Something's Gotta Give

Current stress level: 1.9 Ks (KiloShannons)

Something is terribly wrong here. I don't know what's going on, but nothing seems to be turning out the way I expected, and it's taking ten times as long as it should to turn out badly.

First thing's first, Andy's apartment, which I made a nice drawing of to figure out where all of my framing was going to end up. This thing looks awful. I think that it looks pretty cool in drawing form, but somewhere I've gone wrong and it's not turning into the pretty thing I thought it was going to be. And by pretty, I of course mean industrial and haphazard. It just looks bad right now.

I think part of it is my technique. I had resigned to the restriction that I wasn't going to use any glue to put this thing together, which worked out fine for my roof and floor structure, but when I started to try and maneuver a drill around there to try and put up walls and studs, things got out of hand. First of all, the floor and ceiling took me three or four times as long as they should have. Second, they're just as representative as they would have been if I would have used glue, which might have saved me some time. Third, they're not rigid enough to accurately measure things. I'm constantly cutting things and then realizing that what I just cut was out just a touch because I was pushing the floor down a little when I did it, or I had the piece a little bit slanted.

I think I have to abandon my current method of working, and find a better way, because this project can't happen unless I get my shit together and make it work. Friction connections take for-bloody-ever, and they look awful. Plus, no one in their right mind would ever take a six inch piece of pine and sharpen the end so that they could pound it through two other pieces of wood in order to make a friction connection. It's an apartment, not a 1600's log cabin. I'm switching from the friction connections to glue. I know that's not what I originally said I was going to do, but that's what has to be done. Glue is no more representational than friction connections, and it's way faster.

What I'm going to start doing is making AutoCAD drawings of my spaces and laying out the studs and sheets of plywood, and then I'll build the walls on a desk so that I don't have to worry about wobbly or weird things happening. I will then attach said frames to the building and then glue the plywood sheets over top. Then I will dance. Poorly.

I think the closeness of this deadline just hit me, and I need to get my ass in gear.

The Story So Far - Remix

So, we've once again had to have a chat about my narrative, but this time I think the talk was a lot more interesting. What were the motivations behind this random act of building, who are these people, and why are they building the way they are and where they are? All excellent questions, of course, and in order to answer them, I've written up a little story.

I will update this tomorrow morning when I can upload some images, I'm not sure what's wrong, but I'll work it out then, I think.

In order to write the story, I had to make up names, so I used names from a now defunct TV show that I really like, bonus points if you can guess which one! Anyway, enough blathering, on to the story.

My project’s life begins five years in the future. The Canadian economy is in a recession due to the North America’s recent housing crash, and industry is at its lowest point since pre-war times.

Andy French was a contractor whose business in Winnipeg finally succumbed to the plummeting economy. Not being able to afford his mortgage anymore, he wasn’t resigned to his fate just yet. He went to talk about his situation with his friend Jim Kubek, a Winnipeg artist in a collective that worked (and sometimes lived) in the Watkins building on 90 Annabella in Point Douglas.

While Andy and Jim talked, they came up with the idea that Andy could just live on one of the two floors the artists had rented out for the past few months. Andy was excited about the idea because he still had a lot of leftover materials and tools from his work, so he wouldn’t have t pay anything at all for the initial setup.

The other artists, however, weren’t thrilled about Andy living completely for free while he used their power and water, which has to be paid for on top of the rent. So, in order to get the project off the ground, Andy agrees to become the janitor for the artists in exchange for the permission to start his building.

The first building goes together pretty easily, but Andy and Jim decide that there is one more mutually beneficial thing that can be done on the floor. A bathroom was needed for a long time, and so one is built near enough to Jim’s new place so that he could use it when necessary, but it was also accessible to the artists.

Andy’s new place is good enough for now, but the artists aren’t doing any better than him, and he worries about the stability of his new situation. If the artists somehow can’t make the payments on their floors, then Andy is also out of a home, so he decides to call on an old friend to help him out.

Bill Oakley was also a contractor, but his specialty was solar panels and passive solar energy. His company went under almost a year before Andy’s did, and Andy had given him a few jobs here and there to help keep him afloat. Since people felt that solar energy was too expensive to implement at the time, Bill had loads of solar panels and pre-built solar heaters lying around. Andy knew that Bill had fallen on hard times as well, and was also looking for a cheaper place to live. Bill agreed to help Andy out, and Andy was one step closer to being independent from the Watkins building.

