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.

A second draft of the information boards

Following on from Andys comments on my first thoughts on the contents of the information boards I've had a go at a second draft for discussion at the workshop today.

"Overall, yes. Well done for putting it together and I like the direction. A few really quick points off the top of my head:

-          Design board probably split in two – design and then build

-          Ask more leading questions. Can we involve the public more? (Do we want to?)

-          Less text, more graphics (I know this was only a first draft)

-          We need to sort out our “take home” line. What one sentence or idea are people going to go away thinking? Is that clear and expressed enough? (I know we are inferring meaning in some aspects)"

The Spider's Web

To see if "The Spider's Web" option could work, I put together a Sketch Up model of it. A few snapshots are shown below. I really like the lightweight efficient structure holding up the basketball hoop, but the connection between the four tubes and the main steel I-beam is going to be a complicated one.

All the dimensions are accurate and conform to Olympic regulations.

Design Options

How do you go from idea to concept?

How can you convey your grand plans for how it will fit together and look?

Within design engineering the answer normally lies in sketches, and as such a big part of how this project will take shape is through them. A mix between an art and a science, a good sketch should both portray the overall shape and feel of the design, but also give the viewer an idea of dimensions and connections. A skill that is developed over years, not hours.

Below are some sketches of various design options for how our basketball hoop is going to look. They all have advantages and disadvantages, and it's up to us a team to discuss what is more important, practical, efficient and sustainable.

What's the answer? We don't know, but we're enjoying getting closer.

Some thoughts on the content of the information boards

Initial Sketches for Idea

Whilst going through the design process to come up what our idea was and how it should look overall, I drew up the following two sketches. These aren't the finished product but do show our progress on deciding what we're going for and what the important parts are.

Sketch 1: The area around our basketball hoop

 

Sketch 2: The Basketball Hoop design

Correspondance for ideas

Cool. Well if I get on with designing the structure over the next few days, can you all have a go at what you think the display boards should have on them? We can then hopefully decide on that on Friday so that we each can develop slides over the weekend and be well prepared for Monday.

From: Mike Howarth
Sent: 31 January 2012 14:55
To: Noel Brandley; Andrew Mather; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

Sounds great

Kind regards

Michael Howarth

Graduate Engineer

Building Services

T +44 (0)161 827 1890

mike.howarth@ramboll.co.uk

From: Noel Brandley
Sent: 31 January 2012 14:40
To: Andrew Mather; Mike Howarth; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

Andy- for me that is: Nail, Head è Direct hit!

Erm.....you’ve hit the nail on the head

From: Andrew Mather
Sent: 31 January 2012 14:39
To: Mike Howarth; Noel Brandley; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

There’s definitely a middle road through here. Firstly, attached is a better sketch of the bball hoop. I completely agree it needs to be a nice and visually pleasing structure without adverts. I think the Ramboll logo can be made to look good on it in some way though, but that is something we can get to later on. Not a critical thing at the moment. Secondly, I feel we can definitely cover the Cradle to Cradle idea incorporating the problem of waste. That won’t be large or complicated or something that people are bored of since it’s been covered too much. What I don’t think we should do is offer solutions to how the industry can better use steel/concrete etc, that part can be inferred from our design. Hence our displays illustrate the problem (inc facts), ask leading questions and then explain our design and show how to build it. We then will have educated people, got them thinking, engaged them with design, shown how our company puts design as important and done something unique for the festival.

How does that sound?

From: Mike Howarth
Sent: 31 January 2012 14:12
To: Noel Brandley; Andrew Mather; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

I just don’t see why using this to champion a design philosophy is overambitious. What realistically are people going to infer from the design other than recycling is good and there are things you can recycle in old buildings? We should be using this as a focal point to put across our message:

“At the moment the construction industry produce large amounts of waste, and that needs to be mitigated with innovative ideas like this. The future of the construction industry however, is that the future reuse of building materials needs to be considered from the very beginning, even when the building is in the design stage”

Kind regards

Michael Howarth

Graduate Engineer

Building Services

T +44 (0)161 827 1890

mike.howarth@ramboll.co.uk

From: Noel Brandley
Sent: 31 January 2012 13:17
To: Mike Howarth; Andrew Mather; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

I really liked the initial replies where you mentioned that you liked the idea for its simplicity. Please don’t forget that!

Do we have to put the message across so bluntly? I think adorning the bball net with slogans would look very tacky! Is it not possible for the public to simply INFER ideas about recycling/reusing from our design?

The way I see this idea developing is as follows:

·         Develop a design for the net that is super simple and replicable. Any contractor should be able to pick up this idea and build a bball net for themselves. The structure does not have to be the most ‘efficient’ in terms of mass, but does have to be ‘efficient’ in being able to source the materials.

·         Produce a ‘How to Build’ guide along with a set of detailed plans (sizes, connections etc). These will be made available online for anybody to get hold of.

