Week 1 Studio Journal Marta Elefterijadis 640888

Our group decided to create our tower with a triangular base. We felt that this would be the most sturdy option, while allowing us to use less blocks to build the tower.

We also decided to incorporate a certain wall structure as can be seen above; the spacing was again done so that we would use less blocks in order to build higher.

Despite the base, as we went higher we realised that our tower not only became rounder (resulting in the circular edges as can be seen in the picture above), but it also tended to lean to various sides, which made it look almost rickety in shape.

Doors in the form of archways were incorporated into the design at a later stage. It was difficult to begin to make these archways as we were unsure of the overall stability of our structure, as well as where the load bearing points were.

Eventually we began by twisting one block at a time inwards and slowly pulling it out of place to create an opening.

As we were building these archways in order to fit a toy dog (pictured below) we had to measure the opening in conjunction with the toy.

We found that the dog was 13 wooden blocks high and roughly 5 across.

Constructing Environments - Sem2

Week 1 Studio Journal Marta Elefterijadis 640888

Once making one archway, we decided to include another two (one on each side of the tower). This allowed us to fit the dog in from any side.

Addition of windows further on.

As we built further up, we realised that we were running out of wooden building blocks. To compensate, we enlarged the makeshift windows on all three sides of the tower.

It was found that many of the blocks easily shifted when we tried to twist and pull the out of the structure. With this we were able to accurately see where the load bearing points of our structure were, as well as giving us yet more blocks at our expense to build even higher.

Constructing Environments - Sem2

Week 1 Studio Journal Marta Elefterijadis 640888

Constructing Environments - Sem2

Eventually we built our tower quite high, but in the end it collapsed. It was found that possible cause could have been:

* The rickety nature of the tower; the fact that it didnt go straight up, and instead was built leaning in a wave-like pattern may have caused a fault in the stability, especially further up.

* The change in shape; as the tower went from the initial triangle shape to the later more circular tower, it could have lost some of the initial stability due to a shift in the load bearing points.

* In our quest to build higher, we took out too many of the blocks from the lower parts of the tower; this was not done with caution towards the end, and so the tower collapsed as we took out one too many blocks.