Archinect - University of Texas at San Antonio (Natalia)

scrap steel

2008-11-18T10:22:24-05:00

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.

a little bit at a time

2008-11-05T13:42:58-05:00

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 to the point of exhaustion and wasted time as other studios prepared for competitions. Maybe I'm just bitter.
We will supposedly start being on the site sometime before the end of the month, meaning we won't be out there for more than 3 weeks total, if it even happens. I don't know which I'm looking forward to more: waking up at 6am during the coldest months in Texas so I can go do manual labor, or knowing that the manual labor will involve no more than clearing brush and digging.
Regardless, we spent the last two weeks redesigning a shade structure so that it would actually shade. Somehow, this wasn't part of the requirement of the original design...

another week in the life

2008-10-06T20:33:59-04:00

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 reality of the site. So...we redesigned. Nothing too major; just had to move the decks around and solve the problem of the missing property. So far so good. We actually like the new design better :) Other than that, nothing too much has been going on. We're all ready to go out and get our hands dirty in the field, but everything keeps getting pushed back. Our county contact person's position was eliminated on friday...so we no longer have anyone to tell us what's going on on the county side of things. And with elections coming up, no one is exactly concerned with the university project. Oct.7 (tomorrow) was going to be the day we would present the project to the county commissio...

we built something!

2008-09-23T19:56:32-04:00

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 of two 8' and one 1'10" piece which we will then adjust on site as needed. Our longest concrete threshold is 17'10", and the shortest is around 9', so some cutting will be involved. The best part of the entire experience, I think, was the cooperation which our class was able to achieve. Though most of us have sort of known one another for around four years, we hadn't necessarily worked on any projects together. Today was a bonding experience. Over screwing, sawing, and drilling, we found common ground. We talked, we laughed, we shared our lives. It was awesome, and no one got hurt :) The people who had used power tools before made sure that everyone who had never held a saw or sc...

Test run

2008-09-17T10:03:49-04:00

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 at the amount of time it took to drill 4 holes. The drill has to be kept perfectly straight and we had to attach each pipe to a piece of 2x4 so it wouldn't move during the drilling. Overall, we spent about 30 minutes on the project. However, the real structures will be made of 30' steel pipes which are 2 3/8" in diameter...and we will be using 1/2" bolts...and drilling on site. There are several hundred holes to be drilled. It's something to look forward to :)

Tuesday was spent on finishing our construction drawings and coming up with a framing plan for the deck thresholds. It took a while to come up with how the framework would actually work because we have three different sizes o...

Slowly moving forward

2008-09-05T17:59:37-04:00

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, came out with a figure which was quite a bit smaller than expected. Also, we got an estimate of about $2,000 vs. the $11,000 the last design/build studio spent on fasteners. We spent most of Thursday morning driving around and getting lost trying to find Ace Bolts Nuts & Screws...which apparently only has one location in San An, though google listed three. Regardless, we got everything found and figured out on time. We had the opportunity to go visit the site today. I have to say, it wasn't what I expected. Though I knew it was a park atmosphere, I thought it would be more open and plain. Instead, the site is very pretty and covered by large trees. The morning was lovely; the sun...

First day

2008-08-27T19:07:39-04:00

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 impression that we would have a training/safety session for a few days and then get right to building. Boy, was I wrong. The project has had to go through a long permitting process, and though the City of San Antonio is very excited about UTSA students designing and building a park, there has been some trouble. Namely, the budget. We cannot do much about consulting fees or anything like that, but we have been told to cut $60,000 off the project costs before we can move forward. Seeing as it's already a fairly low cost design, we're not sure how we'll manage to do that. It's going to be interesting looking for unconventional materials or ways of putting everything together. Essentia...

Almost there

2008-08-26T10:23:42-04:00

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 previous stages, but I was able to stop by and look at the previous semesters' work-they did the construction documents last spring.
I still have yet to purchase a hard hat and screw gun, mostly because I want to see what kind of equipment is best. Other than that, I'm nervous and excited about being out in the Texas sun every day from 7am until noon :)