Model/Drawings Done!

Time to sleep in! Woohoo!!!

I was pretty impressed with the turnout for the model. There were many noticeable mistakes, but only to a very discerning eye. Every aspect of the model was carefully thought out and designed by the class as a whole. It was a very painful process, but I think we all grew up because of it.

In the process, some people were claiming parts of the model to be their's, as in Boback's and Kelly's use of "my" in front of model. I did notice that each person responsible for crafting the buildings were from UTA. So we showed them! I didn't really feel like making any of the model, because I figured that model making is something that is incredibly easy to do, particularly because how small our building was. I felt that I was the best person in my group of 3 (Alex from UTA, Brent from Tennessee, and I) to do drawings. In the end, the comments made on the drawings were that they read very well from far away, but the closer you got, the more the details became apparent. They also appreciated how the site section extended all the way to the water, indicating it's importance to the site. They also thought that the attention to detail with respect to materiality was important, because the building design and its construction was so traditional (and uninteresting) that it was almost necessary to document its finer details.

There was a great deal of time spent discussing the model. I was impressed with how much of the model was constructed from the same material: black alder. It is supposedly a wood that is native to the Kotka area, which is the big city near Sunila. The way it was constructed was by taking about 6 inch pieces of (almost 2x4) lumber so that the grain of the wood is shown on top. Those were laminated together on the 6-inch-skinny side in a staggered 2-ply. My problem was that this lumber was not planed to a uniform dimension on the flat side before they were laminated and staggered. This produced intermittent gaps. This was somewhat fixed by inserting shims into the larger gaps, but the smaller gaps were still present. Dan, a student from Catholic University in Washington, had an idea for the ground cover that was fairly efficient and effective in its presentation. It was to lightly hammer a chisel at the surface in a somewhat random fashion. This roughened the surface which resulted in a high contrast between it and the smooth-sanded grass.

On my group's portion of the site, there were a significant number of reeds close to the water. I proposed the best solution for creating these reeds, and we stumbled onto it by mistake. When planing the 2-ply strips of lumber, the grain of the wood was fed parallel to the direction of the planing blade. Therefore, instead of the blade cutting off small bits of wood as it would if the grain was the other direction, it cut off long strips of wood that still held together somewhat. These long strips clogged the vacuum pipe and spewed soft strips of wood everywhere! Gluing these strips in the center and then rolling them up bunch down the center, they would later be cut in half, making perfect small scale reeds. It wasn't a painful process, but it took time, and lot of workers to produce the amount we needed

A large portion of Finland sits atop an enormous formation of granite. Throughout the site, there were large granite boulders. They looked as if they grew out of the earth. With this in mind, we wanted the model to achieve the same effect. Thus, we used scraps from the black alder. Brent's idea was to take these scraps to the big sander and sand them down to faceted chunks. The way they sit on the model reads very clearly that they belong to the site and are not just foreign objects.

The idea for the trees was also Brent's. They were dowels that were cut and sanded roughly to a point, so they would resemble the various types of trees on the site: pine, birch, and spruce. This, in my opinion, was the least successful part of the model. There are so many trees with differing thicknesses in the actual landscape, it was very difficult to accurately model them. I believe the failure was due to the lack of a canopy as well as overgrowth. The density of the abstraction makes it look as if the surface is the back of a porcupine. Oh well, can't be perfect everywhere.

The entire model was made at a scale of 1 to 100. I don't know the exact dimensions, but I'd guess that it was around 3-4 meters long and 1.5-2 meters wide. The saunas were made with dark modeling wood. The main house was made with a combination of birch plywood and the same dark wood. There's no such thing as basswood here, nor is there micro-scale lumber. All of the modeling pieces had to be handcrafted. Very impressive work by Kelly, Alex, Boback, and Sergei.

The material used for the water was a piece of plywood with a semi-glossy stained wood laminate. Because the water sat on 3 edges of the base in which none of the corners formed a 90-degree angle, this made the construction very difficult. It had to be carefully mitered so that none of the plywood was evident. I was going to help on this part, but I became so caught up in the drawings that I couldn't divide my time. There were 3 people who worked solely on the construction of the base, so I gave them my 2 cents and every so often and kept working on the drawings. These 3 people were the ones who came from Catholic University in DC. One of them produced a section drawing for his group, but the other two did nothing, and went home earlier than everyone else, every day.

I lost a little bit of respect for the one who would, when I came down to work on the site model, constantly go on smoke breaks, as if they were required before, during, and after accomplishing the simplest of tasks. What's sad is that I talked to him at the beginning of the trip about quitting smoking. I told him I'd been done with smoking for about 6 months, he told me he had quit for a year and a half. He mentioned how if were even to try a cigarette, he wouldn't be able to stand the smell or taste. He now keeps a monument to his return to smoking at his desk. A pyramid of all the packs he's finished while at school. I think he's up to 14 now. This monument not only serves to remind him of his return, but it also how much time he wasted while he could've been working hard. He used to be a kind person, but now he's grumpy all the time. Perhaps this is because he plans go to cold-turkey before he returns to the states, where his girlfriend (who doesn't know) will greet him with the expectation that he hasn't smoked. I feel sorry for her, kind of as much as I feel sorry for myself for having to be his roommate during his proposed quitting period.

The last couple of weeks were pretty dull for me, since I was constantly working at school. I would get there everyday at 9:30, take 30 minute lunch at noon, history class at 4. I always needed a cup of coffee beforehand so I could stay awake. Work till about 12:30 am, catch the bus back home. Dinner sometimes came late, sometimes it was a cheap buy from the grocery store right across the street. On a few occasions, I borrowed my teacher's bicycle and rode it into the shopping center at Espoo (pronounced es-pohh). A few others and I would eat at a cheap and delicious kebab/pizza place. The free salad makes it all worthwhile :) The thrill of the bicycle ride reminded me how good it feels to be in touch with nature. Therefore, when I get back to the states, I plan to purchase a bicycle and ride it to and from school. Hopefully I will be able to find a good cheap one on Craigslist or something.

More things to talk about: my trip to Tallinn, Estonia, and midsummer celebration in Helsinki, cookout at Jari's.... when I have more time!