Constructing Environments

Cheng Wei Lydia Chen 641119

Week One Journal

Tower Building

1.

We began with a circular base rather than a rectangular base to reduce footprint and to save more building

blocks for later.

We decided to try an evenly distributed load as we thought a stable base will enable the tower to go higher.

Constructing the blocks this way allows the forces to be spread evenly down the blocks, enabling a sturdy base.

The circular base also wasn’t fully closed, so we could fit the dog in later on.

2.

Because we didn’t close off the circle, the ends had to be supported. We decided to place a building block in the

opposite direction of the other blocks and the ends of every second later to support the structure.

This way, the gap between each block would stay even and the ends would have a better support as the centre

of the block is being used as compared to just one half of the block.

Tower Building

3.

When we achieved a height that we believed would fit the height of the dog, we began closing thee

circle to save some blocks and also to achieve height.

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4.

Then, we began to place the blocks with the shorter ends towards the centre to reduce even more

area from the circle as we were running out of blocks.

Tower Building

.

5.

The centre circle was then completely covered with blocks to allow point load to occur as we were aiming.

6.

With the last few blocks, we had to achieve the maximum amount of height- by simply building with point

load, and lots of careful balance as the top became really unbalanced. This is because sideways force could

easily unstable a point load as it compresses with a top and bottom force.

Tower DeconstructionWhen we were pulling blocks apart, we decided to start

with the curves in the middle as we thought that most of

the force was enforced upon the 2 side walls.

We were correct, support began to spread to the two sides

of the tower was the middle blocks were pulled apart easily.

The hole in the middle eventually became a strip, but the

sides no longer supported the upper half of the tower, so it

fell apart.

Construction of Tower