auburnuniversity

Happy Halloween Reviews

November 1, 2019

The Halloween Reviews week is here! This week for the big review, the 3rd-years presented their 20K design and research for 20K Ophelia’s Home. Much of the busy week was spent in preparation for the Thursday review and their group costume, the “Last Supper.”

The 3rd-years finished their final quilting blocks in the elective class just in time to be hung and presented alongside their initial renderings. Aaron Head (local artist) returned to lead a sticking workshop on Wednesday as the students begin the process of actually “quilting” the quilt top, batting, and bottom together. Those couple hours of stitching were so peaceful, a pleasant break from studio work.

As Halloween grew closer, the students rapidly worked to finalize plan details, construction documents, and presentation flow.

On that hallowed day, guest reviewers Marlon Blackwell, Mike Newman, and Katrina Van Valkenburgh, alongside Rural Studio faculty, probed the students about the decisions they made behind their work, gave insightful critiques, and encouraged the 3rd-years in their research to improve the design of 20K Ophelia’s Home. Overall the review was a success! 

And the students did enjoy itself all the while! The reviews of the 5th-year and master’s students were extremely interesting and engaging (not typically a word used to describe review days) and it was great to see what the rest of Red Barn was up to. Tuesday was the annual community Pumpkin Carve with the Halloween celebrations and costume contest on Thursday. The disciples definitely enjoyed themselves. 

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Water Lines and Tool Trailers and Batter Boards, Oh My!

October 18, 2019

It’s now the week after fall break and the 3rd-years are rested up and ready for the next phase of their semester! This week has been all about making sure the students have everything ready for when it’s time to start building.

First, the students had a much-needed conversation about their schedule and budget. They held a pull planning session to start making a schedule for the rest of the semester – will they stick to the schedule? Stay tuned to find out!

Next, the students worked together to get things ready on site by moving all their supplies and the leftover wood from Mrs. Patrick’s Home (last year’s project) to Ophelia’s site.

Over the next couple of days, the students broke down into teams to get the site and their tool trailer ready for when it’s time to build. A few of them focused on locating and shutting off the old water line on site. This team also dug up and capped off the old septic line and removed old tie offs for the trailers previously on site.

Another team worked hard to build the inside of the tool trailer with shelves for all their equipment and individual cubbies for everyone on the team.

The third team measured and cut all the pieces to make batter boards that the 3th-years will use to measure the height of the finished floor of Ophelia’s new home!

All in all, it was a productive week for the 3th-years on site and they are very excited and eager to break ground on Ophelia’s 20K soon! Just look at how excited they are!!!

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Presenting Ophelia’s Home

October 11, 2019

October 9, Ophelia’s Home was decided! The last two product line homes the 3rd-year studio considered were Mac’s and Joanne’s and the cut was made after a final sprint of drawings and a group discussion Wednesday morning. The 3rd-year students will be building an iteration of Joanne’s home for their client Ophelia.

The very same day the students presented their plans to Ophelia and her family. Here’s to last minute decisions! 

The 3rd-years set up their work on site, and Ophelia, her family, and Mrs. Patrick (last year’s 20K client and Ophelia’s neighbor) sat outside while the students presented Joanne’s Home and the specifics of how and why this home would be best for Ophelia.

The presentation included technical drawings but also a site model and with a version of Joanne’s that Ophelia could keep. The group then moved around the property to podiums of perspectives for the client to look and see the potential views of her new home from various vantage points.

The presentation to Ophelia concluded by walking through a one-to-one mock up of the new home where the students plan to build it, showing every rooms and the views from every window.

The 3rd-years are so excited to have chosen a home for Ophelia and she is so happy with the one they chose! And on that note, both are ready to build! Stay tuned as the studio takes their design into the dirt. 

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Raisin’ the Roof

September 26, 2019

With things picking up in the Studio entering fall semester, convocation, and neckdowns, we were working with a tight deadline for when the boom truck was booked to raise trusses before the chaos started. 

While building the trusses, we did a series of physical and sketch studies to test column composition and location and hardware for the splices. Once the trusses were finished, we moved into column construction focusing on how to make the three plys as tight as possible and create a structural and aesthetically pleasing screw pattern.

Clamping columns to ensure they are laminated tight.

Moving between the woodshop building columns and site, we began to place and steel feet on the column footings and drill holes for anchor bolts. We located each footing focusing on centering them along truss lines so that the truss can slide into the column. We then set the threaded rod using apoxy and set leveling nuts to ensure the steel plates were all sitting at the same height.

Truss raising day finally came (after weeks of stress dreams and some long days). With the generous help from West Alabama Mechanical and United Rentals for a scissor lift and man lift, we were able to get all of the trusses up in a day! Seeing the structure raised and beginning to understand some of the spatial aspects of the pavilion in real life has been a big boost in the project for us.

Thankful for the BEST clients (we’ve said it before and we’ll keep saying it because it’s true) and some incredible community volunteers who believe in this project and love Moundville!
The men “helping” (but really, we couldn’t do it without them!)
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Week 76

May 28, 2019

Hi friends! Lots to catch up since our last post! After many weeks of rain in April, we have designed, built, put up and down our full-scale mockup. Some on Morrisette to test if the 18’ screens would stand safely, and finally on site. As always mock-ups are the best tool for making decisions, so as we were putting up the screens, we made some changes to the design as we saw how the space shaped out. Also, thank you Andrew, Steve and Mass Timber team for helping us raise the 18′x18′ Screens!

Luckily the mock-up was ready by the time Pig Roast came around the corner, and it helped us study how people inhabited the space. Not only as a large crowd but also when the Horseshoe Farm Fellows had one of their weekly meetings in the courtyard.

We have also had many pin ups and meetings in the last 2 months. We had a chance to meet with Zane Morgan and Cassandra Kellogg twice! They are not only super generous with their time, but also incredibly helpful when talking to us through some of the details we have been working through. We also had a visit from David Hinson, whose excitement about the project energized us to keep pushing forward! As well as a long, but incredibly helpful call with David Hill, in which we learned some more key information about tree choosing, and soil conditions of our site.

Additionally, in the last two weeks, we have spoken to Joe many times, in order to work through some of the structural questions of the walkway and screens. We also visited Jim Turnipseed to update him on the newest design proposal. We are incredibly thankful for Jim’s generosity with material donations and for letting us use his shop when the time comes to fabricate the screens!

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