Seeing Architectural Project

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Design Resolution Term 2 Birmingham School of Architecture BA (Hons) Architecture Year 3 2020

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un_seeing

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seeing

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long_sighted

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short_sighted

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for_seeing

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seeing

Un_Seeing.

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[in-situ]ationist

With the rapid changes in the urban context of Bir-

mingham, architects and designers tend to forget about the complexity of the changes and resulted in a design that is harsh and brutal to the surrounding context. In this design project, we are encouraged to be a social actionist or an [in-situ]ationist. The meaning of being an [in-situ]ationist is to contribute to the field of architecture by interacting design and social criticism as ‘creative drivers’. [in-situ]ationist as a manifesto in this project, is to create and instigates rebellious design collaboration at different levels. We aim to produce a design from either a new space or change the meaning of the existing ones. Along the process of designing a space with meaning and being an [in-situ]ationist, we have to be able to be sensitive of the surrounding context of a site by examining the crossing between social protest, urban environments and designers. To then use it as a base of our project either in the display, exchange and consumption of radical insitu-actionism.

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Un_Seeing From the experiments and findings in the previous book, it can be summarised through the outcome in the act of Un_ Seeing which are the Field Diagram and Conceptual Forces.

Field Diagram is the concept of a space field forces that are extracted from a study of an element of an urban context or site. In this project, field diagram is an outcome from the study of seeing conceptual forces through an urban element, Stairs within a Terrain Vague to achieve the outcome of a new meaning of the site that relates and anchored closely within one of its urban contexts.

The Conceptual Form act as a visualiser of the field force to be used as a base form to move towards a more architectural project. To summarise, the Conceptual Form it is extracted from the Field Diagram through shadows which then manipulated to be a three-dimensional form.

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Seeing As mentioned, Unseeing is an act to study and understand the conceptual field of vision in an urban context as a way of finding a field diagram and conceptual form. In this book, we will see how to shift this conceptual anchor to be an architectural project that will be the result of being an insituationist at a Terrain Vague.

This seeing journey will be about finding an architectural solution to the given brief and hypothesis through the un-

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seeing studies from the previous book.

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Seeing.

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Architectural Project As this project will be moving towards an architectural project proposal, the given brief and requirements have to be taken into consideration in solving the social issue through the design concept that runs alongside to reach an architectural proposal that gives answers to an urban problem.

Brief The given brief of this architectural proposal is to create a Halfway House and a Community Centre.

Community Centre Community Centre is the main core brief of this architectural proposal. This building aims to provide a new community centre in Digbeth for the interest of social recreation and leisure time to improve social health and well-being.

Also to create a bridge to increase the acceptance rate between different group of people to help one another and to open up opportunities of networking for the Halfway House residents to the local community.

Halfway House Halfway House is a residential building proposal that is providing an architectural need for those who typically seen as socially invisible and neglected architecturally. In this specific program, the users are an ex-convicted society that are architecturally struggling. The aim of this building to design a space that helps to create the gap between detention and society by providing personalised guidance as well as space and time for the inmates to get used to being back in the society.

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Program To be able to provide a good architectural space that fits within the context and follows a function of needed space, a specific program has to be thoroughly thoughts to achieve architectural proposal that solves an urban issue. One way to understand the requirements of a needed space is to study the program and its users.

As mentioned the users of the Halfway House and the Community Centre are ex-convicted to help them to regenerate back into society.

These individuals importantly the one that has been living for many years in Prison has gone through architectural spaces that are built purposedly to punish their existence. Through the limited natural sunlight, overcrowded space and also a low to almost none openings that allow seeing to the outside world.

Which through architectural space could lead to a huge mentality and psychological damage towards every individual, but as human, a species that could adapt towards their given environment and these individuals arrived in the point where they are used to that living conditions. In these individuals, release day where there is no limitation of seeing, natural light and space, most common reaction is that these ex-convicts will not be able to adapt back into the society which may lead towards well-being and mental health issues.

Within the program of the Halfway House, there is a need for gradual stages that lead its users to slowly released towards freedom.

Supported from the research done by Hillary Cottam on how to help the individual in finding opportunities for neglected people, the Halfway House Program is built.

