Our meeting this week took place at the ArcelorMittal Design Studio @Chicago Architecture Foundation, sponsored by LEGO. It was a really unique and exciting way for Team 3 to explore massing and concepts for our project in an environment built to foster creativity.

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First, students were asked to think outside the box and build something out of Lego bricks that portrayed 1 of the following: Elevate, Screen, Span, Texture or Enclosure….and no buildings were allowed!  This was a great intro to thinking like a designer and how to start the creative process.  Then the students were released to start thinking about actual buildings and they came up with some great starting concepts for the shape of our project.

We heard a great analogy this week for design….Designing a building is like baking cookies, first you start with the flour and sugar (our program and adjacency diagram) and then you add in the butter and eggs (what we did this week with building massing) and then you add the flavorings and you can’t make cookies without all the ingredients.  I can’t wait to see how our batch of “cookies” comes out!

http://www.architecture.org/designstudio 

I never knew that dots and spaghetti were basically resistant to earthquakes, but then again, you learn something new every day.  We had a full meeting last week and got to learn about some delicious barbeque structural engineering!  Jean Claude van Damme taught us about some of the structural basics like types of structure:  concrete, steel, wood; and about moments acting on structural members: torsion, tension, compression, shear, etc.  We learned about dead loads and live loads, and about slabs and decks, lateral bracing, and trusses.  Click on the link if you want to review the presentation again (or just want to see Jean Claude gyrating in spandex).

After learning about how building structures are influenced by movement and forces, we tested it all out by building a structure which could withstand the shaking of an earthquake, also known as Philip.  While all the structures (let’s not talk about the mentor team’s collapse) stood the wrath of Philip, we learned a couple things in the process, about the actual implementation of the points discussed in the presentation.

In terms of next week, we’re going to be talking about the role of the Owner’s Rep, what they do, and how they communicate between all the parties involved.  So come hang out!  Also, please bring us your signed permission slip for the site visit for the meeting on the 19^th.  Please bring your signed FIELD TRIP PERMISSION FORM or you have to sit at the kid’s table forever!!

Also, here’s a little something fun to look at while you’re waiting on your parental signature. http://architizer.com/blog/cats-rule-everything-around-me

Next Meeting:

Thursday, December 12

Arcadis Office @ 120 South LaSalle Street, Floor 1350

Time 5:00-7:00