At our first meeting of the new year Team 6 began to focus in on this year’s project: the repurposing of Navy Pier.
Our team divided into two groups, each with a different project emphasis. Half the teamwill be designing an urban installation for the pier and half will be designing a feature for the end of the pier.

Burnham Pavilion- a temporary urban installation in Millenium Park

Last week’s meeting focused on brainstorming and refining ideas for each of the two elements of our project. Looking ahead, we will be honing in on a program that will more clearly set the scope of our project for the rest of the year.

College Night

The Week 4 meeting focused on discussing issues related to college- including planning and funding college careers, how to evaluate different college options, and what to do once you finish college.

Some big takeaways:

• Make use of all available resources. Teachers, counselors, ACE mentors, etc. all have different experience relating to the college process. Be proactive and seek advice from a variety of sources.
• Consider what YOU want/need from you college experience. College offers an incredible diversity of opportunities, consider how an individual school relates to your goals.
• Financial planning is important. Take the time to fill out the FAFSA (www.fafsa.ed.gov/) to apply for financial aid. Seek out scholarships and apply to as many as possible! When you do decide on a college, talk to the college administration to find out what financial aid they have available.

Finally, if you are seriously considering a career in Architecture, Construction, or Engineering, please make use of the collective knowledge ACE mentors have in planning for a college experience in one of those industries. Learn from the mistakes (and the successes) of those who have gone before you!

Team 6 met at the office of Thornton Tomasetti for an introduction to structural engineering. The engineers of TT provided an overview of basic concepts such as tension, compression, and bending forces.

ACE students then had an opportunity to draw on the meeting’s lesson while competing in the spaghetti hat challenge. This week’s challenge required students to design and build a hat made only of spaghetti and tape. The only criteria of this competition was to build the tallest hat possible.

An ACE mentor explains the structural and architectural purity of the triforce

Students approached the task with many different strategies, though two features were seen in many of the hats. Drawing inspiration from the design of the Hancock building, several groups made use of cross-bracing, which can be seen in the picture below as the X-shape at the base of the hat.

All the groups pursued a large spire, mimicking the real-world architectural tricks of tall buildings seeking the status of “world’s tallest building.” The winning team relied heavily on a tall spire supported by a stable pyramid shaped base, pictured below.

As a reminder: Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, there will not be an ACE meeting on Thursday Nov. 22.

This Week:

CONTRARY to our schedule, we will be meeting at GSA’s office this Thursday, November 17, 2011. Their office is located at 230 S. Dearborn, in Suite 3600 (on the 36^th floor):

The entrance looks like this:

You should enter on Dearborn (the North-South street) just North of Jackson (the East-West street). You will have to go through a metal detector for security, so don’t bring any dangerous objects that you normally bring (like nail files, knives, etc). Maybe not the best day to try out your new goth jewelry, either. Take the first bank of elevators to the 36th floor and the receptionist will direct you to room 3640.

Make sure you’re there before 6 pm!

Closest ‘L’ Stops:
Blue/Red Lines: Jackson (if you’re coming from the Red line, go through the tunnel to go to the blue line but just keep exiting. The Blue line exit is right in front of the building, almost)
Brown, Orange, Purple, Pink – Harold Washington Library or Adams/Wabash (it’s about a block or two away)

Does anyone take the Metra? Which station are you coming in at? None of them are super close, but not really more than 4-5 blocks away.

In any case, we will be getting an introduction to Property Ownership from GSA (short for General Services Administration). Property ownership is pretty much the reason our industry exists. If people or companies didn’t spend billions of dollars every year developing proptery (read: changing what’s on a piece of land), we wouldn’t have any buildings to build! I’m very interested to see what exactly it is that they do, myself (this is Maureen, by the way).

Let’s recap our last meeting, November 10:

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This Week:

According to our schedule, we will be meeting at Lend Lease’s office Thursday, November 10, 2011. Yes, we discussed something else last week, but we were wrong and we’re going to stick to the schedule. Our office is located at 1 N. Wacker Drive, in Suite 850 (on the 8^th floor):

The entrance looks like this:

This week is COLLEGE NIGHT! You should have already turned in your survey either last week or via email. If you haven’t, fill it out anyway and email it ahead of time or bring it with you tomorrow. It can help you start thinking about college even if you don’t want to think too hard yet.

Let’s recap our last meeting, November 3:

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Next Week:

According to our schedule, we will be meeting at Thorton Tomasetti’s office Thursday, November 3, 2011. Their office is located at 330 N. Wabash Avenue, in Suite 1500 (on the 15^th floor):

The entrance looks like this:

You will get an introduction to both Construction and Engineering. We have a fun engineering activity planned as well!

Let’s recap our last meeting, October 27:

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Team 6′s first meeting will be tomorrow, October 27th, at Gensler’s office located at 11 E. Madison Street, Suite 300 from 5:00-7:00pm. This is what the building looks like:

The Gensler mentors will be giving a presentation to introduce you to architecture. Lots of you listed architecture as your main interest – here is your chance to see what it’s all about!

The last time we met was at orientation and mentors handed out orientation packets. If you lost yours, you can see the pdf here. It has our schedule for the year, a mentor roster and a handout with information about each firm that the Team Six mentors are a part of.

I will be doing a trivia game this year via the blog. See if you can answer the question after the jump. (There may be prizes!)

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