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Halfway House Stage 1: To help individual to find their interist field or skill they wanted to achieve.

Halfway House Stage 2: Create a small group of 3 users with the same interest field and to allow them to create connections, network and brain storming ideas of what kind of workshop or classes they could attend to achieve a new set of skill.

Halfway House Stage 3: Combine small groups into another group with different field of interest to allows innovation and creatives ideas to run through.

Halfway House Stage 4: Each group will start to built their own projects and attend workshops and classes within the Community Centre.

Halfway House Stage 5: Each group will present their projects and innovation towards the public community.

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Design Requirement From the gradual of freedom program, the space needed within the proposal has to be able to fit within the needed of flexible space. From constructions, spatial rotation and circulation have to fit within the program.

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The Gradual Seeing

From the Brief Development and

Users Analysis, the concept of Seeing will be brought back into the proposal to allows the project to be strongly anchored towards an architectural concept. Through the understanding of Gradual of Freedom and the space requirement what the project need is to have a systematic concept to control each space’s atmospheric state. Within the building, each individual levels have to be designed accordingly to the level of freedom required which will gradually expose the users to freedom.

These levels of freedom and the act of manipulating space can be controlled with the concept of Seeing. To allows obstruction of Seeing within the proposed building.

There are ways to manipulate spaces which are through Openings, Opacity, Materiality and Light which will be further analysed throughout the book.

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Light

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Jan Gehl Life Between Buildings by Jan Gehl In this book, Jan Gehl describes the relationship between building and its only users, human. Human has different senses such as Seeing, Touch, Smell, Hearing, and Taste.

In his words about Seeing are mainly the understanding of the field of vision in different scales such as urban and social scale. Where the field of vision has its limitation where many different variables could obstruct and changes in how users might experience a space.

A dimension of urban space also dramatically will affect the opportunities of seeing other people so to have an appropriate dimension of space will have a good correspond to people’s social field of vision.

From this book, I anchored my understanding of Seeing and the variables that I might need to manipulate to achieve the desired space condition.

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Long_Sight.

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Long_Sight The surrounding views of them within the context of Digbeth will affect the proposal’s performance because in the act of Seeing there are many factors that will obstruct the field of vision to the obstruct the atmosphere of Seeing. So it is very important to analyse the surrounding Views of the Terrain Vague.

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1: 5000

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Figure Ground Diagram

Private Building Public Building Terrain Vague

1: 2000

Nolli Diagram

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17m

15m

16m

8m 7.6m

Building Height

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Site Boundary

1: 1250

Boundaries and Building Height

1: 2000

Sun Path Diagram

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Short_Sight.

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Short_Sight Short_Sight is to see the proposal in a meso scale to understand not only the Seeing but also bringing Unseeing outcomes such as the field diagram and conceptual form.

In this part of the process, the field diagram brought back again to started to see the impact of it towards the Terrain Vague.

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Field Diagram Rotation To be able to see the effect of the field diagram in different directions, the field diagram is rotated in every 90o angle to understand its field forces towards North, East, South, West directions.

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Conceptual Form With the conceptual form, the study on the scale of it within the urban context, help to see how each different scale could affect the urban context as a whole.

The medium scale of the conceptual for is the most appropriate within the site context which will be taken into further exploration.

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Conceptual Form and Field Diagram To merge and understand the connection between the field diagram and conceptual for, they are placed on the same diagram which reveals a deeper field force between the two-element that could lead to greater conceptual findings.

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View I

View II

Hierarchy of Views From both field diagram and conceptual form, it leads to intersections to happened within each conceptual element which will be the different level Views.

The three Viewpoints will be the anchor of the project where it frames each individual level of the proposal key views.

View I will be located on the Ground Floor View II will be located on the First Floor View III will be located on the Second Floor View IV will be the Freedom of Seeing

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View III

View III

View I View II

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Seeing Diagram

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Hierarchy of Views within Digbeth 41.

View I

View II

View III 42.

Conceptual Form Each of the conceptual form’s plates will represent each level of Views.

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View III

View II

View I

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PM1

PM2

PM3

Conceptual Form Matrix

PM4

With the anchor Views of the project has been set, the building form could start to develop. Each of the Project Modifications (PM) are emancipated according to the Hierarchy of View that allows the proposal to clearly adapted from it.

