Constructing Environments - week 8 What we did: For this week our task was to choose a detail of a drawing from our building in my case the Ormond College building and by using a 1:10 detail of the drawing we were to redraw it into a 1:1 A1 format in class and then present it in the next tute.
The structure that I choose was a window located at the kitchen of the café on the ground floor at the back of the new part of the building. The window is obliviously made of glass and it is surrounded by brick cladding. The frame of the window seems to be made of steel or aluminium. For this kind of window as far as I can tell the building process it quite simple as it would have been already pre fabricated and just stuck on the structure when on site. When looking at sustainability and environmental analysis if the window frame is made out of aluminium instead of steel which is what I’m guessing it is, it would mean that it is much more environmentally friendly in the sense that because aluminium is highly recyclable and it can be used for any product that new aluminium is used for, which means it can be reused many times. However aluminium exerts 8.24 CO2/kg and 155 of energy MJ/kg compared to steel that which only exerts 1.37 CO2/kg and 20.10 of energy MJ/kg. Economically I don’t think there were many implications however since I am still not sure which material they used for the frame I believe that the most liable material would be aluminium and it is cheaper and since there is isn’t much load being exerted on the frame the compression and tensile properties of steel . For this kind of detail there aren’t many implications as it is not a main section of the building, however cracks gaps can occur due to movement of the structure causing leaks in the window structure.