02_Yuan Li (Grace)

Week 2 Studio This is week’s main topic is “Framing”.

With the balsa wood, our group stacked three pieces to make a triangle shape, which is the steadiest shape to make the base.

We used super glue to connect two sticked together to make it a single long stick and used sticky tape to stick the connecting parts, which makes sure they don’t fall apart. Then we glue the long stick with the middle point of one side of the triangle base so it supports the structure and it was also pinned to strengthen the connection.

By repeating the same process again to the other two sides of the triangle, we finished the step and the first level was complete.

Another triangle was glued and pinned on top and the same structural concept is repeated again and keeps building up the frame with more triangle bases and three long sticks holding and connecting the triangles from the middle points.

At the very top of the frame, the three long sticks are sticky taped together to form a pointy top, which can put the spiral on top to add on the height of the building.

With the weight of the spiral and it’s leaning sideways with a slope, the building’s base is not able to hold the whole structure anymore so it was falling. We had to sticky tape the base to the table to make it stand.

We eventually added more balsa wood sticks on top of the spiral and connected them with pin but it was all because we sticked the base with the table otherwise it would not work. This was because the base was too light and was not strong enough to hold all the force; it was also too narrow to be a steady base. Next time, we will extend the base to a much wider range. Triangular shape will still be used because it is a good choice of stable shape.