The Sight of Glass

With Exhibition Day looming, it was time to put the finishing touches on our model. We began by zip tying each of the long stands to each other. After all of the pieces were joined into three large sections, we tightened all of the zip ties and cut the extra length from each of them. This will ensure that there are not long white strips interrupting the transparency of each of our pieces, a quality essential to many of our main design objectives. Next we drilled holes in the edge pieces of each strand so that we could attach them to the base. Many of us supported the first section as a screw was inserted through the hole in the polycarbonate and the metal connections. We put washers on either side of the plastic and finished the connection with a nut. After each of the three sections were connected in this manner, we zipped them together and began removing the plastic covering from the inside of each of the pieces. We left the outside plastic for tomorrow to ensure the transparency of the material would not be ruined by the nearby tree and its birds, but we have one final challenge left for tomorrow. The School of Architecture insisted that we move our site so the walls and joists which we were originally planning on using to support the cantilevering end of our structure will not exist anymore because our new site is the middle of a courtyard. We have to devise a system to secure these members without the assistance of our old site, a design twist right before deadline, but with a little more designing, we will be able to see our Glass Pavilion supporting itself by tomorrow morning. We can't wait to show off our pavilion to whoever comes to visit.