We're heading up to Sydney at the end of the month to install our work for the Baadlands exhibition! This gallery newspaper just landed on our desks...
We're currently working on the design of the streetscape to transform Stanley St, Collingwood for this event. Hope to see you there!
Our collaboration with VDD and others for the Emergency Shelter Exhibition is currently being exhibited at the de/DEVELOP exhibition until 16 June at the Fracture Gallery in Federation Square! Check it out!
One of the official photos of our Emotional Shelter CAT sent to us by the organisers! Thank you to all of our amazing volunteers! Full list here: http://herestudio.net/index.php?%2Fcompetitions%2Femergency-shelter-%2F
10:45 It’s hard to remember what day it is. I am so exhausted, both physically and mentally from trying to get this over the line. This was about to be a big day, and we had made a big call out to extra volunteers.
Here is Alice, Eric and MaryAnn getting the bicycle tubes out of the car. The bicycle tubes are to cover the edges of the corrugated iron.
10:57 We have all the modules laid out to be tied together in the back lane. (We have to store them and pick them up out the back and they obviously don’t fit through the house!) The idea was to get the worksite hyper organised for maximum efficiency – many hands arriving.
11:23 Eric and Louise. We got all our small dry bamboo from Melbourne Uni, and had to prepare them a little in anticipation of work to come.
12:10 – 12:50 At the same time as the bases are being prepared, the team grows: Mei Ting, Charlotte, Louise, Carley, Alice, Sophina tie one half of the purlins on using square lashings. Ammon teaches two then they teach the others.
Dave and Jessie arrive to hold the arches in place.
13:49 Here we are trying to finish for lunch (and prepare for the other team from lunch to return to lash more). In the background Kaletha and Faz arrive and sort more bamboo, and start to prepare rope lengths for lashing.
See video:
14:32 Nicole is inside working through the spreadsheet of all the events we have planned. She is calling performers to confirm their needs. Our aim is to do it all on no mains power - imagine what we would have post disaster? This is a community facility, events to connect and socialise are key.
Charlotte, Ian and Michelle and Kamil are out the front lashing the arms in form. They need to stake a jig into the grass.
[start - up to up and down to down x 3, binding x 3, tie with start, end]
The diagonal knot is the same as the square knot but the pattern is 3x top to bottom, bottom to top, then diagonal cross 2-3 times, then binding knot, then tie off.
[start - up to down and down to up, x 3, cross cross x 3, binding x 3, tie with start, end]
16:46 This is our worksite in the back lane, all packed up.
The knots are tied together with surgeon knots and dowels. Each curve is held together with two ropes to hold the shape. Each curve has 3 bamboo strips.
Michelle and Kamil stay on to finish the 4 arm structures!
Michelle and Ammon are heading up to Canberra with Stuart Candy from ARUP and Tadhg Daly from David Lock Associates for the opening of the CAPITheticAL exhibition at the Gallery of Australian Design tonight! Here is our video submission filmed and edited by the talented Natalie James on location in Currumbin.
http://vimeo.com/54567251So, Day 1 of our Emergency Shelter Exhibition prototype. VDD, herestudio, and team.
Quite a time-consuming process, but many hands make light (and social) work.
We reflect, that if you want to build without processed- industrial materials and tools, it takes a lot of labour!
Our prototyping day started early at 11am in Kensington. The trains were replaced with buses so we had an audience every 20 minutes! It was a cool, quiet morning. We were at Mary Ann's house - out on the nature strip.
11:31 This is out worksite from across the road.
11:34 First, we had to split the bamboo into strips so that we could lash laminated beams. Here is Munir, Katherine and Nicole splitting the bamboo with a special tool against a tree.
Video:
11:50 This step is to strip the edges with a blade so that the cut is smooth for construction - and occupation. Both green and flesh sides. Here is Michelle, Soledad, Marjan, Katherine, Munir, Nicole stripping the bamboo. Jim is across the road cheating with the angle-grinder to remove the inside bump of the nodes.
11:52 Munir Michelle Muhammad (Kamil) trying to understand the drawings
12:15 Michelle sat in the space to check the size. We are thinking that it's looking a bit small and the scale should change.
12:16 Marjan and Soledad - the bamboo stripping continues
12:33 Kamil and Munir finish pegging in guides for the bamboo to bend inside. There will be 12 bamboo strips in one beam. Munir made a centre point to draw in a radius and marked the level of the floor.
