Step 7: Materializing Designs

We are arriving final steps of our semester. This seventh one is concentrated in approaching the materialization of the eight designs in the Unit. We'll maintain the same team structure as last steps', and each team member will be assigned a new specific task for this next stage. Deadline for this step is April 29, at 12.00, as always.

Teams are expected to analize different solutions to materialize their proposals; discuss and critisize them and, finally, select the most appropriate strategy to build their designs. Each one should study different structural posibilities for their model, regarding both preexistances and new volumes for the site. You must also decide what constructive materials and solutions you'll use in your proposals. Obviously, all these discussions and decitions will certainly modify and complete your initial approaches (in some cases it's desirable that in a really significant way). So teams will also be expected to produce new general project information (plans and sections) that include all these changes and more precise definitions.

The four different tasks for each Design Team during this assigment are the following:

1. Structural 3D Model (physical or digital): You should study the structural strategy of your whole design. From foundations and topography, to roof level, we want you to make a 3D model of the structural system that supports your design. Of course your model will include the part/s of the existing building you maintain with your proposal, and it will describe the way new volumes establish their structural relation with the old ones (for those who prefer to make a physical model we suggest a scale not bigger that 1/200, because otherwise it'll be very difficult to introduce the amount of detail required)

2. Constructive Section: You'll have to select the most important part of the sections you've presented. Study it carefully, and select and design all the constructive decitions you'll need to materialize it. Of course you must discuss the final image you have in mind for your proposal both in its' interior and exterior appearance. You'll have to select all different materials, match them with the structural model you are developing at the same time, and build up a significant constructive section which clearly shows the way the proposal should be built. We suggest you work on a scale around 1/50.

3. Constructive Physical Model: Structural and constuctive decisions will be shown together on a physical model of a significant part of your proposals. Again we suggest scale 1/50, and first decision should be to choose what part of the proposal you want to modelize. It would be advisable that you had part of the old and the new areas, and from ground to roof level. With this model we want you to demostrate your capacity to integrate all the design decisions you've been making in a real construction homotetic to the project you imagine.

4. New Plans and Sections: All these discussions and decisions have to modify and complete your previous design. We now want you to re-draw all that general usual documents we commonly use to describe our proposals, introducing all these change and preciseness. Most teams didn't complete their documentation in the previous stage. So this step is the opportunity to introduce those changes we've spoken about individually with each group during last session, and those new decisions you'll certainly have to make during this materialization stage.  Now we do expect you to hand in all plans and sections with a high degree of correspondance between all documents.

Next Thursday each team leader must inform us about the specific task assigned to each team member for this stage. We only have a couple more to go, so work hard and build a solid proposal.