Model Building

Wow, when can i say i last built as model....well it was back in the day when Hansie lectured design in my first year... after that year we progressed to 3d drawings, and 3d renderings took the norm.

starting off with sketchup, and finally CAD 3d, models took a backseat. Model building proved to be an acquired ability, either you have or you don't. Luckily for me, I'm versatile.

I'm currently in the process of assisting a friend...the deadline is looming and I'm learning new tricks in this trade. Detail is key in creating a well built model, not only does this show ones creative mind set, but it is a reflection on the student.

Creating clean cut lines is no joke, attention to detail is perfection. There are now a number of ways in which models can be constructed, personally i prefer to print out each of the sections on a4, then paste it onto the cardboard, thus creating a template from which to work. another option whereby one passes the manual cutting process is by having the templates laser cut...this is perfection at its best, but it yields a costly price tag, and for many students, its a no go.

Gluing the pieces is another issue...only certain glues can be used...many turn a dirty yellow colour which can give the completed model an unsatisfactory finish. The use of a syringe allows for precision

Ill post a few photos later on of the completed works.

Lecturing

The year has come to an end, and for some, it has been a long hard battle as for others a fruitful ending. I took on the position of assistant lecturer...here i worked along side Lucy with the her 1st years in the subject - Studio work (DSW)

My primary goal to assist the class with construction and teaching them the do's and don'ts in technical documentation. The class was the biggest ever reaching a total number of 94 students... The class was so huge that i barely managed to remember faces. A semester had passed and the number came down...primarily due to failures and in certain instances drop-outs

As the second semester progressed, I learnt the names of many of the students and I created student lecturer bond, with them coming for crits on a steady basis.

I am proud to say that these students, most of whom are hard working all achieved really impressive marks. They really upped their game, and the marks prove just that.

I'm ready to tackle yet another year lecturing, only this time I will know how to approach them right from the beginning...

Well done guys. May your 2ND year with Mr Pansegrouw be a great one

SIR NORMSN FOSTER - A LEGEND

After some research on the web, I came across a birthday wish.... Sir Norman Foster has turned 75 today. Here is a recap for those whom don't know or remember him - He was born on the 1st of June 1935.
In 1963 he and three partners started an architectural firm and named it TEAM 4, however the firm did not last long and it was dissolved with each of them heading their separate ways. Foster and Wendy Cheesman (a former partner of TEAM 4) teamed up and founded Foster and Associates, this later became the FOSTER + PARTNERS.

Here are just a few amazing works by which I'm sure you would have come across:

GLA Building, London, UK


Chep Lap Kok Airport, Hong Kong.

The Gherkin, London, UK.

Hearst Tower, New York, USA

SKY CITY - Tokyo, Japan

I recently watched a documentary on Tokyo's new proposal to develop a new housing scheme.

The reason: there is simply no more land to build on...so instead of building across (horizontally) they have had to propose building upwards (vertically).

Architects and town planners have planned a radical new move that would change the lives of people 10 to even 100 years from now. This new proposed mega structure will top the worlds highest building twice. Its is estimated to stand 2/3rd's of a mile high nearly 1 km in height!

The tower (Sky City) will comprise of 14 intermediate levels each with 10 floors.

Basically a self contained city where there is no need to set foot on mother earth. There will be condos, supermarkets, restaurants, hotels etc... with a green space in the centre, all connected to a state of the art new transportation system.

There are a few major underlying problems that will need to be addressed, ie: Tokyo has a very soft soil and to reach a hard surface, they would have to excavate nearly 800 metres - this obviously is no solution so they would rather use thousands of friction piles to create a steadfast foundation. Another factor 'earthquakes'... these can cause immense damage. The image below is an artists impression -

The designers estimate the tower to house 135 000 people, with the tower weighing in at 6 000 000 tons... The base of the structure (foot print) will be approximately 30 acres in size. Japan consider tress to be sacred, hence the incorporation of the central parks through out the design - the green space doubles up as a fire barrier in case of a disaster.

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NEW LOCALLY AVAILABLE PRODUCTS

As students we generally keep our specifications constant through our years at the university. Most of the time we specify products that are not locally available, and in the industry this could result in your client carrying the HIGH costs.

I did some research and consulted with a local company SPECIFYING DYNAMICS to find out more on local products. Their sole purpose to promote their clients products and where possible they aid architectural firms with the necessary specifications.

As students we are quick to jump onto the world wide web (www) or Auto Spec for that matter to specify products...right? OK but ill repeat - LOCAL. How and where can we get information on local products - myself and the university are currently organising a school lecture for next semester where SPECIFYING DYNAMICS will be addressing us on their clients products and a display board will be on show for two weeks at a time and a catalogue will be made available to the students in boardroom on the mezzanine level.

