Tension

Once again, not the bad kind. I just finished making a little addition to my building, the first of many. I basically just set up a base for the rest of that side of the building to evolve out of. I based my initial structural member off of something Lancelot Coar showed us in a tech class, where he used bent 2x6's to create curvilinear shapes. His has trusses in them, but I decided that for the purposes of mine, I didn't need trusses, I wanted to exploit that tension.

It's basically just a bow-string, as was pointed out by my studio mates, but it was really strong, and exceptionally light. I liked it, and I decided that I wanted to use it to create some kind of awning.

I liked them so much that I decided to make three of them and then mount them on a fairly simple clamp inside a window. I also switched out the butcher's string for some fishing line, because I didn't like the look of the white string. It seemed exceptionally bulky for something that was meant to be light and airy.

Once I had that all done, I added some cladding to it. I think that it looks really good, and it'll be a great roof for the structure that will grow out of it. I have it on the East side of my model, even though it'll end up on the West side later on, once I get my top piece re-cut.

There are a lot of opportunities for future pieces to tie into this piece, and the actual connections that I used to start the tensioning to the building were really simple, too, and I can keep using that system all over until I really take over the building and envelope it. And I will...

Once again, I am excited. Thank God.