Finale

Yurt Finale

Images from the final presentation

A Very Yurty Breakfast

The thing about sleeping outside is that I always wake up when the sun rises, and I can only roll over so many times until I give up and get out of bed. At 5:45 am.
At least it gave me plenty of time to make breakfast. Sadly, the empty egg crates were discarded. They, like their 3,000+ brethren, will be recycled. And made into more egg crates. I'm just hoping to stop dreaming of egg crates, and/or having nightmares about rainstorms the night before our final presentation. Now let us never speak of egg crates again.

Twenty Ways to Reuse an Egg Crate

Apparently when we started this project, I did not do due diligence in searching online for spontaneous egg crate usage. Here is a fantastic website with 20 ways to Reuse an Egg Crate. Below are pictures from some of the more interesting ones, which include more lighting solutions, more furniture, apparel, decoration and toys. Maybe we aren't yet the world's experts in egg crates after all

And for a few more artistic pieces (and some other spontaneous architecture, including the Heidelberg Project I showed images from in the first month of class) see another post on the same website

And Some Decor

And for spicing up the living space, how about an egg crate vase, seen here, or an egg crate table, seen here.

Spontaneous Lighting Ideas

Here's an idea we might use for the lighting of our structure. See more images here
Another egg crate lamp can be seen here.

Spanning

After the penultimate review, we arranged our structure into its final form. However, it was clear that while the rear section, supported by two 8mm rebars could support itself, the narrower front section could not. As a temporary measure, we introduced a column inside, "borrowing" one of Bang's tubes. The result is a rather nice entryway, and a structure reminiscent of the tradition dwelling on Tatooine.

The next step was to try and strengthen the front half, so that the column would be unnecessary. Since the rebar was so successful in the rear half, we decided to try adding some to the front as well. However, we were concerned about reopening the whole structure, and instead decided to try and insert the rebars with the structure semi-intact. To make this easier, we elected to use 6mm, smooth rebar. However, this did not prove to be strong enough, as the building stood initially but experienced delayed structural failure.

After much deliberation, we elected to add another 8 mm rebar to the front section. So far, it appears like we have success!

A short video of the interior of our structure:

What remains is to complete the floor, minor rearrangements of the envelope, some decisions regarding skylights and partitions, and a general cleanup.

supply chain factory workers; the night shift

Wow...these pipes are overwhelming

Name that Shape

In the last few weeks we've noticed that our egg crate buildings tend to look like various other items and objects. So what did the most recent building look like? Well, with apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot, here are some possibilities:

I guess if it appears so often in nature, it must be a somewhat functional and stable shape. Any other suggestions for similarly shaped objects?

Some Assembly Required

Pictures of us putting together our penultimate pod.