Murphey's Law-- (I highly dislike his truthful enlightenment!!)

Just getting back from Austin, Tx fresh ideas circulate in my mind. It’s good to get out, get away and get inspiration—especially since it is out of Ruston. Everything was going well while we were out of town on our 402 trip. Form work for half of our foundation was in place, things seemed to be rolling, until…….. Monday, Martin Luther King Day, we received our permit for our slab( yet we had already started building our formwork 3 days before that—we didn’t know that we couldn’t do temporary construction before receiving a permit---wupps) so a fine was presented before us. Not to mention our building restriction line might not be sufficient enough. We felt like we just got hit with a 2 x 4 or ran over by and auger or sliced with a chainsaw. ( choose your destiny) So,what do we do now? The building inspector was out for the rest of the week. WORK WAS AT A HALT!!!!! Most of us thought, BREAK for us. But as you can tell from my previous writings, that was not the case. We still have to design this house, figure out what this house looks like, the materials involved.…….. so many things. Man, Murphey was right!!!! Dangit!!!

What to do???????

Others afterthoughts could be devastating. But pre-pre-thoughts can be self- destructing. So what does one do? Think about all the things that have to be done and drive one’s self crazy or, like the rest of them, come to that mountain when you get there. I just can’t do that. Its not apart of my atomic structure. Productivity is not my middle name. The thought process might be, but it is also a hindrance. Thinking about all of the things we need to do, we need to draw, need to detail, need to order, need to do, to do, to do, (this is one second in my world). By now one can see how hard it is for me to be productive. “Prioritize,” they say. I guess. But everything is important, to me. It try to just sit back and just let things happen, but that just doesn’t happen. Things just don’t happen. I’ll leave you with this, “Process is more important that outcome” Bruce Mau. If that were only true in this case, right?

You deck you!

Design

So there is a major issue happening. Our foundation is half on slab and half on piers. The problem with this foundation system is the transition between the two levels. The driveway sits on the lower half and due to the piers must be at least a foot off of the ground, which means we are going to have to have 3’-8”grade beams and foundation walls. Cost and complexity. The entrance into the house lies on the slab which is about 2’-8” above the level of the parking ground. One way that we tried to solve the problem was by putting a retaining wall that would physically and diagrammatically separate the two levels. This works really well because it separate the spaces up into 2 main spaces which represent the public and the private. The problem with this solution is cost and general aesthetic design. More foundation walls more formwork and more concrete. Aesthetically the approach from the car to the house is abrupt in nature. The path brings you directly along the building chopping though the foundation wall and bringing you onto a slab porch. Basically surrounding you with foundation wall the whole way up. Not to mention the porch at one corner drops off almost 3’ so you see 3’ of concrete and additional railing may need to be added. One thought about this system is that it frees up a flat space in the front of the house for the children in the family to play on.

Another solution to the entrance of the building is to gradually move up through the space along the retaining wall. The main problem with this idea is that there is now an inconvenience for the family as they get out of their cars they must proceed away from the house and then back towards the house again. But again this way the slope of the sight wouldn’t be so harsh and major retaining walls could be taken out of the budget. The hardest part about this issue is presenting ideas to the rest of the class. The force always seems to work against which is not good in my case. Maybe one day. Let’s see what we can do.

STAND ON SOMEONE'S SHOULDERS

The first day of class at the start of the year, our teachers made us fill out forms to evaluate ourselves on our strengths and weaknesses. I’ve realized that some of the things that I have put down are not as true as I thought they’d be. Based on my experiences from being a summer counselor and multiple experiences being a team leader I thought I was a relatively good leader and I could encourage people and keep the momentum up. Things have changed since I’ve enter college though. It’s really hard working in groups. Let me rephrase that. It’s hard working in school groups where the goal of the individual isn’t the same as the goal of the group. I don’t think I will have a problem working with people when I get out into the real world, but it’s hard to make people want to work when they don’t want to whether it be lack of compensation or whatever else. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I wanted to shed some light with the group and beef up our encouragement. Over all, habiTECH works well as a team.
But here are just a few words of wisdom from Bruce Mau.

