2/17 & 2/19

2/17

Today in class we toured Huff Hall, the Armory, and the Football practice building.

We started class with Huff hall and began discussing the ceiling and the structure of it. The ceiling actually reminded me of a bridge by my grandma's house, so I guess it kind of works in the same way. Through a series of metal rods, the largest arch transfers the force put onto it into columns that are located on the sides of the stadium. There was also another beam (maybe it was called a tress?, I don't quite remember) that caused the largest arch to seem like it was smaller than it actually is.

We then went to the armory, which was my favorite building of the day. One side of the arch is cemented down, and a pin is used to hold the two sides together so that the building can't really move. They then added rooms in addition to this which are on the second level. These rooms put stress onto beams that then make a pathway through other beams until all of the stress from the rooms are eventually put into a series of columns.

Lastly we went to the football practice stadium. I didn't find that one quite as impressive as the others, but it was interesting that they chose to do the arch the opposite way that most people would.

2/19

Today we finished discussing the threshold projects. I really liked seeing how thresholds meant different things to different people.

We also discussed our new assignment, which has a lot of rules to it... I came up with three ideas, but all of them were eventually knocked out from one rule or another. I'll figure something out!

2/10 &2/12

2/10

Today we were supposed to tour the mechanical room of the architecture building, but unfortunately that didn't happen! The room was re-keyed, and no one was able to get in.

Something really cool about the heaters in the building that I learned about was that it pushes hot air out by pulling in cold air. The air conditioning in one of the design rooms also runs on the same concept. It's kind of interesting to me just because we've discussed this kind of process in one of my chemistry classes, and now it's applicable to real life.

We instead followed pipes around the building and discussed those. Most of the pipes were labeled which is a really good idea, even though it's not something you'd first think of doing.

There wasn't a whole lot that stuck out to me today as being incredibly interesting other than the heaters, so I suppose this will be a relatively short post, but it was still a cool tour, and I loved being able to walk around the building and see a bunch of the rooms!


2/12

Today we looked at approximately half of the projects due today about the threshold assignment. It was really interesting to see what everyone's interpretation of thresholds are! There's not too much to write about today, but it was still a pretty cool day!

2/5/15

We toured Krannert on Thursday, and learned a lot of really interesting things that I would never have known otherwise. We started out our tour in the main lobby (which is approximately nine tennis courts long), where we learned about the floor. It's a very interesting design that was apparently designed by Eleanora Krannert. The floor also contained an entire shipment of an endangered tree (not remembering the name), so people that work at Krannert are very protective of it apparently! I believe the tour guide said there was no gum chewing allowed. It was kind of cool to look at the floor and see how it has worn over time. You were able to see hundreds of little pocket marks from women's heels.

We then ventured to the scene shop which was really cool to see (I did set design for theater in high school). The scene shop apparently has a different foundation than that of the stages so that if people are working in the shop, the vibrations wouldn't be felt on stage.

We went into the playhouse later, and we found that it had 92 feet of fly space above the stage box. This is kind of unusual because most stages have their fly space in the wings. We also found out that each of the theaters were built with a specific purpose. The Great Hall was built for concerts, the playhouse was built for plays, and another was built for operas.

This tour was particularly interesting to me because I did tech in high school and came down to Krannert for Theaterfest one year.