·         Presentation of the idea in week 4 can include how this fits in with the whole cradle-to-cradle philosophy, and of course we would have the board as well. I don’t think we should get too involved with this philosophy, as we may (will!) be biting off more than we can chew.

·         Build the bball net for the LFA. In my opinion it should be BARE STRUCTURE, thus showing off Ramboll’s prowess in creating beautiful, simple structures and coming up with innovative ideas. No slogans or logos!!! I’m sure any architect would be of the same opinion

A few comments on the structural design- the bball net must be able to act like a bball net, that is, the ball should bounce properly off the backboard, and people should be able to slam dunk (nb this would result in a large moment to the connection between the hoop and the board). I wonder if there are any standards for basketball net design. Probably are.

From: Mike Howarth
Sent: 31 January 2012 11:01
To: Noel Brandley; Cillian Ryan; Andrew Mather
Subject: RE: New idea

I’m still not sure what the message underlying this is really, It seems rather odd to target members of the public and encourage them to recycle materials from a building site or I beams or whatever.

What I recommend would be combining these proposals, so that we’d have a display in the foyer explaining our message, that we’re trying to champion this design philosophy of end use recycling, and as our visual example have this recycled basketball hoop that we’ve installed out in the city. That way we get to cover all the bases.

Kind regards

Michael Howarth

Graduate Engineer

Building Services

T +44 (0)161 827 1890

mike.howarth@ramboll.co.uk

From: Noel Brandley
Sent: 31 January 2012 10:23
To: Cillian Ryan; Mike Howarth; Andrew Mather
Subject: RE: New idea

Cillian- no, I’m crap. Andy must be brilliant though!!

From: Cillian Ryan
Sent: 31 January 2012 10:17
To: Andrew Mather; Noel Brandley; Mike Howarth
Subject: RE: New idea

Grand ill synopsise Noels email into a little paragraph and forward it on to Yanchee.

Exactly Andy we will need to expand and fill out the background info with fact figures and possibly other projects that have taken structural steel and reused it in a different manner or something of the sort!

Quick one though...anyone any good a basketball?!

From: Andrew Mather
Sent: 31 January 2012 10:04
To: Noel Brandley; Mike Howarth; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

I agree we need to keep it simple, but I also think we need something about why we’ve done this / what the message is. If nothing else they will definitely be looking for this in our presentation. Even if that’s we’re just showing one way and expanding the public’s mind.

From: Noel Brandley
Sent: 31 January 2012 10:00
To: Mike Howarth; Andrew Mather; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

Mike,

The idea is re-using materials from a building site. Simple as that.

We are showing a way how this can be done. I don’t think we need any profound statements. We need to have faith in the public, that they will understand this as one way of re-using materials. I wouldn’t like it to get into the whole debate about recycling every material on a building, because I think it’s too big a debate for us to tackle. Besides, it’s already been tackled in many, many books.

From: Mike Howarth
Sent: 31 January 2012 09:56
To: Noel Brandley; Andrew Mather; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

An extra point which just occurred to me is

what is the message this is trying to get across? Its a great method of delivery but do we actually have a message to hang off it? Like Crispin was saying, There isn’t actually anyone who thinks that recycling is a bad idea, so is there a way that we can use this to say something more than “recycling is good”?

Kind regards

Michael Howarth

Graduate Engineer

Building Services

T +44 (0)161 827 1890

mike.howarth@ramboll.co.uk

From: Noel Brandley
Sent: 31 January 2012 09:20
To: Andrew Mather; Mike Howarth; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

GREAT!!

Really happy you like it. As you just said, and as I mentioned, I would really like to retain the simplicity and not get bogged down with trying to find a way to recycle every single material on a building.

From: Andrew Mather
Sent: 31 January 2012 09:18
To: Noel Brandley; Mike Howarth; Cillian Ryan
Subject: RE: New idea

I like it!

I was going down a similar vein but couldn’t come up with the right answer for what exactly we should build. This does tick a lot of boxes and if we can do a nice bit of design work such it retains simplicity but looks really good too then that would be awesome.

Mike, Cillian what do you think?

From: Noel Brandley
Sent: 31 January 2012 09:12
To: Mike Howarth; Cillian Ryan; Andrew Mather
Subject: FW: New idea

From: noel.brandley [mailto:noel.brandley@gmail.com]
Sent: 31 January 2012 00:01
To: Noel Brandley
Subject: New idea

I have had a new idea!

After bashing out the jumper idea between us I think it's kind of missing the point that it was originally intended to make. The practicalities seemed pretty immense, although I did personally like the idea of taking a community-wide sustainability approach.

I think the conclusion that we made was that the idea should revolve around recycling/reusing materials from a building site. I think trying to tackle this whole problem would be an enormous task and would not really be suitable for the LFA, plus most of the things we would think of will already have been covered in books like 'Cradle to Cradle', 'BRE Green Guide to Specification' and by David Mackay (DECC).

