do blogs teach us? Following a productive weekend of researching architectural precedents, Charleston history, horticulture history, and West Ashley climatic and demographic information, Studio V had the chance yesterday to run through all of our findings and compile them into a more cohesive plan for this coming Friday's presentation with the Charleston Parks Conservancy. We [...]

A ZOOM© into Virtual Studio Culture

Anyone that knew an architecture major during college knows that when an architecture student goes to studio, its usually for a very long time. “What is the word can they be doing that makes them stay up till the wee hours of the morning?” you might ask. Well the answer may not surprise you. They [...]

Bikes. Brainstorming. Bridges…

Higgins Pier After an intense day of field study, biking the West Ashley Greenway, the A+CB team heads back to Studio V with a better understanding of the current site conditions along Charleston's premier walking trail.  An outdoor experience and hands-on building projects are the reason a lot of us joined Studio V and now [...]

Almost Ready to Lift

Last night we moved all the rafters to the site and assembled our 48 FOOT beams that run down the center of the structure helping to support the roof and gutter. A couple of key deliveries came yesterday: Our GUTTER and the wire mesh for our vertical garden. Moving forward this week you will see [...]

Color Schemes

As some of our team began to put together the truss system for the roof over the weekend, I started to examine different color schemes that we could possibly use for the shade structure. Earlier in the design phase of our project, our client had mentioned about the possibility of incorporating the colors on the surrounding [...]

Storage & Seating Final Adjustments

Over the past few days, my team member Christian and I have been working extensively on making adjustments to the seating and storage that we have designed. A big part of the adjustments that we have been making addresses how the various board slats will go together. We will be using 1x3.5 slats of lumber [...]

Don’t Forget the Fish: Part II

Alternative title : Shrimp, grit, and determination . Trying to look at the big picture, last semester's Clemson Architecture+communityBUILD (A+cB) program taught me the biggest lesson of the critical path - thinking about the work in the sequence required and working on parts that you will need first to allow other people to continue moving [...]

“Work Smarter, Not Harder”

"Work smarter, not harder."  Sounds like something my father or grandfather would tell me, gently chiding me for making something more complicated than it needs to be and then instructing me on a way to do it better, faster, more accurately - or giving me a better tool to do the job.  That's another phrase [...]

Finding our Rhythm

The second day. We’re past the initial visit to the site, past the meeting with our client, and on to the most exciting and riveting portion of the entire design process: research. I say this with a twinge of sarcasm but also with truth as well. Research is the first step, it reveals opportunities, challenges, [...]

Light at the End of the Tunnel

After working all weekend, we have made a lot of headway on the Vat Shack. Rafters are now up in place and are getting screwed in. The wood paneling for the siding has been cut. We have been making a lot of progress by spending 12 hours a day working! The walls have also been [...]