BuildSense leads another great summer of Design/Build at NCSU School of Architecture!

BuildSense leads another great summer of Design/Build at NCSU School of Architecture! In our fifth summer, we were once again blessed with a fantastic group of motivated students who completed another elegantly executed project. The non-profit Benevolence Farm in Graham NC was the proud beneficiary of this summer's efforts. Students and Instructors designed and built this vegetable washing and packaging barn (“The Benevolence Barn”) complete with open work areas, cold storage, dry storage, and tool sheds in just over 10 weeks. Benevolence Farm provides an opportunity to formerly incarcerated women to live and work on a farm where they develop farming and business skills, grow food, nourish self, and foster community. See images of the completed work below:

Gabions Rock!

Why pay for organized fitness classes when you can install gabions?? It’s both a great work out and a means of enhancing one’s physical environment! Amongst the multitude of today’s retaining wall options remains the handsome gabion. Ideal for erosion control, this modular system demonstrates many benefits; particularly strength met with flexibility. 

“Gabion” translates to “big cage” which is typically made of steel wire fabric that is welded, twisted, or woven closed once filled. The baskets can be filled with rocks, stones, or even concrete. Ideally, one can reuse material such as concrete from a demolished structure. 

While a finished gabion system appears to be monolithic and does indeed provide retention, the wall is also flexible to ensure structural efficiency, and permeable to allow for drainage. Last, if you are willing to put forth your own efforts, collect suitable materials, dig a lot, break and stack stone, and sweat real hard, then gabion walls are quite affordable. Upon completion, this seemingly elemental system will surprise you with its rustic yet undoubtedly elegant appeal. Here’s the basic overview of gabion installation:

1) Excavation
A couple of good shovels will certainly do the trick, however a few hours with an excavator will greatly reduce time and energy spent during excavation.

2) Leveling the ground
It’s important to make sure your ground surface is nice and level before placing the baskets.  While hand levels are, well, handy… a transit is a nifty surveying tool that assists greatly in leveling.

3) Basket assembly
Next comes the unfolding and assembly of gabion baskets.  This takes patience, but the pay-off will be very rewarding.

4) Filling the baskets
Once the baskets are properly set, it’s time for the fun part – filling the baskets with your chosen material!  Options range from taking a sledge hammer to the concrete foundation of a previously demolished building to create chunks of desired size as reusable fill, to ordering pre-sized riprap, stone, etc.  Inherent beauty of the retaining wall structure will be achieved as long as the fill is thoughtfully placed.

5) Fastening baskets
This step can be tricky; using zip ties to first close the gaps between seams is extremely helpful.

6) Backfill if necessary
A layer of landscaping cloth between gabions and earth further prevents erosion.

Explore Your Senses

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Explore your senses

Explore your senses

Explore your senses