The idea

My new proposal is to build a basketball net using structural materials (I-beams etc). Please see plans attached. I am hoping that people will really like this idea. I am very keen on it, as it is simple and ticks both the boxes of 'Playful City' and 'Reuse/Recycle', and also has the added factor of being related to sport, which can't be bad what with the Olympics nearly upon us.

The design

The net should be designed very simply from steel sections that are often used in buildings. There must be some size sections that are used really frequently. The connections should also be simple, so that any contractor would be able to put them together. The net should be easily REPLICABLE.

Getting materials

I think there would be two ways to get the required materials:

• reuse/recycle from a demolished building. Andy- would you possibly apply a large factor of safety?
• Overordering- there must be some element of over ordering on any construction project. I'm sure that you could manage to find a few metres of I-beam from somewhere.

Presentation

I would like it if the idea were presented as an instruction book on how to build the net- a small book and a set of detailed plans. These would have to show the connection detailing, sizing and how the thing can be constructed. I think that all the connections should be kept absolutely bog standard so that any old contractor could put it together. We would be able to sell this idea to firms wondering what to do with their excess steel.

I think we should aim for a design that can be constructed in half a day by a few contractors.

Delivery at the LFA

Quite simply, it would be built somewhere. I think the building process would be part of the attraction, especially if it can be built quickly and easily. We may be able to get involvement by somebody like Sport England. I think it would be good to have a display by a 'street' basketball team. Also, just have a few balls around and let the public have a go themselves.

Lastly

I feel the idea is very simple and, personally, I would like it to stay that way. I wouldn't like to get into this whole debate about trying to recycle EVERY material from a building. I feel that the public are clever enough to see that we are re-using materials in a clever way and that this may be applied to other materials in other ways (if that makes sense?!?!)

Many apologies for the lateness of this idea. I was thinking about it when I was on the train last night! I hope you all like it, and of course, any input/comments please discuss.

I WILL PUT  THIS ON THE BLOG/DOCUMENT FOLDER LATER

Basically what I see us doing is a display in the Foyer area, mainly aimed at people with some knowledge of the industry but hopefully accessible enough to be appreciated by anyone with an interest in Sustainability. The location of the foyer lends itself well to this as it would be seen by many visiting architects etc as opposed to people who have just wandered up to it, although they’d of course be welcome.  I’d see it as being 4 display boards with a couple of small scale installations, same sort of vibe as the entrance area to the RIBA building (that is the one we went into right?)

So the display would be set up like:

Board 1
A discussion of the end life of a current building, how much waste is produced, what materials are sent to landfills, what things are recycled as standard.
A summary of the materials which are recycled as standard and what they are reused as, perhaps a case study of one material showing the steps it goes through between being reclaimed and its new use.

Board 2
A discussion of the 2 different design philosophies which can be used to recycle the materials which are not recycled as standard. E.g., ductwork, piping, carpets, window frames. This can be done through 2 case studies:

Case Study 1: looking at reclaiming some of these waste materials and using it in a new or innovative way, for example, shredding the existing insulation and using it as a cavity fill.
This is our opportunity to have a hooking point, we should create an installation to underline this point. It could be jumpers made out of carpets, a bicycle frame made from copper piping, a chair made from ventilation ductwork, anything which underlines reusing building elements in a new way.

Case Study 2: Looking at how the building element which is being scrapped, could have been installed in such a way as to enable it to be removed at the end of the buildings life and easily reused, without needing a huge change in use or requiring huge amounts of energy to recycle.
This is the cradle to cradle strategy. There are loads of construction materials that it can be applied to, quite a few are actually listed on that website that Crispin sent round. Off the top of my head I can think of a kind of tubing I’ve looked at before tubing which is a replacement for standard pipework which snaps together, and at the end of its life can be broken down into its basic elements, taken to a different site and used to form a completely different piping system. We ouldnt need to go into masses of detail here though, just enough to illustrate this philosophy.

Board 3
A discussion of the new industry that a change to this design paradigm could stimulate. This board can discuss jobs, people, and essentially link in with many of the wider themes of sustainability.

Board 4
A concluding board where we recap this whole building end-life philosophy. This can link in well with Andy’s sculpture Idea, which encourages people to look at a building as a collection of elements which can be used to create other projects, rather than a section of building waste and trying haphazardly to recycle what we can from it.


This would leave us with 4 boards, and 2 displays in the lobby area, which i think would be quite good as an educational display.
It’s a project which would make Ramboll appear quite exciting, as a company pioneering this holistic approach to construction and I think its pretty realistically achievable and gives us a nice set of things we can deliver.

If I was summing up our project in a couple of sentences like Yanchee asked for yesterday it’d be something along the lines of: “To create an educational display aimed at members of the industry which promotes awareness of end life recycling to drastically increase the sustainability of the construction industry.”