On Friday, two trucks showed up bright and early, with the 14 yards of concrete we had ordered for our first two rows of foundation footers. We had ordered it from the local CRMP (Commercial Ready-Mix Products), and when it showed up, we had to be ready to go, with our holes pre-leveled with the rebar cages in place. Our concrete crew consisted of myself, Matt, Eric Wandmacher, our friend Penny Hagbert who was visiting from Sweden (she is a former Rural Studio student), and

Now that our rebar mats are finished and the site has been strung and marked, we are ready to dig. And dig, and dig. This week, Cameron, Erick, Kerron, Alexia, Jamesha, Stevie, and Anthony, have come out to the site to work on the foundation, which consists of digging out 27 of our spread footer holes at 16″ deep. It has been long, hard labor, with some gravel patches, and some interesting stuff found buried in the ground (above). An old bottle from the 18th

Our foundation is a 9×3 grid of 27 spread-footers, which are 4-foot-six square slabs of 12-inch thick concrete. On top of each footer, we will use a sonotube to pour a cylindrical pier atop the slab, upon which our trusses will be braced. In order to make each spread footer slab as strong as possible, we will embed 2 gridded mats of rebar. Each rebar mat is made from 10 sticks of rebar, crossed over itself in a grid. We needed to fabricate 2 mats

Before we begin site excavation and digging the actual foundation, we need to precisely mark off where each footer will go. In order to do this, we have located the building on the site based on its orientation between the treeline and the road, and the appropriate setbacks from the road and Department of Transportation lines. Our building has nine rows of three footers each, each line of three spread-footers corresponding to one truss for the structure above. In order to perfectly grid out this

Hundreds of truss pieces, disassembled and ready for transport to site After weeks of building a jig and deck, and then prefabricating our farmers market structure’s 9 trusses (each of which are different), we are now DONE! The trusses were each cut, assembled, and drilled out with precision, and then disassembled so that they can be transported to the site very soon. We’ll tilt them up into place once the foundation is poured. Read about our prefabbing process with intricate jig and coding systems for

A few weeks ago, we built a perfectly level deck and jig on which to prefabricate our structure’s trusses. There are 9 trusses total, which delineate the 8 bays in which vendors will set up. The trusses go from floor to ceiling, approximately 24 feet tall. On one end of the building, the trusses start at a fixed depth, and each subsequent truss gains 9 inches, creating an angled facade (a visual below). This week, we are prefabricating all nine trusses, starting from the shortest.

On Friday, the local building inspector approved our building permit for the Windsor Super Market, which means the farmers market pavilion is green-lit for construction! Our favorite part is the inclusion of the word “super” in parenthesis on the official document. This permit will be posted on the construction site this summer as we begin to erect the 2000-square foot structure. More info about the design here.

As the academic portion of Studio H comes to a close, we took a day to celebrate the adventure we’ve had thus far. After our students submitted their end-of-year-essays (read all of them here!), and a monetary award was available to students who completed the course with a passing grade, and submitted the essay based on the stated requirements. I should note here that Studio H was designed to provide students with two semesters of academic credit (college and high school), and a paid summer

By: Erick Bowen, Studio H class of 2011 After a complete school year of the Studio H architectural/design-based course, I come away with a lot of hands-on knowledge and exposure to many different ways of approaching things in life. In particular, Studio H has taught me to always approach things with a positive and creative attitude, and that can bring great things. With these skills you can and will accomplish anything. Along the way you may not always feel 100 percent sure that things are

By: Kerron Hayes, Studio H class of 2011 For my entire junior year of high school I have been taking a course known as Studio H. It is a hands-on class that is more interactive than any other class I have ever taken. Our class started with thirteen students and ended with ten. Studio H taught me something new everyday. It is a class that will teach you new skills that could possibly make your life easier and even help you become more successful than