With knowing that the day will consist of time spent in the modelling studio, I spent some time before arriving at university gathering any materials from around my house that I thought may be of use.
We began the day with discussing our floor plan that Tom constructed in the evening at home. After discussing within the group and also lecturers we discovered that an octagon shape would be a great approach in achieving an effective layout, allowing for only one cleaning room required, positioned so that multiple parties are able to use it.
The picture above demonstrates the initial floor plan and design, however we thought that perhaps more creativity could be applied to the structure and design with the proposed looking more like an erected tent.
The image above demonstrates an alternative design that I produced from remaining with the concept of an Octagon however increasing the height of the centre of the tent. After some discussion and analysis of this proposal it was felt that little was being gained from this design but an increase in the size of the central column, once again mimicking perhaps a circus tent and not benefiting us in any way.
From here we decided to construct some research into folded structures and how we may be able to implicate this into our design. During this research I stumbled across an interesting folded structural shape that we thought could perhaps influence our design. This image can be seen below (fig 12 in image)
We also discussed the structure of the building, reconsidering the use of a fabric membrane. After looking into this, we found an effective way that could be to replicate the way a fence panel and its column works, easy and fast to erect. A dilemma however would be the fact that too much space would be taken up within the container by the structures materials leaving very little room for the medical centers life saving equipment, the slightly more vital part. Because of this we decided that the idea of a fabric wall and roof shall remain in place, consuming less room in the container and allowing for the entirety of the structure to be connected via split connecters like that sketched in the image below.
From our influential research we attempted to replicate the structure in which we found via modelling with straws and wire. While modeling our proposed structure we attempted building with straws and wire, this proved difficult to get any foundation of a shape. Making us unsure on how the folded structure shape actually worked
Instead we used sticks of wood, modeling clay and tape as this gave us a place to start on the board while making for a stronger model too. We also decided that the fig.12 image would not give sufficient headroom around a lot of the structure, creating completely wasted space. Because of this we decided to stick with the idea of a folded roof however implement it into our design by dropping every other corner point of the octagon slightly lower, this created a similar effect however kept the deign simple and effective too. To also give us an idea of how our original concept works alongside our new proposed concept we built models for both ideas.
The design which appealed best to the entirety of the group was the folded structure, offering a more aesthetically pleasing design and better structural properties as a whole due to the triangular formations. Not only has this development created a more pleasing design but also landed us with a strong product that will act well in any bad weather conditions.
Following the findings from the model making myself and Tom felt that it would be effective to utilise the drawing studio to produce our layout and template of the whole design to a scale of 1:50, allowing us to adjust any room layouts and sizes where needed. This time also allowed us to configure accurate measurements for the heights, lengths and widths of the structural poles so that both a working structure could be created as well as keeping the size of the container in mind for transportation.
The picture below shows attempts made on configuring the size of the structure. Initially we thought that 10M faces for the pentagon would be sufficient, however when considering the angled roof structures it was apparent that these will be too long to fit inside the container. With a reduction to 9M faces, we were able to fit the roofs structure within the container while still gaining enough space for the rooms within the structure.
This image below shows the complete layout plan, produced on A1 in order to be able to be used as a template for our model, ensuring accuracy within sizes and angles. Some slight changes were made to the layout plan however the general layout has been kept relatively similar to that proposed.
Below is a small detail showing how the fabric membrane could be implicated into the design. The idea was that the fabric shall not extend all the way to the corner points of the beams, enabling the connecters to be used without the interfering of fabric. Allowing the structure to still be connected together using 4 way connectors.
Nice photos but would be better in landscape format rather then portrait. Can you turn them?