If you are an architect, sketching, math and drafting are just part of the process. Sure, they don’t sound very sexy but if you want to get something the looks really great, it’s going to take time … and most of that time is spent after the clients have left and it’s just you trying to solve a problem through sketching, math and drafting.

It always start with the question “How am I going to do that?”

We have finished our infill modern house project and I am in the middle of closing things up, filing all the project paperwork, and storing all the files digitally. While we are a little ways off from getting the final project photography (meaning I don’t have final images to show you yet) I do have a handful of images that show the evolution of the bridge element we designed – from the initial problem solving sketches to the last all-most-done-but-not-quite-yet images.

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This was the first sketch I started with … I was laying out the structural plan. This is what I used to determine the sizes of my windows … that’s right, I said windows. I knew that the structure was going to end up exposed and as a result, the spacing of the members would figure into the window layout. The other moving part to this problem was that the floor was going to be glass as well and the exposed structural members were going to be used to support those glass panels. The glass panel sections have size limitations so determining the spacing and pattern at this point was crucial.

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In this CAD drawing – a floor plan of the bridge element – you can see how the structural elements (shown dashed) work with the spacing of the windows and the floor glass sections.

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I know that not everyone reads construction drawings so if you don’t I apologize in advance. I included this partial construction detail to help show the relationship between the floor (both the glass and concrete portions) to the overall bridge shape.

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Here is a enlarged look at the corner of the bridge walkway where the glass floor and the glass wall come together. The arrangement and sizing of the structural steel was worked and re-worked until we got it to this point. There is enough of an offset with the steel beam so that the glass at the floor has a place to set. We also sized the vertical columns that connect the structure at the floor to the truss structure at the ceiling with 2″x3″ tube steel so that the width of the members could be enclosed within the metal of the window system. When this bridge is finished, you won’t see any of the columns in the glass wall.

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I generated some SketchUp models at one point to help facilitate a conversation about a large display cabinet that was going to occupy the non-window side of the entire bridge. The clients have a massive African drum collection that they wanted to display and we argued that rather than display them all … why not rotate them in and out of the display area so that they seem a bit more special? They agreed (because it’s a good idea) and as a result we designed a large display area that is surrounded on all side by a LOT of storage areas. These 3D views were created to help show the clients the scale of the display area within the context of the entire cabinet.

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While you can’t tell from these 3D images, let me assure you that the open display area – as well as the individual doors for the storage area – all align with the structure, glass floor panels, and the joints in the glass curtain wall.

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And construction finally gets underway! The pictures I have included below represent about 2% of all the photos I took of this area during construction administration. I don’t go onto the job site thinking about how I am going to take certain pictures to improve a blog post – although that would probably be a good idea. Most of the pictures I take are specific to the overall progress and generally indicate the context of a specific area related to its adjacent parts. (yikes … that sentence sounded awfully medical)