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PM5

PM2_A

PM2_B

PM2_C

PM3_A

PM3_B

PM3_C

PM2_D

PM3_D

PM2_E

PM3_E

PM3_F

PM3_G

PM3_H

PM3_I

PM3_J

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PM2_B The massing exploration then moved into a more detailed and brought in the meso scale of understanding the potential space’s circulation and the Hierarchy of Seeing. Which also started to look at the surrounding context of Digbeth and how it may affect Seeing.

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PM3_D With PM3_D can be seen as the most appropriate building massing which can be seen from floor plan exploration, the shape could lead to interesting key shots within each level of the spaces.

PM3_D will be taken into further exploration.

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Massing to Building The project is massively influenced by Zaha Hadid Phaeno Centre in Germany. The problem with the current massing is that it quite a huge ad massive building on the site. In Phaeno Centre building to reduce the massive massing appearance of the building is to elevate the building and have it above the air.

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Community Centre Spatial Analysis Albert Schweitzer Community Centre is located in France with a similar aim and brief towards my project, to understand the spatial strategy on how to separate a public and private space a spatial analysis diagram is made to show a clear public, private and circulation system within the building.

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Public Space Circulation Private Space

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For_Seeing

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For_Seeing To be able to control space, it can be done through the control of its Openings to the outer side of the space, Opacity where typically uses glass as a material. Lights, which can be manipulated through natural which relay on the annual sun angle or artificially which is an internal installation of the building. Lastly through materiality and how the uses of material reflect lights that coming inside the space.

To be able to control all of the variables of Seeing, a Device that allows obstruction of Seeing from Inside to the Outside field of vision can be further explored.

These For_Seeing device what will control all Openings, Opacity, Light, and Materiality reflective towards space.

One precedent that uses the same principles of obstructing Seeing is the Gallery of La Tallera by Freda Escobedo. Which as seen on the image it obstructs just enough to still allow for Seeing to be taken place and it also manipulating direct sunlight at the same time act as louvres to cast shadows to prevent overheating and glare. This is a great strategy to be used within the project.

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For_Seeing Development From the rotated field diagram, a matrix of possible device shape starts to be taken place. Some of the shapes allow a high level of Seeing and some are long On the next page, an experiment of some of the shape is been done to understand the effect of the shape on how it manipulates atmosphere within the space.

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For_Seeing Development

For_Seeing type A, B and C is one thing they have in common is the high level of Seeing where it does not obstruct the field of vision by much. The users will experience a high level of direct sunlight

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For_Seeing

direction.

None of these types of For_Seeing device will be further developed.

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A_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

A_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_MATTE

A_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

A_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_MATTE

B_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

B_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_MATTE

B_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

B_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_MATTE

C_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

C_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_MATTE

C_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

C_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_MATTE

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For_Seeing Development

Within type D and F of the For_Seeing device, the problem lays on the high glare issue that the user will face within the space. Glare happened when there is an extreme contrast that exhilarates the visual experience. Without doubt type D and F successfully show a case of obstructing Seeing at a high rate but it will then lead to a bigger problem which is glare.

On the other hand, For_Seeing type E seem to have the ability to manipulate it into a better For_Seeing system.

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D_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

D_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

D_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_MATTE

D_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_MATTE

E_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_MATTE

E_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

E_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_MATTE

E_WEST_DEC_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

F_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

F_SOUTH_DEC_1200_WHITE_MATTE

F_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_GLOSSY

F_SOUTH_JUNE_1200_WHITE_MATTE

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For_Seeing Materiality The materiality of the for_seeing device is explored in 3 different types of material, such as timber, glass and concrete.

Timber Timber not only it’s a sustainable material, but the aesthetic of them it has the ability to changes the whole experience of as a building through its material. In term of this project, I manage to make models of the potential shapes of the for_seeing device and to see how timber as a building material could work.

One noticeable thing is the way that, timber cast shadows from a source of light to the internal space is not an aesthetic of how the project and concept flow.

Within Digbeth, the industrial urban context is very strong and timber is not the best material to be used.

