Turf laid, job done

A break in the rain gave Swatton the chance to finish his job with laying the turf.
Thanks Steve and Will, you did a great job! Thanks for your advise, keeping an eye on the details and delivering precise work, on time, without any problems.
If only the organising bit of this project was so straightforward!

Apparently the University leaves the tarmac path in the grass as it is, for the time being… How daft is that? All I can say is: that is just typical, a path to nowhere.

I hope to get better pics tomorrow!

Surfaces

Last week the floor is concreted in and the rendering is done. Sadly my photocamera isn’t working anymore.  I’m taking pictures with the video camera or use stills from the video but the quality is not great.

Now the bricks are gone the surface comes to the foreground and we see the wall as one curving warped surface. I’ve tried to sharpen it by giving the top of the wall an edge. Now its waiting to get it all dry for painting. Swatton will finish the site with leveling the soil and lay grass turf .

Video part 2

If link to video isn’t working go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEfqcCnGY8I

Edge and floor

Subbase

We were lucky to finish the brickwork last week while it was still dry. Now we hope to construct the concrete floor, which will be cast on the subbase.

The images of today show the compacted ‘MOT Type 1′ and an indication of the shape or edge of the concrete. We will add to the concrete some black dye to colour it as dark as possible. The triangular line in the floor will be steel, and refers to the string used to create the shape of the ellipse with three foci. I used strings to draw this shape at the beginning to sketch and draw the initial ideas and Robin Hankin created an algorithm to make it possible to model it in 3D. Now its great to see the result of this mixture of digital and tactile way of working.

Today the Project group (Reps of University, Rolls-Royce and CDC)  had a meeting about the opening. Probably somewhere in November but more about that later…

Last brick

Today Will and Steven have finished the brick laying and we are now discussing the floor and render.

For the first time I can experience standing in the ‘SoundUnit’ space. A realy warped space! How weired to see it now in real, after so long having worked on it in 3D digital reality. Will and Steven have been saying for a few days how difficult it is to keep everything level. They keep seeing everything warped and distorted as if they are seeing it through a wide angle lens. My small photo camera does the same, it distorts and barrels. So experience wise the images give a good impression.

Walls continued (2)

Video part 1

if link does not work click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i296EfMFCUU

Walls continued …

Will is going for it… Wall A3 is at its full hight. The curves are getting better and better.

Building up the walls

The damp proof course with solid black engineering brick is now ready and will stay visible.

The foundation trench is filled with excavated soil and the inside of the ellipse is covered with MOT Type 1 aggregate. All spoil is removed with grab loads.

Steve and Will continue to build up the wall with standard bricks. Their main problem will be to keep the curve the same as is set out for the first course. They have to keep checking with the spirit level and which slows it all down but at least it should keep things straight …

I’m working on a video that shows all this but then speeded up.