Blog #1 5/21/21

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 things that strikes me about this project is just how poignant the effect of outdoor time on stress really is. Since all three of us are taking AP tests, the time we spend outdoors measuring and planning locations is a great foil to the hours of studying we have to do afterward. In my mind, this is what my hope is for this project for the rest of the student body: to be a place to destress and relax to deal with the intensity of Hawken study habits. Hopefully, it will be as helpful for others as it was for us.


Comments

  1. Rachel MullenMay 27, 2021 at 11:28 AM

    Mourad, I enjoyed reading your blog posts. I agree with you completely. On the surface, your project seems rather simple. Students want a place to hang out and relieve some stress. The perfect solution is a workout area. I think you're learning that whenever there is change made to the appearance and function of a space, there are many levels of approval and compliance that need to happen. I'm glad that Scott is helping you with this project, and is also helping you find the resources you'll need (hopefully free of cost). He has many years of experience and is a master at his craft. I look forward to seeing you next week, hopefully! Keep up the great work, Mourad! - Mrs. Mullen

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog #4 6/1/21

Image
 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 ...
Read more

Blog #2 5/25/21

Image
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...
Read more

Blog #3 5/28/21

Image
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...
Read more