Journal entry 1

Week 1- Constructing Environments Journal entry As our first task in tutorial we were asked to create a structure as high as possible using small blocks, the highest tower won. The catch to this was that each tower had to fit a relatively large object, in this case a plastic toy animal. The toy had to be able to enter and exit the structure using a doorway.

As a group we decided to try something out of the ordanary and go with a triangular structure that would be built up by interloching the blocks at each corner. We felt this would be a good shape to escevate a doorway out of as it had a strong weight distribution and strurdy structure.

Using the triangle was a bit risky as we were unsure on how well the structure would hold and react to the removal of blocks, however in the end it turned out to be a good choice.

The blocks were layered one on top of the other in a conventional brick laying pattern allowing the weight to be trasfered down along the

structure to the base.

Our grouop was assigned the method of excevation to create the doorway in our building. The toy elephant needed to be able to freely move in and out of the building without touching the walls.

In order to experiment with the structure we chose to escevate the doorway from the corner of the bulding as apose to one of the walls, this works suprisingly well as the structure held its form and shape.

Seeing as our tower was not the tallest we decided we would look at how much escevation the tower could take before collapsing seeing as the removal of the doorway worksed so well.

Glen George 638042

TESTING STRUCTURE To test the structure we first decided to try and build in a roof using as pyramid system, this involved layering the blocks on top of each other but moving them close and closer together. This again was a test which we were unsure of its outcome, unfortunately the roof collapsed and due to lack of structural stability and support.

Once the roof had caved we decided to move onto testing the overall structural stability by removing as many blocks as possible and seeing how long the building could retain its upright structrue. Doing this was a relatively slow and carelful prossess and we were quite supprised at how high the escavation got before it finally collapsed. It was extremely intersting to test out how the structure worked and how each section of it interacted with the next creating a strong and stable structure.

Glen George 638042

OTHER METHODS It was interesting to see how different students chose to construct their towers when given the same instructions. Circular, triangular, square and also random assortments were all used as the base shapes for the structures.

The circular structure was the highest tower it was very strurdy and well constructed, however it used a lot more bricks than the other structures relaive to its size.

This structure was created through the more random assortment of blocks to add stability and structure to the tower. Although not the tallest tower its uses minimal blocks in relation to its hight so it was quite an effective and conservative approach.

The squere structure was a very effective and strong method of building, but like the circular model a very large amount of blocks was requited to construct the tower. Another point of interest was the time it takes to build such a dense structure with so many walls. Although this structre could easily have been the highest it wasnt due to the lack of time given to lay the amount of bricks needed.

Glen George 638042