Learning By Making projects at the School of Architecture & Design are real and require full engagement with clients. Students experience design work in collaboration with consultants and local authorities while also undertaking small building design in a public location. Students are required to submit formal documentation to clients for their approval and to local council for development and/or building approval. In these projects students also employ model making of various scales to collaboratively develop and finalise designs.

Click the links below to read about some of our past Learning By Making projects:

The Castle

Kings Meadows Bus Stops

Dance Stage Set

Stompin Office Pod

Home Point

Penguin Interpretation Centre

Plywood Structures

Forestry Tasmania

The Castle

Client: Youth Futures and Studentworks
Budget: $25,000
Staff: Ian Clayton, Geoff Clark, Richard Burnham and Robin Green
Engineer: Rod Neville (Engineering Edge)
Duration: 14 days

The Castle is a long-term collaboration between the School of Architecture & Design and two local youth-service organisations. It is a project that assists youth at risk of homelessness by deploying micro-dwellings to households experiencing spatial and emotional distress.

The Castle is mobile, autonomous, spatially clever and capable of becoming home for a single occupant. The Castle explores sustainability from multiple perspectives: the benefits of student involvement in a community connected project, stand alone servicing, ‘leanness’ in timber construction and mass-customisation, therefore balancing the efficiencies of mass production whilst responding to the unique needs of each customer.

Three prototypes, designed and built by UTAS students, Studentworks and Youth Futures have resulted in a highly adaptive digitally cut plywood construction system called panitecture. A model kit has been produced to assist people to design their own version of The Castle.

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Kings Meadows Bus Stops

Client: Launceston City Council (LCC)
Budget: $10, 000
Staff: Ian Clayton, Louise Wallis, Robin Green, Justin Hanlon and Matthew Skirving
Engineer: Peter Yttrupp
Duration: 3 weeks

The Launceston City Council (LCC) provided a strict brief including volumetric limits, location and transparency requirements as well as reinforced concrete footing options. 2 design and construct teams enrolled in the Australian Timber Design Workshop Learning by Making to experience a condensed program of design, construct and deliver to site a small public structure. Building approval was fast tracked with the LCC requiring Bus Stop Documentation, Engineering Specification and a detailed 1:5 scale model showing structural fixings and details. Each team collaboratively designed their Bus Stop and utilized the other team for critique and feedback. The ‘Chickenfeed’ team chose to use CNC router technology while the ‘Service Station’ team chose traditional construction techniques. Both bus stops were completed on time in the School of Architecture Workshop, leaving only delivery to site and bolting to footings on the last two days of the workshop. The bus stops received positive local publicity and were a part of a Council shopping precinct upgrade.

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Home – Dance Stage Set

Client: Stompin Youth Dance Company
Budget: $5000
Year: 2006 (Semester 2)
Staff: Ian Clayton, Louise Wallis and Robin Green

The brief required the design and construction of a contemporary dance set within a warehouse setting that mimicked the rooms of a house. The set had to be lightweight in its construction to allow for multiple performances in different locations and pack-up within two shipping containers. Externally, the set was plain and non-descript hiding the contents within its cardboard walls (2400 x 2400 x 300mm). Inside the set, there was a sequence of rooms (lounge room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and the bedroom), which the audience was guided through. Each room contained a different dance performance that interpreted the activities and mood of the room, which the students designed. The design of the wall panels was central to the success of this set, as it allowed walls to be located at different angles (45, 90 and 180 degrees) and to house sound, lighting and comply with fire safety requirements. Each wall panel was finished with a 6mm mdf vertical end “cap/connector”. These were cut out using the CNC router and allowed the joints to be pressed together using “Velcro”.


Materials:
Cardboard, builder’s glue, small section timber and paint

Published:
Newspaper articles published in the Examiner and a Melbourne paper

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Stompin Office Pod

Client: Stompin Youth Dance Company
Budget: $1500
Year: 2003 (Semester 2)
Staff: Ian Clayton and Robin Green

The key object of the Stompin mobile office project was to explore digital design and manufacture. Students collectively measured functional requirements and documented psychological and aesthetic needs to expand and comprehend a basic request of a mobile office from the client. The student group was divided into teams with different responsibilities all including design and making aspects of this small but ambitious project. Countless iterations of scaled models using CNC tested design options, provided skill acquisition in CNC, as well as accuracy and efficiency in model making. The client approved the final design and budget by student presentation of a 1:10 model and spreadsheet detailing all expenditure including transportation and on site assembly. The result was a cardboard and ply 2.4m “cube”, complete with shelving, desks, windows and a door. The space frame roof was a development of a design explored in a previous building technology subject.