Glass Through glass as a for_seeing material, is to take advantage of the ability in the level of opacity it can be varied. A mock-up piece of the device shows that glass capable to provide a different level of seeing with a high opacity that reaches 0 percentage of seeing and to the medium opacity level that allows light and silhouette to be seen from inside the building. One disadvantage of glass is the high-cost production to have different patterns for the gradual level of seeing through the project.

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For_Seeing Materiality Concrete

Concrete is a very common building material

within Digbeth’s industrial urban context and aesthetically is something that would fit within the project and concept. From one of the precedents of how concrete used as a facade material in a systematical grid is EDU Headquarters in Columbia, which shows a great precedent of how concrete would cast shadows and obstruct seeing which fits into the project and concept.

EDU Headquarter, Columbia.

This precedent shows how the concrete fa-

cade is being produced and pre-casted outside the site. The first step is to create the moulding plastic that will hold the shape of the wanted concrete facade. Then the concrete will be poured alongside the metal grid that reinforced the whole precast facade.

And when it arrived on site, the pre-cast facade then will be installed and joint with the desired system.

The whole construction process within this precedent helps to understand the construction sequence would go through and that it is possible to achieve the aesthetic and the concept of the obstruction in seeing.

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Plaster Model. Model made by Sadiyah Tijani

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For_Seeing Rotation From For_Seeing Matrix, type E was the one to be taken into the further investigation to its shape that directly applied and experimented to the device. For the device to fit within the concept Gradual Seeing a set of rule, rotation and opening are made to control the atmosphere within the space.

For each set of For_Seeing device, one shape of it will be open and it goes until the full exposure of the For_Seeing.

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For_Seeing Results 71.

VIEW4

VIEW3

VIEW2

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VIEW1

Seeing

From the developed building form and For_

Seeing device, a further investigation on the device’s implication has to be done to understand that every variables within the urban and site context carefully calculated to make sure the space within the building fit with the desired level of Seeing.

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View II

View I

View II

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Daylight Every different level of Views it

faces different directions which allow it the space within the building to have a different atmospheric effect towards the key element that brings huge

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impact which is the sun path.

Due to the different rotation, sun

path as a variable becomes an important key to be taken into consideration since it may lead

to different solar gain within the building and at the same time to still be able to achieve the desired level of seeing and if sometimes the space lack of sunlight, some modification should be made.

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One example is View I. which its

facade faces the West part of the building which will have a high

solar gain during summer solstice which a good louvre system might be needed to prevent

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overheating. On the other hand, during the winter solstice, the facade lacks solar gain through the season and resulted in the build-

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ing to be lacking natural light.

To be taken into consideration towards the depth of the build-

ing which is fairly high, some modification has to be made. It resulted in View 1 to have a big-

ger opening than the other level of Views.

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Seeing

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Seeing From the developed building form and For_Seeing device, a further investigation on the device’s implication has to be done to understand that every variable within the urban and site context carefully calculated to make sure the space within the building fit with the desired level of Seeing.

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Drawing Title: Location Plan

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:1000

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Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Drawing Title: Site Plan, Digbeth

Project Title: Seeing

Date: 21 May 2020

Scale: 1:1000

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Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Drawing Title: Roof Plan

Project Title: Seeing

Date: 21 May 2020

Scale: 1:400

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Drawing Title: Ground Floor Plan

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

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Drawing Title: First Floor Plan

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

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Drawing Title: Second Floor Plan

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

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Drawing Title: Third Floor Plan

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

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Drawing Title: East Elevation and Section

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

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Drawing Title: North Elevation Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Drawing Title: North Section Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Title: Seeing

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

Scale: 1:200

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Drawing Title: East Elevation

Date: 21 May 2020

Project Lead: Dea Arimbawa

Project Title: Seeing

Scale: 1:200

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1. For_Seeing Concrete Panel 2. Aluminum Embedded Anchor System Front Part 3. Bolt 4. Aluminum Embedded Anchor System Back Part 5. Bolt 6. Concrete Slab

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1. For_Seeing Concrete Device 2. Metal Panel Grid 3. Aluminum Embedded Anchor System 4. Curtain Wall 5. Concrete Slab

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