boatotype #1 coming together!

With the RARA retrospective 2010/2011 opening at the space 54 this Thursday the last couple of weeks have seen great progress at the boat building colony. Namely we have, almost, built boat number 1.

After cutting out the ribs a couple of weeks ago, this week we assembled and fixed them along the spine before using the 6mm plywood sheets to clad the two sides. The design evolved intuitively as we sought to bend the plywood along the ribs.

The next step will be to clad the bottom and the end pieces before using fibre glass to (hopefully) seal the joints, enabling us to test it. With this in mind a few colony members tested the fibre glass solution ready for this week.

Come along to the exhibition to see how much progress we make in Wednesdays session!

Boat in progress!

Boat design news! Keeping in mind our goal of making the building process as uncomplicated as possible, we have designed a very simple plywood skiff, with a flat base, 2.25 m long and 1.1 m at its widest.

The six 18mm ply frames would be attached to the the bracing plywood plank, and placed upside down on the assembly frame.

We would then apply 'stringer' pieces to the edges, and attach the thinner ply to the bottom and sides of the boat, and finally the end pieces, cutting them to fit.

Finally, we waterproof, seal and paint the boat and...fingers crossed, it floats!

We are currently working on fitting the six frames on a single sheet of 18mm ply.

The plan is to begin building the first prototype/guinea pig boat this Wednesday 29th of June at 19.30, so come and join us!

15/06/2011

So tonight was another fantastic night!

We had the pleasure of being visited by Katrin, André and 15 of their students from Berlin who were all over in London checking
out various architectural projects across the city.

Thank you to them for not only helping out with the next stage of the RARA Ale brewing process, typing up some of the labels for the the RARA Ale on the in-house type-writer and helping with the construction of the framework for the first boat, but for their great company and for bringing Fish and Chips along with them to fuel all the activity.

Really great fun!

Check out the photo's!

We'll be meeting again at 19:30 on Wednesday 22nd June.

08th June 2011

So The Boat Colony had its first active meeting at The Redundant Architects Recreation Association on Wednesday 08th June 2011. We were straight to work. It was decided that the tasks at hand would be divided between the group. So if you look at the photographs above you will see us starting to draw and experiment with some initial designs for the boats, assisting with the pragmatics of the event and getting The Boat Colony special ales brewing so that they’ll be ready in time!

This was a really exciting week with things really feeling like they are taking off very quickly.

There are going to be two types of Boat Building running parallel; the quiet and considered beauty of craft found in a traditional style of boat making - the boaters - and the experimental and unplanned (perhaps favela style) - the rafters.

Here we go

Here we are...6 of us raring to go. The boat building colony has been established and we have talked for an evening.

The colonisers met at The Redundant Architects Recreation Association last Thursday. Many signed up at an Emerging Group pitch and only a few could make it. From left to right we have Cameo, from Architecture for Humanity, who is developing the idea of reusing waste materials to create a raft, Nathan who is a Part 1 architect and believes in the long term goal of creating a crafted boat whilst developing the raft; ad hoc on a weekly basis. Terry of No Fixed Abode was here because I had a meeting with him earlier in the day and he stayed on to drink more Ale and see what was going on, he is concerned with the questions like: what is the point, who is it going to benefit and how are we going to let people know about it? Micaela is from Argentina, she wants to get involved and better her English through making. And there is Sonia who is questioning the need for boat building in modern day east London.

Next weeks meeting is at RARA again, everyone is invited but this time bring your swimming costume, we are getting wet.