Tower Project

This semester we started to look more detail at building structures. We had a serious of lectures about loads, forces and basic structural elements, which at the beginning sounds very boring, but is very important for architects, because architecture is not just a great ideas and design of the buildings; it is also study how the things work. So as a way to check how we understood this new teaching material our tutors organized Tower Project, where we could experience new skills.

The project itself was carried in four-people groups and the most exciting thing was what we had only one week to manage it. The aim was to create 1:10 model of 20 m high tower. Monday was the day of research; we spent a lot of time in library trying to find some different towers around the world, which would inspire us. Following that everybody made some sketches how the tower may look like. Tuesday started with group discussion, we picked four ideas and decided to build four different 1:200 models to see how it works. Wednesday was the most important day, we needed to show models to our tutors, explaining some structural aspects, they gave us a piece of advice what we need to change to improve our project. And finally Thursday, the most eventful day, apart from model we needed to draw plans, sections, elevations and also some diagrams explaining some physical aspects, such as tension, compression, bending. So it was long day, we left studio when janitors closed the building and continued working at home. On Friday morning our tower was ready, for us it was more experimental project, it would be quite easy to build something very stable, we run risk when decided to build our tower, because we were not sure about will it work or not. Of course we made some testing before using our small model, but we still had some doubts. Finally then the tower was ready, we realized that it really stands! Our tutors really appreciated our desire to experiment and liked our idea.

The most successful studies are then all the theory you can test in practice, this was also proved working on this project. Such practice made us to use new skills and I think that for the most of students it helped to feel more advanced in structural theory.