we are currently in the process of gathering materials- wood and steel. the steel-getting has been a fairly entertaining process because we got to go to a scrap metal yard and wander in the chaos between huge piles. it's something you normally see in the movies, giant magnets and all, so it was great to be there in real life. the wood gathering is a bit more difficult because we need around 1500 pieces of treated 2x4, at least 4' long, for free. people just don't seem to be giving that stuff away often enough. but anyway, besides that we are supposed to start prefabricating benches and signs this thursday...we'll see how that goes. we are finally on the commissioners court agenda, so will hopefully get all the necessary permits tomorrow, and then who knows...maybe we'll even get on the site.

The semester is slowly winding to a close; registration for my final semester at UTSA starts tomorrow at 7am, and I cannot wait. I have to say, I'm quite disappointed with the way this year turned out. I feel like the promise of a design-build studio was a lie. Instead, we worked and reworked CDs... View full entry

Last week we had a meeting with the county-hired civil engineers. It was very informative as well as eye opening. We found out that the class which did the survey of our site was very very very wrong. Apparently, the elevations and tree locations which we were basing our design around were not the... View full entry

So, as the title states, we have finally built something in the studio. Granted, it's nothing too fancy, but definitely better than working on construction documents. What is it you ask? Formwork, whooooooooo!!! We had developed a system wherein we will have one very long (17'10") rectangle made... View full entry

This week has been quite busy. We started out with some simple construction on Monday; we put together a sample connection to prepare for bolting together the monkey cage, the entry structure, and the shading structures. We used 5' long, 2" PVC pipe and 1/4" bolts for out test, and were surprised... View full entry

School's moving along at a very slow pace this semester. We've experienced the bad news of a giant budget cut, and now we're waiting to present in front of the City on Oct. 7th and have the project approved. We spent the week finalizing our counts of materials- my group, the bolts nuts and screws... View full entry

First days always kinda suck. You don't know who's going to be in your class, nor how the professor likes the class to behave, or what the semester will really be like. There's always preconceptions and expectations, and usually, nothing turns out the way you though it would. So, I was under the... View full entry

Well, the first day of school is tomorrow. I'll be part of a design/build studio this semester, so I'll be doing construction for the first time. I like the way the program is structured-over three semesters, the project is chosen, designed, and then built. I was not involved in any of the... View full entry