theCASTLE: Week 10

Week 10 is slightly less memorable, partly because the elated atmosphere of the previous week’s achievement flattened out a lot, but also because I was quite sick, which gives me reason to think that I was quite quite sick because I cannot really remember what happened. The plan of action in the morning of week 10 was again peppered with questions of product choice and us making decisions about what the Castle (and/or the rig) was to be made of so we could order this and that, which immediately rubbed everyone up the wrong way because we had thought we had left those questions, which had been the same for a number of weeks, behind and had decided that we had a reasonable goal for the semester, and that didn’t involve us specifying things. It just seemed to be an inability of our group to make decisions like that which we knew would affect the complete outcome of the Castle. It was also perhaps our personal views on material use in today’s society; who cares if there is a budget for spending that we haven’t spent yet, it has not been in the nature of this particular Castle class to want to use up good materials for things that we are unsure of. This and what also seemed like a constant quest for new adjustable, flexible systems for the cladding or the roof or this or that. Although we didn’t want to choose materials, we did want to really understand and make some decisions about the size and arrangement of the interior of the Castle rig, and this, frustratingly we thought, often got lost in looking for a flexible system. Looking for flexibility too much meant that we had an even more wishy washy test rig than the week before where we had actually made some decisions and stuck to our guns. Even so, we did manage to fix up the rig with a proper plywood floor and put a plywood roof on top and staple cardboard to the ends for walls. Connor was also making a small toilet/shower pod that could sit inside the space and show the area needed for those kinds of services. A lot of the day was spent in buying some steel channel for sliding wall panels that in a later week were taken off anyway and used on the roof for a similar purpose. I guess if we had initially known at the start of the semester what was expected for the overall outcome of The Castle project, we wouldn’t have had days were we got so frustrated with stuff we couldn’t explain, it wasn’t god or particularly bad, but the different approaches were not what we thought, and all it was, was different.

theCASTLE: Week 9

Week 9 started slowly, partly because we all turn up in dribs and drabs, but also because those people that missed the mid-week meeting had to have the reasoning behind the madness explained and understood before we could actually build the rig. I got chosen as spokesperson and tried to describe this new iteration we were about to embark on. A two part, sliding structure made from four U shapes which are individually composed of six pieces of timber and with two parts braced together with plywood sheet and sliding along runners. No wonder some members of the class had absolutely no idea of what we were making until it finally started getting put together before their eyes. Like all group events in the Castle we again had a diplomatically decided on goal that we were all mobilised towards (whether we knew what that was or not) and we were suddenly all working and moving timber and cutting and bolting things. We had been asked early on to divide into groups to tackle different parts such as the floor structure and the sliding tracks as well as the main body of the rig, but this constant division into smaller parts I think created a lot of the confusion and frustration within the group, being told to either be here or be there and have an outcome for the thing you were supposed to be doing. There was little flexibility to change from a topic that didn’t stimulate, so instead of getting caught in the claptrap I made sure I was part of the group making the frames, which was probably a good idea because there were only really a few of us who had been there for all discussions (and hence had already discussed why the frames needed to overlap a certain way, etc.).







