Construction Day 20

from Valerie Bennett at http://aalog.net

Pavilion Detail - Day 19

Construction - Day 19

via aalog.net
photo by Valerie Bennett

Pavilion Detail - Day 18

Construction - Day 18

via aalog.net
photo by Valerie Bennett

DRL10 Exhibition

From the AA website:

• AA Exhibitions
• DRL Ten
• 25/02/2008 -18/03/2008
  Mon–Fri, 10.00-7.00, Sat, 10.00–3.00

The exhibition celebrates the tenth anniversary of the AA’s Design Research Lab (DRL), featuring current work by DRL tutors and students as well as projects selected from some 354 DRL graduates, as part of a series of events in February and March. The collective mission of the DRL TEN events is to narrate the history of student and staff work, to evaluate the programme’s collaborative teaching and learning methods, and to speculate on future terms of design research in an evolving global architectural culture.

A further physical manifestation of the DRL’s vision will be on display in Bedford Square in March in the form of a pavilion designed by Alan Dempsey (DRL 2002) and Alvin Huang (DRL 2004). Their (C)Space Pavilion – selected through competition – will be constructed of fibre-reinforced precast concrete panels.

DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium, the second book in the AADRL Documents series will be published in March and combines a visual survey of the evolution of the DRL with texts by the programme directors and Andrew Benjamin, Mark Burry, Mark Cousins, Zaha Hadid, Christopher Hight and Jeffrey Kipnis, among others.

DRL TEN is curated by Yusuke Obuchi, Patrik Schumacher, Theodore Spyropoulos and Tom Verebes.

Construction - Day 16

"Live" Exhibitionism...

So the DRL TEN exhibition opened this Friday, with the DRL10 seminar following on Saturday. The exhibition showcases 10 years of projects at the Design Research Laboratory at the AA, but maybe even more interestingly showcases some of the built work of the 350+ alumnus of the experimental graduate program. Visitors to the seminar on Saturday got to see a "live" exhibition, as the primary steel structure was delivered, craned into place, and assembled. It was quite a site, as the steel members are HUGE and definitely drew an audience.

The steel arrived in 3 pre-fabricated assemblies consisting of 2 "nose" pieces assembled from 15mm sheets of structural steel, and a "bridge" piece which completed the arch spanning between them. Each assembly was hoisted by a 25 ton crane and slotted into the concrete ground cross members assembled over the last week with painstaking precision through a combined effort from the sheet fabricators, crane operators, Rieder team, surveying team, and DRL team to coordinate the positioning and notch locations accurately. As each component was placed, 3D coordinates located at pre-defined points on the structure were measured with a Total Station by our surveying team and cross-checked with our 3D model and set out drawings to ensure accuracy.





After final positioning and adjusting, the third and final assembly was dropped into place with startling accuracy (to be honest, I still can't believe how easy this one was), and then bolted and spliced to the other two to complete the assembly of the primary structure.