Constructing Journal 1This week is the beginning of the semester 2, which also is the first time that we touch the subjectof constructing. We are introduced the contents in constructing briefly which also include allassignments that we are going to do and finish. I thought the constructing is a quite importantsubject for those students who are going to do architectural and civil engineering because it has asystematic knowledge to show students the whole structure of a building and how can a house tobe built by us in the future.In the tutorial, we are asked to build a ‘building’ which should be as tall as possible. At thebeginning of the constructing, I thought the way to make a tall building should contains a firmbase, so our group just built our base as big as possible.

The base was made by 10 × 10 bricks size

However, during the process of constructing, we found our initial idea is totally wrong and thisspent us much more time and much more bricks to build our building.We also tried to run the idea of making the building owns arch which likes windows on ourbuilding, but gradually, the idea was broken because our corners of the building could not be builtby following that way, then we went back to the previous operation and our building is not that talllike others. Actually, even our building is not that tall, but I have confidence about our building isdurable!

Following is the fantastic work by the other group in our tutorial, I think the success point to builda good building should be the base! As we can see their base is small and firm which can supportsthem to get a high and beautiful tower. This building’s structural also is very interesting, like they

changed the building from square to circle and finally became a special styled shape which didactually attract people and this building is definitely successful.

Hope our group can also do the best next time!On the other hand, when I connect the the concept of compression and the practice that we doneabove together, I find compression do actually is very important towards a building. We can easilyfind that when the buildings becomes higher, then its roof must be shaper, this may is becausewhen the buildings become higher, then the compression from the roof of the building becomesheavier, thus we need a narrower structure to decrease the compression on the top of the building.This is also why the pyramid structure is the most stable mode when constructing an architecture.Betty Xiang05/08/2013