The frames came in two parts, an upper U frame which had 2 x 1650mm arms and a 2850mm top plate, that over lapped by 90mm as well as the 135mm join of the timber width, and a bottom U frame, which had 2 x 2250mm arms and a 2850mm bottom place with the same overlap. These frames were screwed together with two screws in each corner to try and make them strong enough. Matt and Mitch then led a drilling drive where they drilled holes for the adjustable height connection, and while that went on Bek, Hannah and I learnt how to use the hand-held Fesco circular saw to cut the plywood bracing pieces. We got confused a few times in putting the frames together when we accidentally put together two bottom U parts and then wondered why the next frame was so much smaller. We also had to make sure that the joins in the U parts and the two-part frame as a whole had all the timber pieces lined up in two planes and so this involved turning some pieces around to make sure we weren’t putting undue stress on the material and for visual quality. I didn’t pay too much attention to what the other groups we doing but by the afternoon we realised we had two sturdy portal framed halves of the Castle and a floor plate and some running tracks. I helped out cutting some plywood to fit as the floor and by late afternoon we, amazingly, and by pure determination and enjoyment in what we were doing, had the beautifully simple, and pure skeleton of the test rig. There was an amazing atmosphere of achievement and celebration, verging on hysterics as we tried to heave one of the 3.6m cardboard walls on top to understand the enclosure of space that we had created, only to have the wall teeter on the edge of the 3m high rig. The feeling of the group was on a tremendous high, we were so so so happy and proud of the entity that we had made. Sitting around in the afternoon sun on the test rig of raw, quite ordinary materials, we all just laughed and enjoyed the sight of the rig’s runners being soaped up and sliding back and forward. What it actually meant to have made something like this was that we could demonstrate the fact that we were not there to make decisions on what the Castle would completely be about, but to demonstrate what we thought and understood on the topic of small spaces. Being inside the skeleton Castle really showed you what the implications are of planning decisions that you make every day, such as room heights, things I know my understanding of has particularly been consolidated through the test rig Castle explorations. The making of the test rig was a pure, classic moment of the Castle and one of elation when it actually all worked the way we had come up with.

theCASTLE: Week 8

Week 8 of the Castle was started with a discussion of the design that we could put forward to make a 1:1 iteration of our ideas in cardboard form. This discussion highlighted the fact that we spent a lot of time in diplomatic, circuitous talks with everybody not wanting to put forward any particular idea too strongly in case someone else thought that they were being bossy. It might in fact have made some parts of the design process easier if we did have a bossy so-and-so who wanted things to be done a certain way, because we were mainly left with a group of people worried to put their views on the table in case it was actually decided on. I think that that is what happened at the end of this particular discussion, where someone suggested that we should put forward the paper project with the mezzanine from the week before and suddenly the consensus was arrived at and the vague suggestion was taken for a democratic decision! But, once the decision was made all our forces were mobilised into making the 600 x 1200mm panels and hot gluing them together to make 3.6 x 3.6m walls for the design. Bek, Gabby, Hannah and a few others worked on the parameters for the floor plan and height, which were decided on to allow enough headroom for someone sitting up in bed on a mezzanine above a shower and toilet cubicle downstairs. The putting together of the panels on the floor meant that when we actually had them ready, the picking them up and putting them next to each other meant that everybody had a momentous revelation that 3.6 metres was really, REALLY tall! No one really thought about it too much when the height was decided on, but in person and actually looking up at and standing next to a 3.6m wall was very interesting for our design, and probably extremely informative for all our design processes!






Fairly quickly it was decided that the enormous monstrosity that had been created needed to be cut down somewhat, so the height of the model was lowered to 3m high and we put some cardboard and polycarbonate plastic on the top to try and gauge what it felt like to be inside. It was very interesting being in and around the model, particularly because of the way that we had placed it, it was facing the afternoon sun, which I think made people think that the space we created was very adequate for size because it was a small, but light and airy space, which would have been small, dark and imposing perhaps if it had been facing the other way. This particular revelation of size and shape was the impetus for us deciding on a direction for the Castle, and it wasn’t particularly the design we had started the model with, with the mezzanine level above and things (but which we liked and wanted to continue later on), but how we would design a test rig and what the test rig would test. After lunch we thrashed this matter out. Again, long-winding and circuitous discussion, but pretty important. So we thought that the test rig should test dimensions. One model at 1:1 was all very well, but we needed to be able to test different heights to know what functions we would actually want in what size. It would also have to test lengths as well, whether we wanted long and thin or short and squat. The only thing that was relatively decided on was the width because the trailer-able size for transportable items on Tasmanian roads is 2.4m before it becomes over size and needs all the bells and whistles. In discussion the idea was put forward for a set of frames like a concertina that held the structure up, perhaps a series of portal frames. Another jumped in and suggested why don’t the portal frames be made of two U shapes that can slide up and down to test height. Another jumped in and suggested that if two frames were braced together to make two separate units then the space between them could be defined by how far apart they were pulled. From this set of decisions (and a whole lot of umms, ahhhs and pregnant pauses) we came up with the idea of the test rig.






