GordonYancharHawkenProjects2025

  Going into the final days of our project, we would need to complete our 3D model including the canopy, diagrams of the space, renderings, and an in context model for our presentation. Like most architects, we were rushed to finish working nearing our deadline. After we realized that our first 3D model wasn’t going to work for our final physical deliverable, we spent more time in the Thinkbox on campus on Tuesday. Then, we realized that they would be closing on Thursday meaning that Wednesday would be our last day to print our model. Luckily, our print didn’t take as long this time and we were able to get it on Wednesday night before they closed for the holidays. Although, once again the supports made from the print were a problem for us that we were faced with Thursday. After spending a few hours using tools to try to remove them without breaking our design, we realized that after so much work this model wouldn’t work for us either since we couldn’t get out the supports. Ultimate...

       Starting our third and final week, our print luckily finished as we had hoped. This was a concern ending the last week since when Alex and I had checked the timer had added time and we were worried it would go into our final week. Thankfully, we had a successful print and were more or less satisfied with how it turned out. Although, it didn’t show details as well as we hoped, so we planned to try to reprint it in the near future. Also, one thing we spent time on was designing a canopy over our stair. After some renditions, we settled on a circular covering with steel framing and a plexiglass or glass in order to allow light in but keep precipitation out, as well as keeping it from piling up by making the covering circular. While Alex worked on creating the covering digitally, I worked on the diagrams and formatting our presentation. We planned to have two large posters to convey our work to present, with one being more about the problem and the other being abo...

            Moving on, Alex and I decided that as part of our presentation, one thing we wanted to have was a physical model. Before we could make this model, we had to ensure that our design was ready and all the dimensions were correct, as well as massing the area around the stairway to give context to the model. Once we were satisfied, we took a trip to the Sears Thinkbox, which is a part of the CWRU campus that is open to the public where people can design and build whatever they want with the numerous machines in the building. For both Alex and I, we had no prior experience before this project with 3D printing, so it was a challenge to figure out printing our model. Luckily, we were given lots of help by the students working there and we spent our whole day at the building figuring out 3D printing. We had to transfer our design into a new software specifically for printing, and then edit it there to be able to make it ready to print. We came out w...

  Now that we settled on our final design, over the next few days we were challenged with sizing of the dimensions of our staircase. After a lot of experimentation and going over code and regulations for staircases that we previously researched, we finally got our staircase to scale to fit in the space as we desired. Doing this was a milestone for the both of us and gave me more experience with real world architecture as most of my work previously has been conceptual with not as much regard to fitting designs into a restricted space, which is something that will contribute to my future in architecture. Also, as I have learned from other architects I have talked to, much of everyday architecture in the field is collaborative, which is something that studying in college does not teach. That being said, I think working with Alex will further improve both our future paths since we’ve both gotten to understand how to work well together so that we are satisfied as well as our mentor in o...

On my third day, I was finally able to go into the office to work on our project. It was great to meet everyone, and I felt very welcomed and happy to be there. Being in the office was a whole new experience, and it has started to give me even more of an insight into the profession. Additionally, having Alex and I right together and working on the same project has been positive both for our work and our overall enjoyment since we work well together. My mentor has not been giving too much guidance and has let us figure out many things on our own, which has allowed us to learn a lot already. We took a look at an example presentation of a project they previously worked on at the campus, and took inspiration from it as we will be creating our own elements of this to showcase and present our project to others at the office, giving us experience on another element of the job. The project hasn’t been easy, as there's many details and complications to the stairwell regarding regulations, l...

  For the first two days, I was working primarily from home since we had problems with weather and Alex and I were not able to go into the office. For these first two days, I got to know my mentor better and really got a better understanding of my scope of work and the things I will need to learn to be able to do it. For the staircase we are designing, as they would do for any project, we need to create a massing of the surrounding buildings. To make this, I had to learn a software called Sketchup, which I have been using to create a 3D massing of the space. It has taken me a lot of time to figure out how to use it and use it efficiently, so that is what I dedicated a great deal of time to these first two days. I believe I was successful and I created our first massing of the area and most importantly become familiar with a software that will be greatly needed not just in the future with this project but my future with architecture and similar software. The model I created will be ...