Category Archives: DesignWeek

On this day we finished the poster with input from the 6th formers who created the titles for us. We then presented our designs to the rest of the class.

The presentation on a whole went relatively well. We were all well spoken and clearly presented our ideas. We were were told that our ideas were very good, but the final presentation of our designs needed more “finesse” as some aspects were very rough and not refined enough, which I completely agree with.

Overall i believe we created a very good design that covered all aspects of the brief very well, but our final product was undersold. to avoid this from happening next time and to ensure we put our ideas across in a clearer manner, I believe better time management is needed as well as better delegation of the work. This would of ensured that the poster and models were to the same quality as our final idea.

In conclusion I throughly enjoyed the week. Although it was very hard work and we were in uni for 8/9 hours a day, I think that the week was very rewarding and I learnt a great deal about the make up of bridges, and how good time management and delegation of work is vital to keep a project like this running smoothly.

Although I enjoyed it, i do not believe that the involvement of the 6th formers was needed as they only contributed partially to the work. Although again this can be argued against as with better delegation of work they could have been involved more.

Attached is a picture of our final presentation.

Today I continued by researching different components for the detail. I came across this source which we could use for our detail.

http://www.graitec.com/en/FAQ_view.asp?FAQID=983#placa_baza_taiata

As a group we agreed that we were going to detail the column to foundation detail and after sketching out my ideas I started on the model.

First i acquired a tube that fits to our scale. Then i cut out the holding steel member and made the foundation hooks out of wire. Then I acquired a foam block for use as the foundation. This was then all put together to create the detail shown in the attached images.

While I was doing this the group continued by finishing our map, cutting out blocks for the proposal of the new buildings outside of Mithras and Preston barracks so we could get a feel for the space we had and the fixed our bridge in place.

We finished the day by gathering information and drawings for the poster which we then put together as a group.

On day three we came together with the Hazlewick students and incorporated their ideas into our design. This included the cable and column structure which we envisioned on the previous day. After consolation and some design development we went to the modelling studio to start on the model.

Firstly we delegated the job of creating the ramp shafts to the 6th formers as we needed three to show the space for the ramps. We then continued by drawing our bridge on the map to give us a feel for dimensions and required distances, I then traced round this on trancing paper and transferred it to foamboard. This was then cut out and put into place.

I then continued by cutting out the parapets out of card. This card was to the required thickness of the handrail to scale. This job was then passed on to Rowan so I could research different components for the detail.

On this day we researched more bridge designs and came up with a rough design for our bridge which was an L shape cable suspension bridge which spanned from Lewes Road across to the barracks, with a ramp leading to Cockcroft. We established that this was a good idea but was a bit excessive, so we decided to refine it.

We also researched different specifications our bridge would need to be, for example i established that it needed to be 5.1m above the road, so as a group we decided to give the bridge a height of 6m.

I also established that the width needed to be a minimum of 5 meters to incorporate pedestrians and cyclists going both ways. (2 meters for pedestrians, 3 meters for cyclists. So we incorporated this into our design as well.

We then printed out a digimap of the site so we could build our bridge on this. We had a few problems with the scaling of the map, but after some determination and trial and error we found the right scale, printed out the map and stuck it to our base board.

The final outcome of the day was deciding on the supporting structure for the bridge. We decided on a column structure with a support for the ramps.

First day of the week we was given the brief of the assignment. The design week was combined with a sixth form college and there were assigned to be apart of this design week but they were only in 3 days of the week.
On the arrival of the college students they were assigned a group and in my team we had 3 university students including myself and 3 college students.

We had our first group meeting once we were allocated into groups; we introduced ourselves and went over the Brief to get an idea of what is asked from us.

After the break, we headed out to site to get an idea of what were working with and come with with different ideas on where we should locate our bridge.

After the afternoon lecture, we had another group meeting just bouncing ideas of where it should be located and also ideas of any designs.

As group leader, I gave each team member tasks to do at home and to bring it in for the next day.

Tasks included –
~ precedent studies
~ initial ideas
~ reviewing digimap
~ gathering material