Week 2 Journal Wenjie Cai
In week 2 studio session, we construct the same thing as the last week, building a tower and make it as high as possible, but with different materials. We used wood bricks and clay bricks last week. This week we used balsa woods, glue and needle. First of all, we planned about the structure of our tower. As we were going to use glue, we need to have clear ideas about the tower structure first so that we can avoid the mistakes and reconstruction. We made the base of the tower as a triangle as we think that this shape makes the tower stands with the least materials (figure 1). On the base, we built 3 posts so that the tower can be built further on its height (figure 2).
figure 1: The base (triangle) (author)
figure 2: basic structure of the tower (author) 2 WEEK 2 JOURNAL
figure 3: the 3 levels base of the tower (author) After building 3 levels of the tower in the same structure as figure 3 shown, we tried to find another method that can make our tower higher. During this, we found that the materials that we prepared make it harder for us to build a high tower because our woods are short. Therefore, we decided to stick our woods together to make it long. We used both glue and adhesive tape in this step because the areas of their contact surface are too small (figure 4). Glue and adhesive tape made them have stronger connection (figure 5).
figure 4: The contact surface (author)
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figure 5: Connected woods (author) After sticking these woods together, we did not used glue to connect them with the base; we used needles instead as it is more convenient for us to. (figure 6).
figure 6: Use of needles (Author) After connecting all the materials with the base, the top of the tower still swayed so we connect these three high ‘posts’ together to avoid it (figure 7).
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figure 7: The top of the three posts (Author) Finished this step, our construction was almost completed, so we decided to add something that makes it more like a real building. We added a cross on it to make it like a church and also make it a bit higher. Figure 8 and 9 are the final of our tower.
figure 8: Cross on the building (Author)
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figure 9: Complete (Author)
Our tower is not as high as the other groups and it is not really balance so it was easily fall and lie down. However, it is stable that it never fall apart even when it lie down. This is because of the stable joints of the woods. This further proves my conclusion of last weeks’ journal, bonding is very important for construction. I believe that if we make our base wider or make it heavier, it would become more stable that it would not fall. Also, the type of the building material is very important for constructing. The materials that our group prepared are too short to make our tower high. However, it is wider and thicker than other groups’ so it would not break or fall apart easily (figure 8).
figure 8: Comparison of different groups’ materials (author) 6 WEEK 2 JOURNAL