At first, each group was assigned to do the element they designed because they know the dimension and detail better than those who did not design the pieces. My group was assigned to the sculpture, building a sculpture with brick is not as easy as we think. We have to cut each 10″ by 3″ brick into 4 trapezoid pieces so they can be stacked into a cylinder shape, the workers can easily do it by holding a brick in one hand and hit it once with a brick trowel. We do not possess the skill they have, so we figured our own way of doing it by putting the brick on an elevated surface and creating a fragile point.
The beauty of design & build is that there is always change we need to deal with, even when the drawing is finalized. The appearance of the man-face sculpture changed a lot because it causes extra work for us to make it exactly the sameas the drawings. We also get to try different options in the process of making the face, and it was interesting.
Another small issue we have to consider is the stability, we use liquid cement as filler for the inner support, but the inner pressure can easily destroy the brick wall if it is not dried every 3 hours.
I would say the building of tree house possesses most fun among all the structures. Not only it used our most advanced machine-the circular saw but also it is built on a temporary ladder, so whoever walk up the ladder is like doing a ballet dance. Basically, how they build the tree house is by building a base and a roof with some connecting pieces.
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