12:45 We then decided to stand it up to make it clearer. Michelle pretends to be one of the kids in the space. We bring in the palettes from Bowens Hardware and dry bamboo from Melbourne Uni FabLab that Katherine and Nicole just picked up in the car. It looks better standing up- much clear and looks bigger, but it still is a bit small maybe, especially with the palette depth included.
12:54 That was looking good, standing it up. So we decided to build it in full to have a look - standing up vertically. 12 strips clamped together, many hands holding it above the palette.
here's a video
13:02 A natural catenary structure formed itself, almost by accident. Nicely, it solved the issue of the low height, instead of a circular form, we ended up with something parabolic, therefore slightly taller and thinner. It gave a nice sense - almost gothic, of human occupation.
13:05 The issue we wondered about, was how to connect the arch to the palettes. Because it was 12 strips thick the inner strips were longer then the outer ones - and hence the base was stepped. We called Shaina (ARUP), who assured us that the downwards force wasn't important, it was just important to tie the structure down well. With only a couple of strips touching, we should tie the lashing down to the base.
13:21 We discussed if for half an hour..
13:47 So, after a fair bit of deliberation, we decided we were happy and roughed out the parabola on the grass. And pegged out the jig.
14:31 AND then it was time for lunch. Mary Ann cooked amazing burritos, fresh salads, sauces. We blogged on our phones.
14:47 Back to work Michelle gets the splitter tool out again to split some more bamboo.
14:58 All in place, the 12 strips with nodes all staggered and ends steps are arranged in the jig. Because the bamboo has a top and a bottom (it grows vertically!) we had to alternate thick and thin ends so that the arch was balanced. We staggered them slightly so that the nodes of the bamboo didn't align.
15:42 Here we are a third of the way through the tedious task of lashing. As well as lashing with natural twine, we drilled a hole with a drill and pegged in a bamboo chopstick each lash to act as a dowel. The chopsticks kept breaking but we eventually got them all in one by one with a developing method. The chopsticks we chose were oblong to lock longitudinally into the bamboo. We used clove hitch knots and simply lashed 20-30cm width of twine each time, sometimes with multiple lengths of twine. We decided to soak the twine in water first so it would stretch and then tighten when it dries.
The twine was tricky to use as it kept fraying apart and breaking. We had to be careful to learn how tight to pull it, and remember to twist it each time we lashed it around the bamboo. Jim found a towel to kneel on, and so that the twine didn't get dirty. The best procedure was with two people, one on each side pulling the twine tight and under the propped up arch.
16:04 Katherine still getting over the halfway mark.
16:43 The last lash is started.. It's tricky to keep the clamp on for the bottom lashes.
17:01 And with a lot of excitement, we finally stand it up! Note the rope at the bottom to hold it into shape. We will keep it tied so that the bamboo does not push out and loosen the lashings as it dries.
17:04 Mary-Ann comes out to get a photo too, with Kamil.
17:08 Michelle orders a few more bamboo poles to be split. Aren't the poles beautiful!
17:13 Pack up time!
Please support our crowd-funding campaign at Pozible.
Michael and Kayo have sent us a few recent construction shots
In Stage 1 of the CAPITheticAL competition, we proposed the idea of a roving capital. The capital would move to a new location every fifteen years to address a particular national issue.
Click here for our Stage 1 submission
We presented this idea over 4 newspaper pages - each page a moment in the process - the idea, the engagement and events, the first day in the new capital and finally, the legacy left behind. We chose Currumbin in the Gold Coast as the first roving capital, which would address the issue of climate change and explore what an eco-city would be like. For Stage 2, our team from David Lock Associates, here studio and ARUP decided to actually go to Currumbin to act out this process - we wanted to see what would happen, who we might meet, and what we might learn.
filmmaker Natalie Erika James
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We're very excited that our entry, The Engagement Studio, was shortlisted for CAPITheticAL, a design ideas competition for a hypothetical Australian capital city. The shortlisted finalists were announced at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Old Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday 17 May 2012. The jury (Dr Catherin Bull AM, Councillor John McInerney, Callum Morton, Professor Barbara Norman and Professor Alastair Swayn) selected the finalists from a pool of 41 student entries and 73 open category entries. Entries were received from 24 different countries, including the United States, Canada, Scotland and the United Kingdom and New Zealand, as well as throughout Europe – including France, Germany, Italy, Greece and Russia – and throughout Asia and the Middle East, including China, India, Malaysia and Kazakhstan. In addition, 74 entries were received from Australian participants, including seven entries from Canberra.
The shortlisted entries are currently on exhibition at the Gallery of Australian Design (GAD) from 6 March to 11 May 2013 as part of the Centenary of Canberra.
