Today and yesterday have been all about clearing and preparing the site, taking final decisions on placement of the poles, and marking out those positions on the ground.
Today gave us a real buzz as we set out the building in its clearing, able to visualise the structure in place. We think it will be magical. But before then, there are one or two things to do...
The Land at Iona School is a fantastic resource- including a number of allotment plots (which are actually part of Sneinton Allotments), a 'story circle' amphitheatre, a couple of ponds and many many trees. You'd think we'd be spoilt for choice when it comes to sites for the new shelter, but in fact is has proved rather tricky.
The strongest contender in the early running was on the boundary of the school land and the allotment plots, but this was ruled out by planning restrictions on developments within 5 metres of a boundary.
Just today the final decision has been taken- to locate the structure in woodland at the heart of The Land, where it will nestle next to and connect a number of different areas of the site. The energetic Land Group set to work right away and by the end of the day had cleared the site. It really feels like things are underway, the hard work starts in earnest very soon...
Alina and Simon from 2hD architects have had a few meetings with Steve Wickham of Price & Myers engineers to develop the sketches up into a buildable, durable design. The initial design was for the circular roof to be supported by plywood beams radiating out to the posts at the edge, with the beams meeting in a single node in the centre:
Reciprocal frames are created from a closed circuit of mutually supporting elements- each beam leans on another beam. They can span large distances with relatively short beams, and are often found in nature (for example birds' nests). Better still, the geometry can be distorted to cope with the supporting posts being in non-regular locations...
Here's the developed design:
