Monday
Monday marked the beginnings of Design Week, we had been given a brief that nobody knew what was involved. it a was fast paced day of lectures and getting to know each other as just after 9am we were joined by 3 students from Hazlewick School. Our team now included Smita (our team leader), Joe, Taylor, Katie, and myself (Damian). We started by getting to know one another and we shared email so that we could stay in contact as Joe, Taylor, and Katie would only be in University Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Now that we had introduced ourselves it was time to outline the brief between us so that we could ensure that all of us understood exactly what was expect. The brief stated that we were to design a pedestrian foot bridge linking the two sides of Mithras House and Mouslecomb Buildings. The bridge was to be a design that could easily be installed without disruption to the road, safe, sustainable, functional, and finally aesthetically pleasing. The bridge also needed to be installed in a location that would support the new development around the area and benefit students/pedestrians the most.
The next part of the morning included a site visit to Mithras house, this was to look at our site and get some inspiration as to what to do for our bridge. Together our team got prepared and headed out to Mithras House.
Mithras House Site Visit
At this point while out on the walk I was now starting to have visions and ideas, this walk had benefitted me and the team as we could all see the real-life situation and task at hand which could now feed our concept ideas.
Crane in University Building Site
One interesting experience I had on our walk was the site of the crane located on the building site next to the University. Earlier Smita had mentioned Kings Gate Bridge and how it was constructed in two sections then rotated into place, at this point I was yet to research it but the crane had given me inspiration into an idea of building the bridge in a crane like section at two ends of the road and rotating them into place thus solving a made part of this brief (minimal disruption to the road).
The walk had also given us an idea of the location of where our bridge should go and the awareness of space we had for our design proposal either side of the road.
After lunch we returned to the studio, by this point we did not get much of a chance to discuss between us what we had thought about on the walk as we had lectures planned, so Smita assigned the 3 Hazlewick students the job of doing 3 precedent studies on bridges after having the walk as inspiration into their concept ideas.
Over the afternoon we had lectures from Noel Painting, Dr Pierfancesco, and Dr Poorang. The lectures were perfect to give us knowledge, inspiration and ideas for our research. I felt by this point I was on the right track to fuel my research for the evening.
By the end of the afternoon the Hazlewick students had left early so Dr Poorang took us for an induction in the workshop. The workshop was important as tomorrow we would be starting our models for the bridge.
Once we had finished with the workshop induction Smita and myself discussed what we were going to do for our studies this evening and once we had finished our discussion it was time to go home for an evening of precedent studies.
My evening at home had included research on the following precedent studies…
Millau Viaduct
Millau Viaduct Launching System – http://www.slideshare.net/paurinshah3/millau-viaduct-35054304
What I liked about this study is the deck launching system, with the deck launching system it meant that the bridge could be built over a large span without the requirement for scaffolding. This idea could be incorporated into our project reducing the need to shut the road. The only problem I had here is the cost and time although this idea worked great on a large-scale project, for a small project like ours it would not suit the clients brief.
Forth Bridge
Forth Bridge Annotated (By Damian Bolton), 07/11/16, (image) https://wayzgooseways.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/a-peninsular-walk/
What was interesting about this study is the span, it was the second largest cantilever span in the world which made me think we could use the same design idea for our bridge to limit construction in the road.
Kings Gate Bridge
This is the project Smita had mentioned which sounded very interesting and I can confirm it was very interesting a design by Arup which was unique and different. It involved designing two cantilever bridge sections then rotating them into place which meant there was no requirement for scaffolding or anything below.