Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Concretin'


So for our Details class [ Construction Tech II] we are developing / experimenting with material joints. We have to choose two materials and play with methods to join them or use their inherent properties to get them to interact with one another. Eventually we will be producing full Environmental Impact Analyses for our materials and working out a fully formed joint which could be elaborated into some form of a building system [structure, enclosure, etc.] I chose to work with Concrete [well - at this point, just quickcrete] and engineered wood - MDF specifically. I spent waaaaaay too much time doing the formwork yesterday and pretty much ran out time to actually pour the thing correctly so the reinforcement and the mix are all sorts of messed up. But the larger idea of the two materials lacing together to form a screen is here, and I'll be refining the joint through several more iterations. I need to develop a nice way to separate the two materials yet let them intersect, since, of course, concrete can't be in actual contact with the wood.

Anyway, heres a few photos. The idea is to use the concrete to support the wood slatting by lacing it through cavities in the wood. Sort of using a window shade as the jumping off point and seeing if I can translate that into concrete and lumber.




And this is Solveig, making the world's grossest pizza - formed from cardboard embedded in latex.

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