Mi-Carême Begins: Excavation, Foundations, Pressure treated Structure And Junk Yard Explorations

These photos are just outside the Mi-Careme Centre in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia. Half of our class is there right now designing and building and new sign for the the centre.
On their website, the Cheticamp Tourist Centre describes Mi-Careme as such.

"For our ancestors, Lent was a time of sacrifice during which time no amusement of any kind was permitted. In order to have a break from the monotony of this 40 day period, on the Thursday marking the exact half time of Lent, people began to disguise themselves and go from house to house while trying to keep their identity a secret. The householders would try to guess who was behind the mask and costume. With time, the Mi-Carême was extended to cover the whole third week of Lent. The festivities now begin on Sunday with an evening called "Laissons entrer les mi-carêmes"(Let the mi-carêmes in), which takes place in the community centre.. The evening consists of musical entertainment, dancing, goodies, and of course, mi-carêmes!. The Mi-Carême is officially started!. We "run" the Mi-Carême every day and every night of that week and the whole thing comes to a close with another social evening on Saturday night."





Brick Vaulting

Crossway zero carbon house built in the UK. The house a brick vault design. This is a example of a similar process we will be using to do our own project in Cheverie, NS. The project will house a camera obscura which will project an image of the tidal area.

Finished Lamella!!

We managed to have the outdoor dining hall (lamella) finished for opening ceremonies on Canada Day at 2pm. Even though we were working right up to almost the last minute, we finished. We also added a temporary slat walkway up to the lamella for visitors of Canada Day. There was cake cut under the lamella and a barbeque just off to the side. It felt great to have completed such a huge project and the turn out was quite impressive.
The image below is a clipping from the Chronicle Herald Newspaper published today, July 5th.

Cheticamp Portable Wind Turbine AKA Cheticamper

This is another project that we have been working on. It's a little crazy. It is a canteen/wind turbine built on top of a 6' x 10' trailer. The idea is that the wind turbine, which will pull out from the the structure to expose itself, will generate power for the canteen area and possible other things, as well as serving to teach the local community of Cheticamp Cape Breton about wind power. Since Cheticamp is such a extremely windy place, with winds sometimes around hurricane strength, we felt that a structure that could educate as well as provide a service during community events would be great.
The next few post will be some of process work done so far for the 'Cheticamper'.
Plan
Detail of rail system to out wind turbine. Bottom right is a Section.

Plan

Elevation


Plan

Nearly Completed Ross Creek Lamella



The Moiré effect which happens when two grids are overlaid at an angle or when they have slightly different mesh sizes.

Justin, you're so beautiful.

We ended up making the inner benches part of the lamella itself. In front of these benches will be tables and more benches on the other side designed by coastal studio as well.










Ross Creek Lamella

We are back in Ross Creek on the weekends completing the lamella in order to have it finished for Canada Day. Here are some updated photos as of the 21st of June. The perforated metal is being used to tie the structure together and give it more stability.






SCAD Tour, Savannah GA

SCAD in the Savannah College for Art and Design. The college, if i remember correctly, is $20, 000 a year!! It doesn't matter if you are international or note. The school was amazing though. They had buildings all over the city and their facilities and resources were very abundant. If you have the money, it is well worth looking into.




This ceiling changes colour every few seconds. Pretty cool.
... and if you feel the need to take a nap, well there's something for that too. Pretty neat.
The way the chair works is it blocks out sound and has a timer that will vibrate the chair once it's done.


This is in the architecture building. Out of all the faculties at SCAD, we were the least impressed with the architecture building.


Downtown Savannah



We decided to climb this to get a better view of the city. It was on top of a parkade.