MouradZeynalovHawkenProjects2021

 Mourad Zeynalov Tue, June 5 Hawken Project Blog At the end of our first week of construction, we have made considerable progress. After weeks spent designing and prototyping and presenting, the actual creation of the project was a lot easier than expected. By Tuesday we had used a special machine called an edge cutter to remove all of the grass and dirt in a 26.5 ft. diameter circle in less than 3 hours. We revised the radius from the approved 12 ft. to 13.5 ft. in order to ensure the borders of the circle were as smooth as possible. After clearing the dirt we spent the remainder of the week designing and building the base of the pit. After consulting with the Hawken groundskeepers, Mr. Bleminschid, and Mrs. Zelinski, we decided on using weed barrier tarp as the base to prevent undergrowth from growing through the pick and also to allow water to drain. We also elected garden edging as the side material. We also went to Sidley's Sand and Gravel on Thursday in order to place an orde...

 Mourad Zeynalov Tue, June 1 Hawken Project Blog In a bout of good news today we finally received approval for the entirety of our project from all interested parties. From our presentation to Mr. Lucas on Friday, we were directed to present to Mrs. Dyer who proceeded to give the same presentation to Mr. Looney just today. He gave his final stamp approval this afternoon. With that, we can actually break ground for the first time tomorrow. We have also contacted and received guidance from the school's equipment director Jim Baker on materials and machinery necessary to excavate and fill the pit. They are able to cover the cost of materials and provide a rototiller to easily excavate the hole.  In the meantime, the three of us have been busy researching alternative barriers (the final choice - rubber garden barrier - is seen below). We also measured out the proposed dimensions for the court onsite in two forms, a 9 ft. and 12 ft. option for the school to choose (see below). The ...

Mourad Zeynalov  Wed, May 28 Hawken Project Blog As we enter the second week of our project, we've set upon finalizing the design and planning sections of our project. As the last week demonstrated, receiving approval will be the most challenging poart of the process, so we have focused this week on refining and finalizing our proposal to present to Mr. Lucas and Mrs. Dyer on Friday. This week we embarked upon building scaled-accurate 3D models of the proposed location and estimating the distances from the road, parking lot, and sidewalk to maximize safety, efficiency, and fair play (see below). We decided on a location 85 ft. away from the sidewalk adjacent to the loop (see below).  We also spoke with Scott Bleminschid, the school's construction coordinator, about effective materials for the edges of the pit. He recommended using rubber garden edging instead of lumber for safety reasons. We will consider this and include it in our next project proposal to Mr. Lucas and Mrs. D...

Mourad Zeynalov Fri, May 21 Hawken Project Blog The first few days of our presentation have been an insight into the achievements and challenges we will face moving forward. While certainly constructing and executing the actual design will be the most challenging part of the project, the modeling, preparations, and approval processes for breaking ground will serve to be the most arduous. Today we spent the day choosing potential locations on the campus and designing birds-eye sketches of the finished project (see below). Receiving approval from the school will require an in-depth plan of what locations we are interested in and what impact it will have on the scenery. We presented our proposed locations to our project mentor Mrs. Zelinski, who commented on her interest in the ideas and suggested meeting with the school's carpenter to discuss how to actually construct them. We also planned to present our proposal to Mr. Lucas, the school's director of facilities. One of the thing...

Mourad Zeynalov Tue, May 25 Hawken Project Blog As our project enters its second week, there are a number of new developments we have been working on. Chiefly has been preparing for the proposal presentation with Mr. Lucas this Thursday. In order to get ready for that, we have been calculating the proposed locations, sizes, and costs of our different designs. We came to the conclusion that we should narrow our scope down to building a large, sandpit Spikeball court seeing that Spikeball is a popular recreation activity at Hawken and students have been asking for a designated location outside of the crowded patio. Shown below are the calculations for the perimeter of the structure as well as the volume of sand necessary to fill down to 3 inches. For a decahedron with an apothem of 9 ft. (chosen because the official serving distance in Spikeball is 6 ft. from the net), we calculated we will need ~58.49 ft. of boundary material and ~65 ft^3 of sand. We decided on a design similar to the o...

    The main inspiration for this project comes from my three years of involvement in Spikeball club. In said endeavor, I got plenty of experience in outdoor space management and the consequences of not having a dedicated outdoor recreational area (namely, many scraped knees). So what better way to combine my own interests and improve the Hawken experience than to bring one such amenity to campus? I hope this project will be just an accessible outlet for stress for students and encouragement for physical activity as Spikeball was for me. We will begin the project by shadowing a carpenter and then most of our time will be spent on campus choosing and surveying the site, building the structures, and testing them for safety.