Email #46 - Walk Thru Walls, Part 1

CM Professor Carrie Dossick said it best: "Walk Thru Walls."

That's when the steel stud framing for the walls are up, but before the drywall is installed. It's a magic moment - usually several weeks long - between a vast empty space and a warren of small rooms and hallways. Like a ghost or a comic book character, you can walk through walls.

I also see it geologically: the large empty space crystallizes into a denser honeycomb of gypsum with a hidden skeleton of thin steel. When just the steel studs are up, you can also "see thru walls. " Both the outlines of the original larger space and the shapes of the small rooms to come can seen at once.

The top attached photo shows the main lobby in the foreground in mid-November. In the background is the steel endoskeleton for the new Construction Management departmental office on the left and new Architecture faculty offices on the right.

The middle photo is looking south in the new CM office, which will be similar in layout to the previous CM office in the same space.

The bottom photo is perhaps the most interesting. It shows the framework for the new hallway and faculty offices within what was once Rm. 124, an open space studio where all 3-year grad students spent their first year of life in architecture. You can still see the windows of the whole room, but not for much longer. Drywall will be up soon.

In the next email, I'll send more photos from within the South Wing.

John Stamets
Nov. 30, 2006

See also #39, #40, #41, #47, #53 and #108