Week 11 started off with the imminent threat of people coming to visit our class to see what we have done, which is always a good way of getting us going. We had several things to prepare, like a presentation of all our work so far (it had been at least 2 weeks since the last presentation) and the actual test rig to make it look presentable and like a lot of work. The people visiting were the couple Narja and Nick from the firm of PlusCreate and the designers of TS1, Geoff Clark who is lecturing 5th years, Lisa and Harry from Youth Futures and ??? and students from Student Works. As people started arriving we all suddenly got shy and nervous and we kept flitting around trying to avoid talking to anyone. Thankfully we had managed to patch together a presentation of our work, right from the beginning with the posters we made for Youth Futures and the Castle, to slides drawn by Bek for the buildability presentation and also some photos of us building our structures out of cardboard and the test rig. For some reason no one wanted to be the presenter again, so I stepped up and said a few words on what we had been doing, with may have seemed hasty and rushed, but if anyone actually realised how out of character it is for me to even contemplate stepping up to be spokesperson, then they would understand. Anyway, we got a bit of feedback from people at the time, like Geoff who said something like; “during that you were obviously thinking about redeemability” (or some word like that) and I think we/I shrugged and said “if you say so”, which may not have given the best impression. Also when Nick was mentioning the embodied energy of different materials they may have got a varied impression of Matt who, when talking about re-use of wood, said: “and then you can burn it!”. Shoving their preconceptions aside I thought it best if we moved straight onto the demonstration of the test rig and how adaptable and flexible we had made it through our investigations. Initially we decided to show how it slid back and forth and created different length spaces in between, but then we decided to go the whole hog and change the height in the space. Again, with a common goal and a few hammers our whole crew were mobilised in trying to lift the top halves of the frames and re-bolting them, which took a bit of hammer smashing and bolt-forcing but in the end was done. Because we hadn’t actually raised the whole structure like that before it was very exiting for the people watching, but also very much for us as well. It could’ve fallen on any of our heads at any time, but we managed to pin it up and that became another classic Castle moment.
Amid the hearty sniggers from our audience there were also a lot of impressed comments from people about what we have achieved through creating this adaptable, flexible thing. Narja, Nick and Geoff had some really nice comments about the test rig and what it was doing so far. Geoff particularly had a lot of suggestions about openings, apertures and swinging/sliding things, which we figured was the Troppo influence shining through, but the PlusCreate guru’s had some interesting comments from the industrial design angle and how we had manipulated the timber material to our advantage. The main conversations were about mechanisms and how we would go about moving a structure like the test rig up and down. This highlighted the paradigm of what we were actually doing, because the test rig in itself was not a full embodiment of what The Castle will actually become and look like, but people cant help seeing that it has a step down in the floor where it slides and that it has about 10 people needed to change its height, so obviously that’s why talk centred around block and tackle systems, wind-up/triple slide, weather shedding and flashings and things. It was good to hear though that an analytical or intuitive viewpoint could be taken in the process from here and it depends on the actual foci of The Castle manifestations.
Narja and Nick then gave a presentation on their object, TS1. Transformational Space One, apart from the interesting name, explored a lot of things that The Castle will never attempt to do, but also only identifies itself in its most urbane manifestation as a sleep-out, rather than a self-contained living unit that The Castle is/will be. TS1 was started as what sounded like a hobby project that then grew out of word of mouth and an increased sense of demand even when it hadn’t been designed. The demountable, flat pack room was a meld of Narja and Nick’s hair and make-up, sculpture and industrial design experiences, and looked the showy specky thing that would fit in on a cat-walk or glitzy, glamour-puss events. The process of design that they had been through had so many iterations that were so very similar to ours, i felt that either we were very good, or they weren’t, but then maybe everyone has the same ideas and throws out all the interesting, unrealistic ones to focus on something more realistic and achievable. There was a particular ease of assemble that seemed to be lacking from how they described early morning wakeups and 6 hour putting together stints, as well as some things that are apparently sealed with silicon each time they are demounted, but overall it was classy and really good for what its is presently being used for, the cat-walks, events, building shows and publicity. I’m not sure it really felt like home though. The market would be there I’m sure for things that are attractive and beautiful objects to enjoy, or have as a sleep-out for kids that want something more, but for someone that has no permanent home, it seemed less home, than show home. The brief that the couple had decided on was very good, a transportable structure that had to be carried by two people with no individual elements over 40kg, which made the 3.5 x 3.5m a simple item materially. The couple also had done some very detailed research into materials for their healthy-ness to the environment as well as the user, and they also had lots of precedents to share as well.
After lunch we split into groups with Narja, Nick and Geoff and had what were to be different types of discussions of their area of interest, but overall leaning towards what the conclusion to The Castle would be. As Richard pointed out at the end, all the parallel discussions were on a very similar topic; the test rig and how the actions it does now could influence the final design. Our group talked particularly about the use of colour within the scheme to create mood, lighting and interest, the use of the trailer as the prime structure for the Castle, and also how the decks around the sides of the castle could create a reveal that would hide the transportable nature of the Castle once it was on site. Geoff’s group were particularly interesting in the micro planning of the Castle (and it is very micro planning at this scale) and they discussed the exterior form and how it could be customised with a selection of parts, the use of the apertures to open the Castle for light, ventilation as well as access, and also the internal arrangement of the mezzanine inside the roof structure. The other group touched on methods of structure use and expression within the building and what could be used from this point. Richard asked if we all talked about the test rig as an actually design product just because its there and we can see it, or because its completely brilliant and that’s what we want it to be? I think that as an idea the finishing of that particular test rig idea is brilliant in what it explores, but that there could be many other alternate paths in the planning stages that we could have taken. Its still a pretty good design though and having made it, it does make it hard to leave the idea of how we made the structure for the test rig work, mainly because its our first exploration using such materials at such a humanistic scale, it’s an important step in all our design worlds. We decided that next week we would re-explore and try and create an understanding from all the comments and diagrams gleaned from today’s talk, to further the Castle and also come to some kind of relevant conclusion.
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