Fitting Finishes

Short update on some of the final works to be carried out on site prior to the main furniture elements being brought on site and fixed.

old paint removed with torch and sander

white trim on door frames, skirting and ceiling

assembled kitchen frame

Refurbishment updates

With all of the services prepared and ready, it is now a matter of rendering and finishing the shell. So, recently the floor and wall tiles have been laid down. In particular, the shower is looking great as it appears as its own small room within a larger room. We had a couple of issues with lining up the tiles on non-straight, non-90 degree walls but we came to a solution. Below you can see a plan showing the different choice of floor tiles for different rooms. The larger,living areas use the herringbone pattern and the narrow, corridor like spaces use the parallel plank arrangements.

Apart from rendering and finishing the shell, we have also been deciding upon the details and finishes of the furniture that is getting made for the flat. This has been an interesting process- rendered images have allowed us to see the general look of the furniture within the room but due to the size of it (wardrobe is 2.6m high or bed is 2.1) we have been deciding upon the finishes and materials by making full scale models of only its details.

 wardrobe handle detail

Next week, the kitchen will be fitted!! Am looking forward to that..

In responce to my last blog

Here is an example of how a ritual gives a site significance. It is also a really nice story...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/world/europe/06rome.html

GRID

The general practise is that the grid is the essential underlying ordering system. In a city plan, the grid allows you to identify relationships between the city’s composite elements. The grid uncovers the form of the city as a geometric composition that is manageable and controllable and that makes sense. The grid flattens all elements including the landscape into a system that has orientation and measurement.

When the orthogonal grid is used as the starting point for organising and drawing space it is a democratic move because it calls for equal distribution – of space, of load and of weight. It’s a political move and proposes a system of efficiency which ultimately reflects the type of society that is foreseen to inhabit the city – one that is manageable to govern and is given boundaries to grow within. As a system of management, parts of the city grid will hence be zoned out and the development of each zone can then be monitored. The value of a point within the grid is then based on its relationship to other points within the grid. A hierarchy begins to grow between the parts that initially had equivalent value. If the grid is initially free of a hierarchy could it be said to be a tool of liberation? Or is it that when confronted with a site of no historical precedence, a vacuum, the grid is the only move that can be made?

Thomas Holme 1624-1695 : Pennsylvania

The grid that features in much of Superstudio’s speculations could be said to be an act to cancel out existing objects. Without objects, there would be no ownership, no point of time from which an object would come into existence so there would be release from a historical continuum. The new city that emerges comprises of the multiplication of the same component; a square from a grid that becomes a cube. The grid can deny objects but there is still a space that people move within so what comes to the forefront are the inhabitant’s actions. If the grid was the tool that could restart everything, then is the origin always in the form of the grid?

 Superstudio 1972 : Supersurface-Life

An alternative starting point for spatial organisation and city planning is the path. Australia contains an extensive system of Songlines – the method that enabled indigenous people to map the continent. A person could navigate the land by repeating the words of a song which described landmarks, important watering holes and landscape phenomena said to be traces from the creator-spirit. The path not only located sites for food and water but also became the visual form of a ritual – that which gives significance to a space that then becomes a place. In contrast to the grid as an organisational tool, a path gives space a sequential and hierarchical order and to follow a path is to re-enact a ritual.

However, in the contemporary city space, infrastructure is both the path’s visual form and the object that facilitates a civilisations survival needs. The differences between the types of ritual spaces that exist now within a city are aesthetic or tribal. A tribal path is that which is defined by an individual or a collective of individuals that, by re-enacting a ritual begin to define territories whose frontiers are not fixed or are defined by an alternative phenomena.

In terms of city planning, the overall benefit of the grid is that it activates a vacuum space or a site without context because it doesn’t need objects to do so. A path on the other hand needs reference markers or objects to call it into existence. Where are the vacuum spaces – sites without context located today and can a path undefined by objects be the starting point for its materialisation? And if the grid stands for a democratic move then what would be the social implications of this move?

Fionnuala Heidenreich May 2010

London Metropolitan MA LAB

Last week the MA LAB was finally completed. After almost 2 years, the design having been updated multiple times and the go ahead obtained to cut the MDF sheets at Met Works; the cut pieces were assembled over two days by a group of MA students. The design was to provide 10 PC work stations for the MA students and ample storage space for models, materials and portfolios. Design limitations included the sole use of friction joints and the lack of fixings to the floor and walls of the room.

collecting the cnc milled panels from MetWorks

laser cut model of initial design

arranging the components and fitting the friction joints together

Smart Geometry Conference 2010

Principle studio attended the Smart Geometry Workshop and Conference in Barcelona to further the exploration into tensioned surfaces. The 'Building Prototypes' workshop served as an opportunity to develop through fabrication, the creative possibilities shared by digital design and the most up to date numerically controlled construction techniques.

The stage within the IAAC building in Barcelona

The tensioned fabric surface and cable net to be stretched across the IAAC hall, was calculated and stressed through Processing and imported in G.C to be developed into flat elements.

surface in G.C and Processing

This revealed to be the trickiest part of the exploration as no accurate method for the description of the fabric's elastic behaviour could be produced. A series of approximations involving the discretization of the mesh geometry were used to create flattened fabric templates

  

Cutting and stitching process

tensioned element within cable net

Despite the availability of a cutting machine, the fragility of the fabric made it impossible to use the cutter, which required for each profile to be hand cut. This and approximations in the unfolding script were perceivable once the 26 fabric tubes were connected to the net frame. For such a reason it was chosen to keep the 3 which appeared to describe the geometry more closely.

26 tubes failing to connect to each other and the supporting net

3 fabric tubes connected to the cable net

Easter break

Open living room (left) and kitchen (right) with plastered walls

25mm thick double glazed 2.2 U-value units

Plastered corridor walls with finished lowered ceiling.

Ceiling trap doors conceal the service points and the boiler

The boiler concealed in ceiling of corridor

The bedroom

Entering main bathroom from corridor

Fittings are ready to accept sanitary ware

The shower and in the lower image showing the pan area with a separating ledge