courtyards

2,200 Holes and Counting…

October 28, 2019

Over the last couple of weeks, the Horseshoe Hub Courtyard team has continued to fabricate the screens in the shop, and are nearly done! After working on the shorter eight-foot screens, the team moved on to working on the nine-foot screens that are above the stage and near the main entrance, as well as 18-foot screens and corners. Thanks to the jigs that were fabricated, a small assembly line was created to facilitate making the screens as equally as possible.

This past week the team finished cutting and perforating all the steel tubes for the footings, walkway strut, and wall plates and started welding the tabs to the wall plates. Also, a huge shoutout to Zane and Cassandra from Blackshop Birmingham for donating the laser-cut plates that make-up most of the walkway, they saved the team weeks worth of work!

In other exciting news, the team took a trip this past Monday to Hunter Trees LLC and tagged the trees for the courtyard! Thirteen beautiful single trunk, Natchez Crepe Myrtles, which will be planted on site shortly after the screens are up.

Tags: blackshopbham, courtyards, fabrication, horseshoecourtyard, horseshoehub, rs5thyears, rsleftovers, trees

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!

Tags: alabama, architectureschool, auburnuniversity, community, courtyards, designbuild, greensboro, HHC, horseshoecourtyard, outdoors, projectHSF, ruralstudio, screens, vines

Week 69

March 18, 2019

East facing elevation shows 18′ screens that slip past balcony datum line to separate the two elements. We are also working through options for the “porch” on the Southern portion of the site, we are interested in using lights or a dropped ceiling to lower the scale.

We finally modeled our most recent design! This past week we shifted from plans, sections and SketchUp to a physical model, so we could charette through the tree and furniture placement.

Stepping out of the waiting room looking towards the active space and porch.

Part of figuring out the tree layout is understanding how it shapes the north end, as another entrance to the courtyard as well as what it gives back to the street since it is the most public area of the design.

Stay tuned as we work through the different options for the railing (not featured in model at the moment) and its interaction with the screens!