When Bill came to the building, he wanted a spot nearer to the southern elevation, but close enough to Andy’s shelter, so that Bill could use the bathroom, and the two of them could confer on what to build and how. As Bill got set up, he took three windows and covered them with solar panels, enough according to him, to power both of their shelters.

However, there was a major problem with Bill’s plan, and the office workers on the floor that he put his panels on were not pleased with the light being blocked out for them. They complained to the landlord, who, until now, was unaware of Jim, Andy and Bill’s project. The landlord, Ron Wiedlin, was quite angry about what they had done, but Bill rationalized it to him by saying that they could also generate some power for the building and lower the building’s power bills.

Bill still had to move his solar panels to a better spot, and so he moved them to the left side of the south elevation of the building, and he also added a fourth panel to supply power to go back into the grid for the building.

Meanwhile, Jim’s girlfriend Posey Tyler kicked him out for spending so much time with Andy and Bill. Without Posey, Jim had no place to live, either, and so he had no choice but to move in to the outside of the Watkins building like his friends. Andy, Bill and Jim quickly whipped up a new space for Jim to live in, but it was decided that Jim also needed to contribute to the group somehow. Jim had apprenticed with a plumber before he went to university, and so he knew a little about how to cobble together a plumbing system for the group. This plumbing system would incorporate mostly collected rain water.

This poses a lot of problems, but the group worked through it and created a gravity-fed system to give rainwater to the inhabitants. No matter what, though, the group will have to tie into the building’s water supply every now and again.

Now that the three of them have their spaces, the building slows down to a crawl. There isn’t much new construction for a while, but word starts to spread around the area about the three crazy guys who have taken over the edge of a building and are living there for free. As quickly as the word spreads, interest starts to grow, and people start to ask both Ron the landlord and Andy about the possibility of living on the outside of the building with them.

Andy, Jim, Bill, and Ron have a meeting and they all come up with a plan. In order for Ron to allow extra people living on the outside of the building, they have to start paying rent as if they are another floor. Ron needs the extra cash because two of the floors are as yet unoccupied, and an extra possibility of income would be very useful. Andy, Bill, and Jim also come up with some terms for the new tenants of the building:

Each tenant must contribute to the overall operation and building of the exterior space. If a new person comes, that person must be able to contribute in terms of finance, materials, or expertise. Each person is expected to help build other units for other people to move into, as well as providing some of the money, materials, or connections to do so.

Once the agreement is drawn up, everyone shakes on it, and the project moves into phase II.

What is phase II, exactly? Good question, and one that I'll be thinking about as I'm building phase I. I plan to have it thought out and written up by Monday at the latest, so stay tuned.

Suspended Floor

So, I started to suspend a floor plane on my building a couple of days ago to try and get a living space set up on the outside. It started out rather well, with a piece of wood suspended from the awning I had made previously. It started out innocuously enough, but then I had to grow it out a bit by exploring some new connections.

Here is where I started to use friction connections to hold my plates together. Basically, it's just a hole that's slightly less than 1/8" in diameter with a 1/8" dowel, sharpened to a point, punched through either piece of wood. The friction produced is more than enough to hold it all together, and it was even still balanced when I attached it.
When I attached the third piece using the same friction method, the whole thing went out of whack, but it was easily remedied by adding a second tensile support to each side. Now it sits right up against the building, and could be entered via windows on the fourth floor.
After I got it all together, though, I don't know if I'm completely happy with it. Compared to the awning, the floor is really bulky, and I don't know if that's where i want this side of the building to go. I know that I want the eastern side to be a little bulkier and use more compression techniques, but this side is all about being light and airy. I think this would have been more successful of I had suspended three planks and then placed smaller pieces of wood over top of them. I'll have to think about it some more before I get too gung ho and rip it out, but I think that may be the way to go right now.

Photo Studio Phinished

My photo studio is finally done, new table and all. I finished the table a couple of days ago, and then got to work suspending my second light. Originally, I was just going to get another tripod, but tripods are expensive, and I already had clips and string to suspend the light with. It weighs next to nothing, and I'm getting valuable practice hanging and suspending things from existing structural pieces.
The light was a lot harder to suspend than I thought, but it really helped me in my thinking about suspension. It's a really dynamic method of doing things, and if you don't think it out just right, you'll mess up your previous lines and have to re-hang them. A lot.

The toughest part was just getting it to point in the right direction. I had to re-clip the back line three times to get it right, but now that it is, my studio is complete. The only thing I'm missing is the camera attachment for my tripod, but I'm pretty sure it's in 111 somewhere.

