Week 1 Constructing Environment Journal
The first week of the studio is mainly contained a brief of the subject and an overview of the assignments throughout the semester. The topic of this week is about ‘Compression’. In construction, compression is about the balanced pushing force of the material or a structure. It is also explained with the example of arch; it can be propped up with the two sides because compression is being applied. The force of the arch is transfer to the two sides and supported by the ground. The second half of the studio is used for an activity of building tower in groups by using the wooden block. There is no specific rules in building it, however, it should be stable enough especially for the base in order to build a high tower. Our group chose to build a square base with gaps between blocks. As it grows higher, the shape starts to vary and soon it changes to a circular shape. Lastly, as the base is stably built, we started to change the way of building it so that it can build faster with lesser materials. As a result, the tower can be divided into three stages.
Stage 1 - Square base
Stage 2 – the shape is turning into circular shape
The final outlook of the tower At the end of the studio, we are asked to break the wall by removing the blocks of the tower to test its stability. The tower is then changed and it is supported by four ‘legs’ at the base part. Accidentally, one of the ‘legs’ is broken. However, the tower is stable enough and it did not collapse.
Linking back the activity to the theory of compression, the tower will not collapse even blocks are removed because forces are being transferred to the sides and supported by the ground. Nevertheless, this theory could only be applied if the base is stably built to support the weight of the building.