Design & Innovation

Growing up I was always a fan of building things whether it was with blocks, in the sand, or just with whatever was lying around. So when I first bought my house about a year ago, I wanted to make sure I liked it, but I also didn’t want it to be perfect because if it was perfect then I wouldn’t have anything to do. Since I didn’t really have much experience in the construction business I decided that my first project would be to completely re-do my basement since that’s probably the part of the house that is seen the least. And lucky for me I have a grandfather, who is just a complete workhouse and an amazing craftsman to assist me in this project. And thanks to the “design” techniques of the previous owners, I quickly realized that his help was going to be needed a lot more than I originally anticipated (However, for me that also meant it was going to be a lot more fun :)). Although I’ll never know for sure, I have to assume that the biggest flaw in my previous owner’s constructing of the basement is that he had absolutely no plan of what he was going to do. It seemed like he just bought the materials and started “hammering” away. The more we started tearing down the basement, the more amazed I became at how horribly designed this basement really was. For starters, as you walk down the steps, there is only a 5 foot clearance, which forces the majority of people to duck as they walk down. Also, there were 3 different layers of tile put down on the uneven basement floor and for some reason he decided to use a “tar-like” substance to hold them in place. Luckily my grandpop has every tool ever known to man, so after a few ideas that weren’t working so well, we finally were able to get the tiles up by diagonally chopping at them with a hatchett and then using an ice scraper to remove the smaller pieces. Our next challenge was removing the paneling off of the walls. Although, this wasn’t as challenging as removing the tiles, the designing of the walls were just as mind-boggling. The wood framing that the panels were nailed to had no pattern, balance, levelness, or continuity. It looked like who ever did it was just grabbing pieces of wood and connecting them together in any way he/she felt like it. Also, behind these walls there were old pipes, some of which were connected to nothing and others that were connected to the water line, but didn’t lead anywhere. The worst part was that these water pipes were actually leaking, causing a nice amount of water damage. So me and my grandpop went to work with some pipe cutters and a blow torch and started removing all these unecessary pipes. Finally, the basement was a cleaered out and cleaned up, so we were ready to start working. Because the process of “gutting” the basement took a lot longer than I anticipated to complete, I was eager to start building, so I said, “Come on grandpop let’s go buy some dry wall and some studs and start putting up this wall.” He just looked at me and shook his head, so I asked him what was wrong and he said, “You know your grandmother is alwasy bragging about how smart you are, but you’re looking pretty stupid right now. We just spent the better part of a month ripping apart a basement because of how poorly it was designed  and you want to go right ahead and do the same thing. We can’t just start building, we need to come up with a plan, we need to take a look around and see exactly what we want to do and what we have to get.” Then he pulls out a piece of paper that shows the layout of my basement with all the dimensions written on it that he supposedly drew up one night when he couldn’t fall asleep. So we started walking around the basement discussing ideas on what we could and couldn’t do and in a couple hours we came up with a pretty good design. He then said to me that this probably isn’t exactly the way it’s going to look like in the end because there may be problem down the road that we aren’t seeing right now, or ideas we haven’t thought of just yet, but at least now we have a game plan to follow. I was so impressed at how good he was at this that I had to ask him how he knew all this and he replied, “When you grow up being forced to work with your hands to make a living, you quickly start to realize that the only way you are going to survive is by keeping your body strong and healthy. The best way to do that is to stop and think before you act. Visualize what you are going to do before you do it and in the end the job is going to look a whole lot better and won’t take nearly as much effort to finish it.” Isn’t it just amazing how wise and knowledgable my grandpop is

I recently came across a picture of the Knut Hamsun Center http://www.designboom.com/eng/ (The picture is about half way down the page) The Center is a Scandanvian project by Steven Holl Architects that is set to be completed in Hamaroy, Norway in 2009. The building is dedicated to the great Norwegian writer by the same name. The reason I felt compelled to write about this is because when I first looked at the unique design of this building, I didn’t see a building, but instead I saw a “running head”. If you don’t see it yourself then stay with me for a minute and let me try and explain it to you. First of all you have to picture him facing to the left. The way the top part of the stairs are shaped makes it look like its right arm, while the portion of the stairs in the back of the building is its left. The top window looks like its one eye, while the lower one looks like its opened mouth. Finally, on top you can see its spiky blonde hair. Now I’m assuming that its mouth is wide open because it is running after its friend who it looks like just fell face first into the dirt (the smaller building to the right). Now I doubt that this is what the architects had in mind when they were designing this building, but I think it’s still pretty interesting how it turned out, or at least how this class is ”warping” my mind ;)