When it comes to roofing, we would generally specify Brownbuilt for example, but i was made aware of a new company stretching their market from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. They offer a wide range of colours etc... but what caught my attention was the way in which their new sheeting profile is fixed to a structure. The system is perfectly suited for the windy conditions we face in PE. Click on the ARONA link and browse their site, its a definite competitor in the market : http://www.aronaroofing.co.za

will PE be ready for the soccer

South Africa is to host the Soccer World Cup 2010 with billions of rands spent on new stadiums and infrastructure, my question to you is

CAN WE A DEVELOPING COUNTRY AFFORD THESE EXPENSES?

Yes many people are optimistic but there is a reality...can we for afford to maintain these super structures (stadiums). These new facilities are going to and i quote 'cost us a arm and a leg', with some stadiums requiring between 10-70 million rand per Annam for maintenance.

After travelling around PE over the weekend i noticed that there was still a lot of construction happening...should this not have been completed already? the new widened road in Walmer is an eye-sore with the incomplete road works and debris lying on the verge of the road. The islands are not 100% paved with an attempt to plant vegetation.

If you take a drive around the stadium you will notice the same problem....OK the stadium is impressive and the grounds are tidy but once again i refer to road works. The new center lane for public transport is sealed off and non operational...

The Livingstone Hospital had to upgrade their Accident and Emergency Centre to comply with FIFA's regulations...that is still under construction and i doubt it will be completed for practical completion later this week. The link provided is a 24/7 web cam showing the construction http://www.lhaepe.co.za.

It might seem as if I'm being negative but I'm giving you the facts.

Link below - stadium maintenance review
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=19&art_id=nw20100512102013232C199857&set_id=

3d max and animation

As a class we are all aware of the looming deadline that awaits us... i am currently finalising my work but i have hit a 'pot hole' - after reading a tutorial, they mentioned that one should rather render the scene in still image form saved as .png as apposed to a avi file. Reason being that had you worked around 30 fps the computer might loose a few clips resulting in a jerky video.

Had you chosen the .png option, you could easily go back and fix your render had you found a glitch... OK so its sounds better but this is where it threw me...i don't know which program to use. I tried everything, from Photo shop premiere to window movie maker, the lot.

Its nice to have all the programs, but if you don't know how to use them they are pretty useless! wait a minute...why not use the HELP file right? well i did, and it was not helpful at all...i even tried Google and YouTube videos... i purely wasted my time and i have had to re render my scene to avi direct.

I will keep you posted as to the outcomes.

Summerstrand BOREHOLE sprout

Port Elizabeth has been hard hit with water restrictions, leaving its residents seeking alternative methods to acquire water. At present there are only two alternatives

1 - Mobile delivery

2 - Boreholes

1. A few entrepreneur's have jumped on the money wagon. These individuals are capitalising on the current water crisis by loading huge containers onto their bakkies/trucks and filling them with water from their private dams or rivers that run through their land. Their target market are people who have extra pennies lying around and they purchase the water.

2. Companies whom specialise in boreholes have flooded the summerstrand and surrounding areas by reducing their prices to become more competitive with their rival companies. After seeing these huge machines scattered across summerstrand for 2 weeks i decided to speak to one of them and get a better understanding as to their procedures.

They come in with a set fee, this fee is compulsory even if they cannot locate water (summerstrand is rich with under ground water - chances are you will most likely get tapped in).

Once they have reached a particular depth of say approximately 20 metres you as the client will be charged in addition at a 1 meter depth rate.

The average statistics are as follows:

on average the overall depths are 30 meters - with 60 metres the deepest.

on average you will get 500 Litres per hour - with 250 litres being the lowest count

80% of clients use the water for drinking purposes. The majority of people are installing automated sprinkler systems to keep their gardens nice and green.

Interesting i would say, but do you really have the thousands of rands for an installation just to keep your garden green? i know i don't.

Gagets

Don't know about you, but I'm a keen on new gadgets and technology. The world is evolving and there is a constant need for technological advance.

In the architectural field we have seen the adoption and incorporation of computer aided drawing software (CAD) as well as laser cutting devices for building models etc...

Currently we are conscious of the GREEN aspect...saving the world for future generations to have and experience what we have at the moment.

In offices we do so much printing, right? so why not restructure our old way of thinking... instead of printing to a piece of paper for municipal submission or for the client etc. rather invest in a product similar to that of the portable E-BOOK device or a next generation wireless reading device...

I found a product by SKIFF - http://www.skiff.com/

Imagine a world, whereby the click of a button you can send the client drawings whilst they are on the go and out of town - say you need their approval etc.

Now you can. All they would need do is activate their device and simply retrieve their information from the firms FTP site... alternatively by email.

This new product boasts all new technologies.