Allow events to change you
Process is more important that outcome
Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child)
Go Deep
Capture accidents
Drift
Begin anywhere
Everyone is a leader
Keep moving
Slow down
Ask stupid questions
Collaborate
Stay up late
Work the metaphor
Be careful to take risks
Repeat yourself
Stand on someone’s shoulder’s
Listen carefully
Explore the other edge
Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms
Laugh
Remember
Power to the people

If you want a more detailed explanation, stop by and come see me, Mau’s has got some good stuff to say.

I also want to add that today we laid out our building perimeter for our formwork to be constructed. The house seems really small when standing in the “spaces” but it still exciting to see the mind’s work being brought to life.

FALLING TREES COULD BE FATAL

In my search of trying to figure out how to start this blog I realized that if I ever wanted to write something, I would have to stop thinking and organizing and start writing. So here I am. Today was the first day I have been to the site since we left for Christmas break (that’s about 2 weeks). Oh how the site has transformed. The site was untouched for years maybe even forever, (except for the multitudes of trash that had been dumped there.) Pre-habiTECH exposure, walking INTO the site, was like walking through some portal taking you out of Ruston and into some magical forest. I know I sound corny when I say that but it’s true. Nature's architecture is equally, if not more important to the built environment. It’s almost a shame to even build on this site, well was. Now the site is completely clear cut with the exception of about 2 trees. The protective blanket, the trees of magic is gone. (YES, I’m being a dramatic, hippie, tree hugger, but its just not the same.) The sad part about the whole experience is the realization that we are/will be architects and our attitude towards the site is the same attitude that $developers$ have in dealing with the site. Maybe the money aspect was not exactly our reason for doing it, but mediocre complacency is definitely a factor. I am not judging us as a class for being wrong for taking most of the trees and changing the whole integrity of the site, because apparently this has to be done due to tight time constraints, building codes, forces of nature, and pure logistics of building. It is just discouraging to realize that if architects can't do it, then no one can do it.
BUT ENOUGH OF MY SAPPY TREE STORY.

This morning we get out to the site and of course things start to go wrong from the get go. Little did we know that our site and building was drawn wrong from the beginning. No pointing of fingers, but this would have been nice to know before we started laying out our building. So what do you do? I go back to the drawing board, and we will just have to try yet again tomorrow. In the meantime we decided to cut ANOTHER tree. Great. I guess subconsciously I did not want to be apart of this madness so I got stuck with filming the action. In my attempt to film the event I am gradually starting to get frightened by what I am seeing. Mike is at the base of the tree cutting a wedge out of the 90’ tree. Some sort of T.V. cable is tied around the tree(b/c we didn’t have rope) only to have 6 people on the other end of the cable pulling the tree TOWARDS them. Simple math. If you pull a tree towards you, it’s going to fall TOWARDS YOU. So back to the story. Everyone realized that this was going to happen, so in a general consensus it was said that once the tree was falling, you should RUN YOUR ASS OFF AWAY FROM THE TREE. One of these 6 people assisting with the tree timbering was a nice gentleman from Habitat. As I watching this very exciting event, I realized that he had decided to stay where he was and simply hide behind a tree. Hide behind a tree. Over and over I keep replaying the event in my mind. I keep seeing the tree FALLING on top of this man. Thankfully it was only the branches that knocked him in the head and back and arms and head and back and arms……. But you can imagine me freaking by what I was seeing. This man was about to be hit by a huge tree, and there was nothing I could about it but watch. Needless to say I did not get the footage and I m a little upset about that.

After that thrilling event, we continued to clean the never-ending site mess in hopes of one day building our house. When we got back from the Christmas break we found out that everyone who was working at the site got poison sumac. Thankfully Janina and I were in charge of the getting drawings permit ready and submitted to the building inspector later that day so we were the only ones who did not get it. Today, we were prepared. We wore long sleeves and gloves in hopes of saving our precious skin and after we left the site we purchase poison sumac oil removal scrub and took the necessary precautions so that we wouldn’t get it. Lets just say I hope it works but I am highly allergic to poison ivy and (ill probably DIE!- lol jk). I have been itching really bad since this morning so the chances that I have it are high.

I’ve just finished correcting the drawings in lonely Hale Hall. We will see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully we can move onward and learn from our mistakes.... well that’s all that we can do really.