We had another mid-week meeting to discuss the actual construction of the test rig and the two part portal idea we had proposed. This was to take into account the materials that we had available (135 x 35 x (round about) 4.5m lengths). Matt did some calculations and I proposed a bolting system (which in fact was very similar to one we had decided to use for our emergency shelter in first year) that would enable the 4.5m lengths to be cut and bolted together with some overlap at the corner joints and with a minimum overlap of the two U pieces of 600mm without wasting any timber. Overall, a very productive set of discussions that left those who attended (often not the full throng) with a clear indication of what the next step of serious exploration, with serious materials, would be.

theCASTLE: Week 7

From week 6 we came into the week 7 class directionless, but having had an enjoyable and informative exploration of some ideas. We knew that Andrew Maynard (whoever that guy was) was coming this week, but with only Ian and Robin to guide us, somehow it was decided that we would start making some torsion box panels to model up a one to one model of the Castle size, volume and form. We started off the morning with a workshop induction and tryout of all the relevant machines that we might be using to construct panels and other items later on. The panels were to be 600mm wide and 1200mm deep, and keep a regular module happening, as a basis for regular design if nothing else. Off we went and set up manufacturing lines of the panels, cutting up cardboard and gluing them together. At about 10:30am, Richard came back from the airport with Andrew and several of the representatives of the clients came over, and we were wrestled from the heart of the workshop and set up to explain what were the things that we had discovered so far and explored in last weeks lesson since the week before where we had discussed what we had discovered so far and explored in the previous week’s lesson. So started a common theme of being pissed off at the number of darn presentations we had to do throughout the Castle. Anyway, I may have missed it but we didn’t get a really clear introduction of who this Andrew Maynard guy was, and why he managed to think of all the questions that we didn’t have any answers for. Luckily, before any of use completely put our foot in it and asked what was his story he gave a presentation on his and his firms work and what direction he takes in his design. I think we were all pretty much blown away. It was really amazing to see the vibrant, colourful, playful and explorative work that seems to count as architecture from where Andrew is standing, and it really impressed us all. Everything from his wacky ideas, his sketch up models, the use of materials in his built works and the cheekiness in the way he presented, it had us all sold and it took the few weeks till Andrew came back again for some of us to have the courage to talk to him face to face! Anyway, there were really ingenious projects that Andrew shared, such as his Poo House, a half barrel textile home with the volume filled with water that slowly got used up and replaced by poo and waste from the household (only very unrealistic with the amount of water that Australians use), and also his design for a house for his friend that fitted the planning regulations for being a certain height and distance from the edge of the property, but which unpacked into a beach house styled home only one storey off the ground. It was also Andrews collection of images from the web (and other places), of lots of different precedents for houses of this type, that made use think this crazy guy should be given an award, it was exactly the kind of influence we needed to have injected into the Castle process at this time.







Unfortunately after lunch, instead of continuing our fawning over Andrews’s sketch up projects, we were back doing the next iteration of the design phase, where both Andrew and Richard critiqued us on our new 1:10 models. Lots of these new iterations were playing with ideas that Andrew presented in his talk, such as curved forms, gas-armed tilt up parts of buildings and slide out halves and thirds of buildings and service areas. My groups contribution to this discussion was probably the most unrealistic and conceptual model anyone had put together over the last couple of weeks because it involved a breadbox sliding roof area that was pushed up to make another storey above ground level. Andrew pointed out that if we could get that design to work we had to tell him and it would save the world, so it was really that unrealistic. Lots of sensible ideas did come out of the discussion though, one group presented an paper idea where a kitchen and bathroom area had a series of steps up some drawers to a mezzanine bed area (inspired again by one of the images that Andrew showed us as precedent). It was this idea that was taken, with many different manifestations to actually become the later test rig. We ended the day being thoroughly inspired by what Andrew had to say, but a bit lost as to where that left us in the process of the Castle having been working on 1:1 panels at one point to then goggling over slick renders of crazy schemes the next. Interesting all the same.