Tuesday 24th & Wednesday 25th February.

With only a few days before our structure has to be constructed in Barnsley, we decided that by thursday we need it to be partially assembled. This would allow us to test that it would work without any major problems, but it would also mean that it could be taken apart again (neccessary for transport reasons) without causing any unneccessary weakness to the structure.

Friday 20th February

As a group we thought it was important that we stick to the idea of making something beautiful out of rubbish, so we set out trying to find (and steal!) used pieces of wood large enough to make the main squares from. We mostly found old palettes from outside shops etc. We set about demolishing the palettes, but because it was mostly low quality wood we had to deconstruct it carefully in fear of the wood splitting. In some instances the wood was damp because it had been found outside. We contemplated the idea of buying new wood, but were scared that we would end up making rubbish out of something beautiful! As a group we spent a while discussing dimensions for the structure, including the heights of the seats, the sizes of the main squares, and the lengths of wood needed.

Wednesday 18th & Thursday 19th February.

We joined groups with the timber group from Park studio. They had already developed and tested a different way of joining timber in the absense of glue. As a group we decided to use the squares from their archway design and incorporate them into our initial idea of moving seats. The F4 group were relieved to leave the idea of a central axis behind, as it had already caused too many headaches! We decided to use pegging technology to hold the wood together, and this was tested in the workshop.

Tuesday 16th Febuary

Intense Day of Design

We discussed the most important aspects of our design that we felt we needed to promote. We concluded that the selling feature of our design was the concept of interactive and moving seats. Therefore we produced a concept sheet showing the different ways the chairs could be used and a working model to show our idea for the working mechanisms. Our design was chosen on the premise that we would amalgamate our idea with the other timber group’s.

Friday 13th Febuary

We proposed our idea for the first time in our tutorial with Mark and Matt. They mostly raised issues that we were already aware of (i.e. the structutural considersations of the seat), and came up with different ways for us to overcome them. They reminded us that the seat needed to appear solid and “seat-like” to the general public, who would otherwise approach it with caution. We decided that the leg on the end of the seats only needed to slide rather than lift up, which we had initially thought. We also began considering what would happen at the end of the pole, and how could we make the structure appear both simple yet elegant.

Wednesday 11th Febuary

Overnight we’d all had a chance to consider the potentials of wood as a building material. We discussed the benefit of having a flexible material to build with, much unlike glass or brick. Furthermore, this led us to the idea of making something more flexible and playful in it’s nature. How can we engage the user with our structure? We soon decided the idea of moveable components would both be possible considering the properties of wood, and interesting for the public to interact with. We came up with the possibility of a central axis, from which seats were held, and could move around. This would allow and encourage conversation, as people could move seats to suit themselves.

Tuesday 10th Febuary.

We started of by assigning members of the group to key roles:

Saule + Rob – Makers.

Helen – Material Sourcer.

Andrew – Project Manager.

Nathalie – Project Reporter.

Alice – Consultant Engineer.

 

We then started considering our material, wood. More specifically, what can we do with wood? And where can we source it from? We considered Hendersons building, certain floors of the Arts Tower, building sites, skips…etc.