With just over 3 weeks to go, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Veterinary students working on the Wild Carnivore Facility Design Build Project have entered the exciting phase of framing the structure of the new husbandry facility. Weeks of design work have been followed by careful preparation of the site, including the installation of new gates created by the craftsmen of University Facilities to make sure the perimeter remains secure, and a new road designed and created by the students in the class.
A Landscape Architect Student works on the road detail in front of the new access gates.
Then it was time to pour the footings. One thing learned, if you are in dire need of rain, just dig some footings. The rain will come. Mucking the footer holes was an excellent bonding event for the students in the class.
Footers and pilings carefully dug and positioned and ready for cement.
The logistics of working with limited access to the site called for unusual measures. Rather than the more common approach of bringing a cement mixer to the site, students mixed and poured 217 eighty pound bags of concrete to create their foundation. Everyone was in on the lifting, mixing and settling the concrete. The whole pour was completed and every thing cleaned up in a half a day, a major feat.
Team work conquers the foundation.
Ready for the next step.
Lots of learning is going on as students of each profession help educate the others on the best way to approach the many different skill sets needed to create the project. Some students have worked diligently in the shops at the College of Design, custom cutting and welding the steel post fittings, designing and building the windows that will be used in the project and even carefully re-planing and cutting recycled materials to keep the project on budget and on time. Others have bent their backs on the site clearing, grading, moving materials and now framing the structure.
An experienced advanced architecture graduate student instructs a willing, if modestly nervous veterinary student in the fine art of cutting posts with a super-sized circular saw.
An architecture student (left) and veterinary student (right) learn the fine points of getting grades and contours just right for proper drainage from the lead landscape architecture student on the project.
And finally the framing gets under way. The building begins to get just a bit of form as the team accelerates towards the finish.