Maker Space

Design and Development

Spring 2015

- A makerspace is a highly technical facility that offers collaborative work spaces in which the public can create and learn. During the second half of my third year, a partner and I designed such a space that could have the ability to also uplift a community. This project was also an exercise in detailing and prototyping: while desigining the building, we were tasked with creating a physical piece of the design through a fabricator in the Pittsburgh area.

Our design included a bridge connecting the Homewood and Point Breeze communities that were separated by Pittsburgh's new bus route. The structure of the bridge became the element which drove the design of the entire building. Wide arches developed from trusses allowed for a very open plan, plenty of natural lighting (through the arches themselves), and a unique circulation pattern. it also provided a system with which the programmatic elements could be laid out. A system of beams connected the trusses structurally and held up a second floor in some parts of the building. Large amounts of glazing held up through tensioned cable and spider clamps created a disply of the interior.

In conjunction with Aileena Gray

Developing a Fabricated Piece

The large garage doors on the ends of the building are operable through a large wheel connected to a sprocket and chain system. This wheel went through a lot of development as we attempted to create a piece of it through a local fabricator. Ideally, this object would be replicated many times and therefore would cost a lot less, but this was one prototype for a school project. Finding a fabricator willing to spend the time to help us create this piece was not easy, and the development of the piece had to keep this in mind. Our final prototype was then designed around our chosen fabricator's (Corcoran Sheet Metal) abilities according to their shop.

As seen in the image of our prototype progress above (image 14) our original prototype was very clean, smooth, and elegant. This was idealistic, and after developing a construction process with a fabricator, it changed drastically. Our drawings had to reflect our ideas during each stage of the process and were eventually used by the fabricator to creat our final object. We were allowed to watch our piece being made through plasma cutting, welding, and grinding. In the end, the single, double-sided handle for our wheel was very rough and raw, but taught us a quite a lot.