Current population of Thekla: 3

Sam, Katy and Amir

Come along and get involved in our project on the 16th of October and become a Theklian!

Cities and the Sky By Italo Calvino

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer "So that it's destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."

If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. "What meaning does your construction have?" he asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?" "We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now," they answer.

Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.

About Me

Sky-rise Cities is a competition run by the University of Auckland School of Architecture which requires groups of 2 or 3 to build a skyrise with a minimum height of 8 meters. We previously had a space of 2.5m by 2.5m to build in but this has been reduced to 2m by 2m. The structure must be self supporting and can not be propped up, hung or supported by another structure. Our brief was to find a story and convey our interpretation of that story through a structure.Our idea for the Skyrise Cities project is based on the story "Cities and the Sky" by Italo Calvino.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Tamaki Campus.

On Sunday we moved all of our materials to Tamaki Campus and began to make the first module of our structure! Below are some photographs from todays work:

All our bamboo sorted into sizes

First module almost completed!


We added the vertical pieces of the second module and they slotted in perfectly with the bamboo wedges we created. They moved very little which was really fantastic.

Katy fixing the second modules vertical piece on top of the first module's vertical piece.

Close-up of the lashings for the cross-bracing above the first module.

Phillipino diagonal lashing. Used to bind the horizontal pieces of the first module's inner structure.

The lashings done on these corners were particularily tricky as it was difficult to get the rope under and over each piece of bamboo. We used Japanese Box lashings for hese bindings.



This was the most exciting part of the day: fitting the floor pieces in! we laid them out to test how strong they
are when we stand on them. They proved to be very strong and not a single one buckled or broke from our weight.

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