As the weather begins to cool down, we have been quite busy preparing for Halloween Reviews. Now that we’re halfway through the semester, we are starting to see significant progress on Mark’s Home. Here’s an update on what we’ve been working on!

Site: Trussing the Process 

We left off in the last post with pouring the 4-inch concrete slab roof for the FEMA saferoom at Mark’s Home. Fast forward to today: we were able to peel off the several layers of formwork to reveal our successful concrete pour!

With the foundation and the saferoom structure completed, we shifted our focus to the framing and truss design of Mark’s Home. In studio, we refined the framing plan developed by the previous semesters of 3rd-Years, paying close attention to the FORTIFIED Gold standards. This process has included extensive iterations of roofing and framing designs, along with collaboration with engineers to ensure the structure and roof of Mark’s Home are durable and safe. 

Next, we created a 1:48 physical model of Mark’s Home that allowed for an interchangeable roof to test different truss designs. This activity led to the unanimous decision to feature a scissor truss above the outdoor workspace. Additionally, we met with our client, Mark, to get some insight into window and door decisions. We gained a deeper understanding of how he intends to use the house’s spaces and how our design decisions can better serve him. 

Most recently, we ordered our lumber and spent the past week framing the house’s walls. We plan to finish framing before Halloween Review and putting up trusses is our next step!

Woodshop: Measure, Measure, Cut, Repeat

Since our last blog post, we have been spending our days on site and our nights in the woodshop, where we’ve been working on our cutting boards. The famed “Chair Project” has been officially assigned, and multiple iterations of full-scale hand drawings prepared each team for the work we will produce. Our tutorials and practice have made us confident using the shop tools. After that, our first assignment was to design a cutting board to provide even more practice for our chairs. We were given a set amount of materials and began familiarizing ourselves with the shop’s tools. The table saw, planer, and clamps became the most popular tools in the shop. Instructor Steve Long helped each of us determine the best course of action to achieve our desired cutting board design. We consider our table saw the heart of our shop, and for our cutting boards, we used it to make almost all our cuts. In the shop, we have many sleds that serve as jigs to help our craft be as safe and precise as possible. These sleds will allow us to make the intricate cuts for our chairs.  

All of the teams have been working diligently to complete mock-ups of their respective chairs. We have been learning the ins and outs of steam bending, mortise-and-tenon joints, angles, and hinges. Most of us have not had the opportunity to practice fine woodworking skills, so we are excited to start working on our craft. For our mock-ups, we were tasked with making the most challenging part of each chair. By completing the key element of the chair, each group is confident and ready to begin constructing the final product in the upcoming weeks.  

History: A Stroll Through the Past

So many places to see! We have continued to visit more historical sites all around Newbern and the surrounding areas, from Bluff Hall in Demopolis to the impressive Thornhill estate perched high on a hill. Instructor Dick Hudgens has had us do more sketches at each location, from quick 3-minute perspective sketches to fully detailed 30-minute elevations, and now that we have all been armed with an impressive variety of homemade watercolor dyes, we have even been adding color to a few of our sketches! Our first watercolor sketch assignment was of The Oaks in Greensboro, which had the personality and character to warrant more than a simple elevation sketch. Our second watercolored sketch was of the famed Green Barn right in downtown Newbern; its “John Deere” green siding and the dappled shadows cast on it from the nearby Osage orange tree pose a fun challenge to recreate on paper.

All this work has been in preparation for our recently assigned final project, for which each of us was given a picture of a unique building in the nearby area, and a picture of a scene in nature, with the task of combining the two images into a new hybrid composition. These will be our biggest drawings yet, and they will be watercolored to capture the best elements from the two pictures. All of our sketches are getting better with each new location visit, and our understanding of the watercolor process is improving along with them. Everyone is excited to apply their refined abilities to the new project and create new renderings. In the meantime, we will continue to visit historical sites, with an upcoming field trip to a location in Tuscaloosa.

Student Life: Tour, Anyone?

Have you heard? Rural’s the place to be right now, so spread the word! We’ve been busy helping our professors give a guided tour to the visiting 2nd-year architecture students, who will be deciding on their 3rd-year options soon. We led our visitors on a tour of Rural Studio’s campus and some nearby past projects, wrapping up at Lions Park to see them off. Not long after, we had our first ever Rural Studio Community Day event. A huge thank you to everyone who showed up for our community and got their hands dirty fixing up the Newbern Playground! While the event was primarily intended for Rural Studio students, we had a great turnout of other extra hands, and amazing students came all the way from Auburn to volunteer.

Outside of events, is that…. a new face? Our 3rd-year teachers Professor Emily McGlohn and Instructor Lauren Lovell helped a new friend in need, Maggie, a stray dog who was feeling under the weather. After a vet visit and some TLC, she’s doing much better. We got to know the sweet and awkward Maggie before she was adopted by our manager of the Rural Studio Farm, Eric Ball.

Most recently, we have a winner in our midst—a bingo winner, to be more specific. At The Stable’s first biweekly bingo night of the year, our very own Emily Fink walked away with a bingo win and a pumpkin. Way to go! We’re still going strong with our 3rd-year trivia night competition: expect to see us every other Thursday night, rain or shine. As per tradition we’ve stayed tight-lipped but are working hard on our Halloween Reviews group costume. Stay tuned to see what we’ve cooked up!