Constructing environment logbook

Week One

!

!

Our design is based on a Truss Bond which is a triangular shape as triangle is the most stable shape in nature. For the base we started of with a stretcher bond, as we go along in building 4~5floors, we started to increase as much weight as possible. The reason why we did this is: the bottom bricks are not pressuring hard enough to the carpet, therefore we thought some weights would help in order to make the bricks more attached to the ground. We put two bricks side-ways together in order to form a larger and heavier brick.
 For the entrance, we used a rubber band in order to hold the bricks together to form the upper bit of the door. As continued, we used a pattern which is similar to stretcher bond; the only difference is we let some spaces between each brick. This only happens on the side which is the door located because we didn’t want too much weight on the door.
 For the connection for each side, we placed a brink in between each end of a side in order to keep every layer attached to each other.

!

Week Two

! !

In this studio we are required to build a tower as high as possible by using wooden sticks and glue. Our design is based on a truss structure as it is the most stable structure. Therefore we started of with a basic triangle by using three wooden sticks gluing each ends together. Then we built up the tower by connecting each point of the triangle with a vertically placed wooden stick. From the side, the tower was in a rectangular shape.
 During the process of building upwards, we found out that the wooden sticks at the bottom were starting to bend. Therefore, we added some extra wooden sticks in order to give more support to the vertical wooden sticks.

Moreover, those extra supporting wooden sticks were connected in a triangular angle. As we wanted to use less wooden sticks to gain the most supporting force.
 As we ran out of time, our design ended up as the picture at the right hand side. We also added an extra stick on top just to increase the height (a little bit dodgy though). At the very end, there was a weight test. Our design only supported with a maximum of 2 sheets of A4 paper, which is not a very good result comparing to the other groups.

!

!