Member Sizing

Having settled on the structural design, I then did a quick calculation to determine what member sizes we required. I assumed that a 100kg person would grab hold of the edge of rim, and with a downward velocity a conservative maximum would be to design for a 2kN load there. The calcs are shown below, and show just how efficient this structure is with 20mm diameter, 2mm thick aluminium circular hollow sections working fine. One point to note however, is that these probably wouldn't be large enough for someone to hang directly off them (the bars would start at approximately 2.5m above the ground, and so are within jumping reach), but they still wouldn't be too large.

Taking this one stage further, I have put together a bill of materials and included on this a weight calculation. Amazingly, the total mass of the whole structure is predicted at under 20kg, with the timber board accounting for most of it! Due to the above consideration about bottom bars, it would be more realistic to say under 25kg. However, the construction would be done in stages with the heavy 12kg board attached near the end, so this design is definitely lightweight enough to be easily lifted into place.

Materials	Specification	Material	Mass (kg)
Wooden Board	1.4 x 0.8m, 15mm thick	Treated Timber	12.60
Board Frame	30 x 3mm RHS	Aluminium	2.27
Support Structure	Ø20, 2mm thick CHS	Aluminium	1.07
Clamps	6mm thick plate	Aluminium	1.82
Clamp inserts	Various shapes	Rubber	1.64
		Total	19.40 kg
	Density of Timber	750 kg/m^3
	Density of Aluminium	2810 kg/m^3
	Density of Rubber	1522 kg/m^3

New idea for a name

'Street Hoops' is not really doing it. My workmate commented that he thinks it sounds like something you would eat out of a tin!
A suggestion was made of changing the name to:

'DOWNTOWN'

This is a reference to basketball- 'three points from downtown'- and plays on the fact that we are planning to install basketball hoops in downtown locations.
After discussion, it was suggested that this should be slightly altered to:

'3 POINTS FROM DOWNTOWN'

Finally, this was shortened to:

'3 POINTS DOWNTOWN'

An obvious reference to basketball is made, and the name will allow us to install 3 basketball hoops in downtown locations.

How does everyone feel about this? Any minor changes? Go back to 'Street Hoops'?

First drawings....

Bit backdated now, but here are the sketches of the original idea....

The missing link

So how did we come to go from a large steel structure to these street hoops? Mike has already outlined some of our eventful Monday meeting with the guys from Studio AR, but this really all came about from some sketches we'd put together. (My post last week about them being key was right!) These sketches are shown below and are what made us realise that the structure was really two parts - a vertical support and a mechanism for holding the hoop and board. If we substitued building a vertical support for using existing vertical supports, eg lampposts or even trees, then all we would need is a neat bit of structural design to attach the board to these.

Simple, playful, innovative and meaningful.

Location is everything

A walk at lunchtime showed some great locations for street hoops in the area around the Building Centre...

Street Hoops

Bringing space back to the streets...

As Mike has outlined in the last post, we have slightly changed our idea for the London Festival of Architecture from a large single steel I-beam construction, to hopefully many lightweight basketball hoop structures. What would the impact on London be if overnight 20 of these were attached to lampposts? Could these transform disused space in the urban heart of London, into areas of play and fun? Would it be possible to have a space where city bankers come in their suits during lunchtime, and then a youth club in the evening?

We believe it is possible, and we think the London Festival of Architecture is a fantastic opportunity to start this off.

To help visualise what it would look like, have a look at some of the working sketches below.

A summary of Mondays meeting and our new direction

We had an extremely interesting workshop on Monday, and subsequently the designs moving in a slightly different direction.

We initially were running with our previous ida of a basketball hoop constructed from I beams and various other building matterials, and discussed some possible changes to it, such as having a lower hoop attached to the back for children to use, and the possiblity of securing the base within some kind of oild drum or simialar container, from which greenery could be grown.

However, after discussing our idea with Alex and Rory from StudioAR, they suggested simply taking the top section of our of our basketball hoop assembly and rather than supplying the I-beam which forms the majority of the structure we find a way to secure the board to lamposts and other fixtures around the city. The hoops could be used for street games of basketball, and moved around to different locations on the different days of the festival.

Its a bit of a departure from our previous idea of focusing on recycling building materials, but still meets the brief of reuse/recycle in that its reusing elements in the city such as trees lamposts etc for a new purpose, and its reusing the space where the games would be played. The hoop itself would be being reused everyday, rather than having some huge permanent structure left over after the festival.

This is just a brief summary of the idea, setting out where its comefrom, but its something we're very excited about and feel has a huge ammount of potential. When Alex and Rory were discussing the idea with us Alex mentioned other schemes like Street ping pong, and Street pianos  which have worked a bit like this at using space in a new way by installing things which you wouldn't usually find in the middle of london. I remember seeing one of the street pianos in London once and being pretty impressed by the whole thing, hopefully our proposal can have the same effect.