Constructing environment Week 1 studio journal Jianpeng deng, 657598 The highlight of this studio section is the group work assignment, which is to divide into groups (I was in a group with 2 ladies), building a so-‐called “ta” with small wooden bricks. I am sorry that I did not take any photos of the “ta” we built. The shape we chose for the “ta” base, we tended to have a strong base, so we put the bricks horizontally and left gaps in between in order to achieve material efficiency. As shown as image 1.
Image 1 Hence, we came up with an idea of making it a triangle base, and it worked pretty well at the beginning, as it was being built higher and higher, there was a side which I took charge was unable for further progress, then we had to leave it aside. Unfortunately, due to this failed side, we could not build the “ta” high, this is because there was a limitation for the other two sides to put the bricks on, and also because we did not have enough time. Triangle base is shown as follow.
After all the three groups had done with the “ta”, the tutor then illustrated how the structure of the “ta” contributed to the stableness. The interesting part is that in order to test the stability and explain how the system worked, he started taking away the bricks from the bottom. For our group’s “ta”, it was stable at the base as we could see there were many bricks taken out, which showed that the forces were diverted to other areas instead of the bricks below. This also tells us that we could build a building with less material in order to achieve some purposes, for example, making it artistic. The other problem with the “ta” was the collapsing, when there were the same forces applied on its three sides, the failed side could not bear the force and fell, whereas the other two still looked bearable. Further, we have also learnt that it is possible to build it up to 2 meters or even higher as long as the structure of the “ta” was built properly. Under the observation with a 2-‐meter high “ta”, the base of which was wide and the bricks closely stacked on each other; however, when it was built higher, the structure looked narrower and finally became something like a cone shape, and the bricks did not look as closely stacked as the bottom ones. As this is my first semester as well as the first studio class for this subject, I have to apologize that I did not fully understand what to do, that is why I could not post any photos of the working.