Materials:
Cardboard, ply, mdf, hardwood, cloth, swivel and braked wheels and paint

Special Requirements:
Knock down flat pack to fit in the back of a “ute”
All components were to fit through a standard door

 

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Home Point

Clients: UTRIA (Upper Tamar River Improvement Authority) LCC (Launceston City Council)
Year: 2002, semester 2
Location: Home Point, Launceston
Budget: $20 000
Staff: Ian Clayton, Robin Green and Todd Henderson
Engineer: Dale Luck and Associates
Project Duration: 3 weeks full time

Learning experiences included brief development, client and consultant presentations, budget management, collective design and making and project installation. The brief was to provide building and object designs to interpret Tamar River floods (past and future). The student group (45) was divided into 4 teams each with design, construction and management responsibilities. Teams provided critique and feedback daily for each other during the design process. This guided a coherence and consistency for the whole project.  Students tested the capacity to bend timber to express the forces of floodwaters as well as exploring ply box beam construction and cantilevers. The site at Home Point being high public profile and riverfront parkland, heightened student ambitions, focus, and design responsibilities. The project enjoyed positive publicity and local praise. This together with commitment to get the job done gave students real experiences in design very early in their architectural studies.

All built elements of the design were completed in the school of Architecture’s workshop prior to transportation to site for connection to engineered footings.

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Penguin Interpretation Centre: Low Head, Tasmania

Clients: National Parks and Wildlife – Tasmania, George Town Council & Penguin Tours  
Location: Low Head, Tasmania
Year: 2005, semester 2
Budget: $10 000
Staff: Ian Clayton, and Robin Green
Engineer: Alan Muir
Project Duration: 15 weeks

The brief was to provide a small transportable building to house penguin rookery interpretation, tour operations equipment and merchandise. Students’ experienced the original Parks and Wildlife ‘mission brown’ transportable facility and tours. Merchandising was from the back of a station wagon. The student group of 20 used model making and poetry as the design medium to test design options for a high profile National Park site. A poem was written based on agreed aesthetic performance requirements, and served to develop a building form and details that would blend with, and enhance the natural setting. Students also colour mapped the context and its visual experience as a basis for finishes.

Material:
19mm Plywood, galvanised steel earth anchors, stainless steel fastening, paint finish, solar power cells and LEDs.

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Grillages: Testing and making plywood structures

Staff: Ian Clayton, Louise Wallis, Robin Green, and Andrew Maynard
Engineer: Peter Yttrupp
Duration: 1 week


The previous Australian timber design workshops were structured in a manner that divided the participants into 2 streams. One stream following a prescriptive series lectures and tours, the other focused on making a small public building. Doing everything-from design to completion.
The ATDW 05 has just one stream-That starts off with three prescriptive days followed by a day of reflection. Participants then embark on building an experimental structure that continues the learning and allows for outcomes to be determined by the participants.

Aims of ATDW 05
1.    Learning by making extends and enhances design skills to include knowledge of construction and structure.
2.    The aim of this experience is collaboration, to discover the sum of many contributions* makes a richer whole.
3.    The final aim is to allow a team of participants to take unconditional responsibility to produce a finished product.

Introduction-Breaking Timber samples.
A. 20 90x35 samples of pine and hardwood where broken in front of participants.
Failure mode, sloping grain, density and ultimate load where all discussed on a sample-by-sample basis. Then all the samples where visually graded and the order compared to the order based on ultimate load. There was a good correlation.

B. 1 plywood box beam, 1 LVL beam, 1 I-beam &1 LVL concrete composite where tested to destruction. During the tests the different engineered timber products where compared. Failure mode and deflection data played key roles in the discussion and discovery.

C. Building Plywood Box Beams as part of the fabrication of 2 grillage structures.
1.  The first grillage consists of 24 box beams, about 300 x50mm and 2.4 meters long. When assembled they form a simple vaulted grillage capable of spanning 10.5 meters.
2.The second grillage consists of smaller box beams, about 120x20mm and 1.2 meters long, assembled into a 3.6-meter structure and tested to failure. This simple structure took 800 kg before it failed. All participants where surprised at the result. The second grillage was built to demonstrate the behaviour of the grillage system under load-to get a ‘feel’ for the potential loads and spans.

D. Building Portal
After a discussion and demonstration of portal frame action the participants built 2 small “sheds”. Each shed consisted of 2 portal frames connected by girths and bracing. The connection was a 12mm plywood gusset. Special attention was paid to the design of the nailing pattern and size of the gusset. Each shed was put into the test rig and tested to failure. Both sheds took excess of 4 tons before failure occurred. In both cases it was the gusset that was the point of failure, which was also the desirable mode of failure.
Peter Yttrup provided insightful professional explanation of structural behaviour.

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School of Architecture & Design Working with Forestry Tasmania to produce wilderness seating in the Styx's valley during semester 2, 2002

The project generated a range of viewing options in a forest walk.

• The Falling wall-a fence like structure that starts all most vertical then recline to an angle of 45°- allowing walkers to recline standing at various angles

• This stump made of timber bricks is a way for the walker to enter the tree, the viewer is directed back towards the "Big tree" as they walk along the track

• The wobbly deck is designed shake as walkers step onto it, heighten their awareness of elevation from the ground and create suspense as the fallen tree is viewed

• A place to contemplate has an entry, isle down the middle with small decks either side. A place to be quite is created.