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.

Photo Studio Suspended

Not suspended in a temporal way, don't worry. I finally suspended something for the first time in this whole studio year. I suspended something and it felt good.

What did I suspend? The background for my photo studio, which is basically just a white sheet.Since I'm using opportunities in my building to tie in extra structures, I thought I might as well do something similar for my photo studio, so I used some clips, some butcher's string, and the lights in room 111 to hang up my background.
I think it's looking pretty good so far. I'm currently minus one light, and I need to make a new (lower) table, but I'm pretty happy.

In the Woods

During my last crit with Patrick, we ended up scrapping the pod idea. He likened it to trailers, and I don't liken that, but he told me to check out an artist/architect named Lebbeus Woods. The way he works is that he chooses a single point and sort of organically grows some kind of structure off of it without any regard for property lines or the building's own architectural language. The results are extremely cool, and I really think that taking a similar direction would be in my best interests.
This one is my absolute favourite. I think that if I can accomplish anything even close to this, I can consider it a success. I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'll figure it out.


I like this one because it looks like an AT/AT, and I'm a giant nerd... sorry...

I think that this image is more like my starting point for this term, where I was looking at in-between spaces for people to inhabit. This is just an alley where Woods has started playing with the structures to create a new space that exploits the buildings around it.

This is very Waterworld-esque, I think. I think that the use of fabric is really interesting in it, because it's a good, cheap, and effective way to cover a large area and create shade.

I'm actually excited for the first time in a long time, and I think this could get very interesting, very quickly.

Drawings and Details

I did a few drawings while I was working out my pods and details for my project during my model building.

This was what I used to determine which side I wanted each person to live on, based on my previous post about the narrative. While I was coming up with that idea, I was making this drawing, so that I could have a better idea of what context my building was in.
This is me starting to think about what kind of space is required for the workshop pod. This pod is essential because the people who live here are going to have to build things on their own, and they'll need a space that can sustain that type of activity. I don't like the curving brace on the outside of the pod, but I still haven't figured out a connection that I do like.

This is a plan for a "living pod". I'm not entirely sure how large I'll have to make them, but 8x12 seems to be pretty good, if a little tight. I'm trying to keep them as small as possible in order to keep them efficient. Less volume means less heating and cooling required.

This is a detail for a cockamamey (sp?) lift mechanism. I like the connections and gearing system, but I think this will be pretty tough to design properly. It's critical that the building have a few elevators, though, maybe not at this exact scale, but it does need them for vertical movement and access.

Model Makery Redux

So, after my talk with Patrick on Monday, I was much dismayed to find out that I was going to have to re-do my entire model. I won't lie, it was a huge kick in the teeth, and I was bitter, but I'm better now. Now my substrate model is pretty much half done, which is a lot better than I can say for my previous one, so I guess things are going OK.

The first thing I had to deal with in this new model was how to connect my walls together without glueing them together. I thought I had achieved this with a small connection I had cooked up. This is the connection with a slight modification on it. Basically, the piece on the left goes through the first sheet, then through the second, leacing a small hook on the end, like this:That hook would then be fastened by the piece on the right hand side, like this:
The problem was that this didn't quite work because the tolerances of the MDF are just slightly off. If it was truly 1/8th of an inch, the friction between the outside (bottom) of this piece and the front piece would have been enough to fasten the outside piece into place, but since it was loose, the outside pieces could quite easily fall off, and that was a problem.

It was easily fixed with a small piece of black card paper which you can see fastened to the bottom of that top piece. With those pieces worked out, the rest of the model started coming together really quickly, and it's already looking pretty good.
This is how it's looking right now, which I'm actually pretty happy with, considering I had to re-do the whole joint system in a day. I laser cut again on Monday, which means the whole thing will be together, and then I can start getting the pods cut out and put on, and then I can start creating all the wacky connections and interactions between them, which is when the real fun will begin.

The Story So Far

Since it was brought to my attention that my narrative for my project was in need of a lot of work, I decided that it would be one of my mian focuses for Friday's sort-of-deadline. I've been thinking about it quite a bit anyway, but I decided to put pen to paper this afternoon after I got my model together and wrote out my inentions for how the project would go.

To start my narrative, I had to develop a few conditions that I had to abide by for the project, such as how many people would inhabit the space and their methodology regarding the site. I decided to have four different people inhabit the outside of the building, each with a different area of expertise. These four people would work together to create a functioning building on the fringe of another building.

