Outdoor STEM Space
Task:
For this project, my group's job was to make a "pitch" to a company about a piece of furniture that we could build and put somewhere on the San Marin Campus. We had to follow certain requirements like it couldn't be too expensive and it had to have certain wood.
My presentation includes:
Blueprints:
Model:
Budget List:
To make our design, we used...
Human Use Patterns and Use of Sunlight Angels
We decided to use a location on campus that would have shade but at the same time would be relatively flat:
The reason why this spot would be perfect is that when the sun rises, the bench will be showered with the sun in the morning since it is rising on the opposite side of the tree. This would allow all the morning dew to come off and also will provide shade when it is hotter in the afternoon. This would cause more people to sit on it because it is more comfortable.
Materials and blueprinting
We knew that the different types of wood we would use in our design would affect how we would build our furniture:
The blueprint was the most important part of this project. it allowed us to know what wood we needed and what sizes we needed to use in order to be able to build our design. We used the blueprint to know the exact lengths of the wood pieces and we also had to decide which pieces were pressure treated and which ones were not. The only parts that were not pressure-treated were the benches that you would sit on and the table. Pressure treatment would only be for pieces that were near/touching the ground.
3d Modeling
We built our 3d model after we finished our blueprint as a scaled version of our design.
We used our 3d model to get a grasp on what it would look like in real life. This part of the project is where we made the most adjustments, we change the part where the side of the bench would go straight (at the end of the bench). We decided to remove them completely and just make them all diagonal. This also allowed us to see what part of the build would be possible to build.
Budgeting and Materials List:
To make companies want to build our design, we would have to get materials that where relatively cheap and possible to get.
Our material/budget list was mainly for companies to look at. Most companies would prefer materials that are cheaper and easy to get. Our budget list also made us think about our design more deeply. We knew that a lot of it would be more expensive than other designs so we tried to cut down on the amount of wood we used. We first tried to find wood that was less expensive than others. Then, we tried to find wood in different formats that wood still fit our needs but just cost less. This allowed us to lower the cost of our design.
Reflection:
This project was very fun to do but at the same time it was very difficult. At the same time, I think that the positives of the project outweighed the negatives. My group and I really enjoyed coming up with ideas to build something interesting for our school. What was cool about our project is that the requirements weren't very tight. We got to choose something closer to a booth and we had a lot of fun making the design. Another part I enjoyed the most was having to put real-world science into making our design. It was interesting how we were supposed to do things like use different types of wood which is something I didn't know before.
Although this project was very fun to do, it was very difficult. There were so many factors that we had to take into account which made us have to alter our design multiple times. We chose a design that most people would consider to be complex and that made blueprinting very hard. Since our design had cuts in the wood that would not come directly from stores, the budgeting list was hard to make since we couldn't calculate the exact price of all the wooden pieces we needed. Another part that was hard is that in home depot, most of the wood that where the same sizes we needed where all pressure treated, and that would make everything we would put on the table unable to be used because of the chemicals.