My mother has a friend in Gothenburg and on Saturday, I went to his house that is about 20 minutes’ drive south of the hostel. I had dinner there together with a bunch of his friends. We had some Chinese food and also rice dumplings together to celebrate the traditional dragon boat festival in China. I met a Canadian there who drove around America in a month in 1995. He shared some photos with me and I really appreciated such an unbelievable experience.
View from the house
Sunday was a pretty normal weekend day. I had a great sleep from 3 to 12 (I stayed up late for my laundry) as to compensate my sleeping hours in weekdays. Every day last week I had to get up at 7:30, which I hadn’t experienced since graduation from high school. After lunch, I began working on homework and went to bed early before 12 as I knew we would need to set off even earlier to Hammarkullen on Monday.
This was a new week for us as we switched from CAD to engineering design. Early at 7 a.m., we set off to take the tram all the way to Hammarkullen, a community in northern Gothenburg. With some master architects and engineers from Chalmers and some high school summer workers, the Dare2Build program officially started! We had five teams- Woodpecker, Frog, Plant, Mushroom, and Wilderness, and all the teams will collaborate to build an education place for children, which includes a center storytelling circle designed by the Wilderness team, and four paths for each species to meet together at the circle. I was in the Woodpecker team, and our team was tasked to build a path up in the air from tree to tree for woodpeckers to land at the circle. I was very pleasant to be in this team, as I had never seen a single woodpecker before, and I really wished to see one in the following two weeks. In the afternoon, we travelled to the building site in a forest called Gardsas mosse. The site is located in an area covered with grass and surrounded by tall trees. There we used twigs to roughly identify our path, and came up with some design ideas. Can’t wait to start our project!
First visit to site
The tram station at Hammarkullen
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we stayed at Hammarkullen and worked on our detailed design. Through brainstorming and discussions, we came up with a design that we would have logs attached to trees to enable woodpeckers to perch from tree to tree, and we applied biomimicry to design the attachment structure that it imitated the gripping movement of woodpecker’s paws to trees. Also, we would have logs of different heights connected together to create a descending path for woodpeckers to land on the circle. We would make some small tools for children to imitate the sound of woodpeckers as well. The design process was much faster than the one I had in ENGI 120, and with members from fields other than engineering, I really had a new and interesting experience.
Woodpecker drawings
Thursday was an exhausting day. For all day we had been setting up the site. We built fences enclosing the storytelling circle, and unloaded all the logs and placed them just next to the site. Unloading the logs was very challenging, as each log weighed more than 100 kilograms, and we needed to first unload it from the truck, and then carry it all the way down to the site, which was about 50 meters downhill. To finish the task, we needed to communicate and collaborate well to avoid dropping the log and hurting someone. By the end of the day, we had our material and tool containers set up with electricity, the circle enclosed by fences, and all the logs placed at the site. What a productive day!
The path in forest
Logs unloaded
On Friday we worked on all the documents required. After a short team meeting in the morning, each member got a task assigned to. I took charge of the building schedule and the model of the sound making tool. With several hours of work, at 4 p.m., we had mostly the schedule and material list down, and more than halfway through the site plan drawing. Next week we will start the construction phase, and I looked forward to having fun.
On the next Saturday we travelled to the islands east of the coastline of Gothenburg. We took a tram to the ferry station, and took ferry to go to several different islands. Houses of red roofs and white walls scatter around on the islands. Near the shores, there are many large rocks. We climbed up the rocks and got a great view of the island and houses. Except the tourists, the islands were so quiet that everyone was enjoying the weekend in relaxation, and so did we.
Group Photo
Houses near the shore
Houses
Houses up in a small hill
Swedish flag on the ferry
Houses along a path
The ferry