1. Touch screen
2. Large format display
3. High resolution display
4. Metal-foil display
5. Robust

A possibility? definitely. We can all help contribute to this green day and age

Deffufa - man made mud/brick structure

A great deal of time has passed me by - resulting in my blogging absence, however I'm back with lots of fresh new stories.


Keep your eyes glued to your screens over the next 4 weeks, while I share my knowledge.


I enjoy watching DOCUMENTARIES, especially if they have ties to the world of architecture, as did the one ill be chatting about. Located just outside the city of Kerma, Sudan, North Africa one will find a place/object called DEFFUFA.


DEFFUFA is one of the worlds biggest if not the largest man made mud/brick structure. This large volume of PURE masonry adds to the geography of the surrounding area. See the attached images:






This massive mound was believed to have been built as a temple, whether for sacrifice or not? we cannot be certain as it belonged to the ancient Nubian people.

Africa is said to be the birth place of mankind. Yet we know more about other countries histories than our own.

(images from google)

Part 1 of 3

3d studio MAX & VRAY

WOW, max is quite impressive with its overall appearance and functionality. In a way Max is user friendly but it requires time getting to know how it operates. I spent a great deal of time this weekend doing tutorials to better understand it.

In addition, i found a program which not only increases your render times, but it renders scenes so life like, that you need to look at the final rendered image twice to figure out whether its real or not.

For those who are not familiar with VRAY ill give a brief explanation: Vray is a add-on for MAX, with its sole purpose of rendering a scene. It works with light and calculates how much light is deflected from objects in your scene. if your settings are correct (there are a whole lot of them) you may achieve realistic rendered scenes.

I found a few tutorials on the web and attempted them... i ended up doing these tutorials 2 - 3 times each.... to try and memorise the settings.

attached below are the rendered scenes: my personal favourite is the wine glass.

Revit

As you all know, Revit is a perfect program for creating a 'working' drawing as it models your design at the same time. I on the other hand prefer to draw my 3d in CAD and import it into Revit to render a basic scene as it is quick and easy...no fuss

Last week i attempted rendering my interior scene... not an easy task. After hours and hours of tweaking settings, i finally managed to get my interior on the go. First off i noticed that Revit cannot handle complex geometry - thus causing the application to CRASH!
i managed to rectify the issue by removing the imported blocks and then having to redraw them in a very basic manner.

Its really weird how revit can export its scenes to other applications, yet you cannot import scenes into revit (excluding CAD).

I don't really have the best experience with Revit, but i find it being very restrictive... for example: i imported my 3d CAD scene, not problems, but when i had to start placing lights to lighten my scene...only 3 lights types were available, the others could not place themselves - constant error messages. I had to use multiple M studio lights...this however resulted in shadows from many different angles... giving me a unsatisfactory result.

Next week we start with Max, and I'm sure it will be a whole lot better and easier.

Bamboo architecture

I was reading into bamboo architecture via the web and I came across this blog (see attached link).
The bamboo was used in its natural raw state, as the emphasis was to keep it untouched. A really amazing design, but look at how the project was displayed...it is clean and uncluttered - awesome.

http://earnalife.blogspot.com/2008/07/project-bamboo-cafe-monaragala.html

Port Elizabeth - 'the old days'

UPE 1m Contours

Good day all, i have a gift for you... i made my way down to the municipality yesterday to collect a CAD file of 1m contours. After a few trial and errors, i managed to superimpose an aerial image and get the exact placement (not quite) of UPE on site.

Please contact me to arrange the transfer of files.

Helix spiral wind turbine

Our new design project focuses on research...1. Wind energy 2. Solar energy and 3. Reclaimed water. I spent a few hours online researching wind turbines and i found a video of the Helix spiral wind turbine... it has a rather odd shape but according to specialists this turbine is a lot more quieter and produces more energy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_xrlMV9EKM

B2 House video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZZ5dCkE30

attached a video clip of B2 House... take note of the front facade and how it opens up. With reference to my previous post, the screens need to open up vertically as opposed to the ones in the video

B2 house

one of our first assignments for this year pays attention to B2 House, Turkey. We are tasked with creating a new screening system whereby the screen opens and closes in a vertical manner as apposed to the conventional horizontal sliding type.

Ones initial thought is how difficult could that really be? An easy task? yes, but we have specific instructions/limits... these make our task a bit tough to resolve. After some time consuming research I have managed to find a solution - cables.

An interesting focal point of this design, is the location of the pivoting point. It is situated fairly close to the wall/window frame, allowing minimal space wherein a counter weight is to be incorporated.

During this weeks lectures, we as a class assessed possibilities in resolving key problems - i unfortunately had to get back to the drawing board and rethink my approach.

So far my concept works, but its a matter of tweaking my drawings, this however will only happen this weekend as i have another project due.

If time allows, ill try post my drawings this weekend.