In order to live on the outside of a building, there were four main problems I have to address:

• Structure

• How the pods and spaces are actually resting on the building and interacting with each other

• Electricity

• How am I going to provide power to each person to accomodate their needs?

• Heating and Cooling How can I keep people comfortable without resorting to on-the-grid techniques?

• Water

• How do I ensure these people don't die or reek to high heaven?

There is a nice coincidence with all of this, of course, in that I have four people, four problems, and four sides of a building. The question is, how can I make a plan so that all four people can actually get going?

The first step is to choose which sides each person is going to inhabit. To do this, I had to look at site conditions to figure out who would benefit the most in which area.

• West Side

• The West side would be occupied by the structural specialist, and this is also the jumping point for the whole project. The reason I chose this side for the structural specialist is that there is a parking lot directly below this side. That way, a truck could come in and deliver materials to the person on the west side, who could use a shop to create the rest of the structures for the building.
• This is a really important side as well, because the size of that shop will determine the maximum size of any piece that can be used for the rest of the project

• South Side
• The south side is the side that is exposed to the maximum amount of light on the building, and this makes it the perfect spot to gather solar energy in many different forms. This is where the electrical specialist will reside, and it will be his or her job to harvest, store, and distribute the energy that can be obtained from the south facade.

• North Side
• The North side is the least enviable spot to be in for this project, and this is where the heating/cooling specialist will have to reside. The reason I chose to put this person back here is that I wanted to create a computer controlled system for operating the heating and cooling devices around the building, and since this will probably require a few computer terminals, it means that this person is naturally going to have a couple of heat sources to rely on when it gets cold out.
• This is the toughest side of the building to live on, and will require the person on it to have a lot of mobility, and this person will most likely have to be the biggest draw on electrical resources due to its shaded facade, meaning that things like solar cookers and radiators will be much tougher to employ.

• East Side
• The only side left is the East side, and this is where our plumbing/water specialist will have to live. This is a tricky thing to stick to, as the water will have to be gathered and stored in many different spots about the building, but it is the only side left to work with. The plumbing system will more than likely be gravity fed, but there may be some kind of pump involved for things like showers and waste removal, but this is all preliminary.

So that's where everyone will live and what everyone will be doing on the building. I think that the premise for this exterior inhabitation will be that these four hackers will rent out a single floor on the building to start their first platform, the workshop, and when they can start to exist on the outside free from the rest of the building's systems, they can simply stop renting that floor and then move on to living on the outside of the building exclusively. That's my hope, and I think that's my project.

It's All Been Done Before...

Nigel sent me an e-mail a little while ago about something called the Backpack House. Basically, the Backpack House is a small, welded steel box that you can add to your apartment that's accessible through the window. You basically just bolt it to the side of the building and then use chains to hang attach it higher up. The idea is similar to mine, but different in a few ways. First of all, it's really just meant to be an extension outside the building, like a small room to have a studio in or something like that, it's not actually meant to be lived in on a regular basis like I intend mine to. Also, the chains at the top of the box preclude any other boxes being put up, which is kind of a shame, because it would be really cool to mount a bunch of different looking boxes all over your building, but this isn't the case, unfortunately.I think they look interesting, but I don't know if I'd want one hanging out of my apartment building. They're nice, but they're nice like a pug is cute, I think...

Model Makery

Lately I've been focused on making my substrate model for studio. Its been going pretty well, minus a few goofs, and I only have one side of it left to cut, which is pretty exciting.This is a picture of one of the connections. The other side simply slots into this piece and then they can't move. It's been working fairly well, but I am experiencing a few slight problems with it, but it seems quite fixable.
Here's a couple shots of the connection in action.





This is the part where I screwed up. I can't actually believe I did this, and I talked about it in my presentation, but it still bears repeating. Basically, when I got the first couple of pieces of the North facade cut, I realized that they were about an eighth of an inch too long, and the front wouldn't fit together unless I changed it. So in order to change it, I did what any logical person would do, I MADE IT BIGGER. Of course, this was completely idiotic and set me back pretty badly, because now each piece was a whole quarter of an inch too long, which really sucked. I've since rectified the problem, but my ego is still experiencing some pain from the bruising.
Here it is in its current state. I don't have the back so I have to use front pieces on the back as well, limiting me to just a few floors at a time. It's encouraging to see it all coming together, though, and I think I should be able to be finished the substrate model in only a few days, and then I can really go to town on this thing.