Week 121 (Annex Floor)

The concrete Annex floor was poured, tooled, and sealed this week.  The results speak for themselves:

This finished surface will forever reflect the underlying logic of the design.  The look is richly organic:

I now see why people were so concerned about protecting the walls.  Just look at all that dye everywhere!

Outside the Annex, tons (literally?) of Cypress soffit boards were installed under the eaves:

I love how the Cypress warms up the blocks even more in the afternoon sunlight.

While those boards were being placed around the Annex, the roofing crew was back to finish the lower soffit with copper flashing:

In the distance you can see that there’s been some considerable work on the conduits for the air conditioning units.  Here’s a better look at that:

Swinging around to the Loggia, we can see that they’ve built some dams for pouring the concrete slab:

Once they get the columns fully protected, I expect they’ll be pouring that slab and finishing it very soon.

You might have noticed the copper flashing in the above photo.  If not, here’s a view that makes it a bit more obvious:

As the copper develops a patina, that effect will diminish.  But it’s certainly beautiful right now!

Inside the building we can also see lots of new progress.  A cherry finish is being applied to the ceiling of the Music Room:

Here’s a bit of detail on that:

There’s also been quite a bit of progress in the Control Room.  Here’s basically the final framing before we start putting on the skin:

The racks in the photo will be rolled in the equipment room when we get the junk that’s in there cleared out.  One of those three racks will be dedicated to holding the five massive power supplies powering the API Vision console.  Another will hold audio equipment that need not be in the Control Room (EFX with remote controls, MADI I/O, Headphone mix distribution, clocks, distribution amplifiers, etc).  And the third will hold out video infrastructure (more clocks, sync, timing, routing, etc) as well as network infrastructure.  We’re still looking at exactly what we going to get, but when we figure it out, I’ll post our answers to the Manifold Recording Studio Tech thread.

Here are two photos to show just how complex this network of rafters really can be:

If you have ever been to The Mystery Spot, you might have half an idea about how disorienting it is to look at these rafters.  It’s crazy!

Speaking of crazy, I spoke last week about how important it was to get all the angles exactly right, and here’s a photo that illustrates why:

At first glance you might say “it’s just a window” (or more correctly, a void into which a window will be framed).  But what you might also notice is that while three sides are square, the fourth is angled and twisted in quite a radical way.  Moreover, you might also notice that there are three layers of 5/8″ sheetrock attached to the framing (with Green Glue between the first two and the last layer).  That 2″ of drywall will then be covered by 2″ of 705 and then fabric.  That’s a total of 4″ of projection on one side of the wall.  There’s another 4″ on the other side, and 8″ in between.  If the angles don’t point in the right direction, then a small error is quickly amplified into an architectural catastrophe.  So there are two choices: do it right or don’t do it at all.  What is obvious from the work done so far is that our guys are doing it right.  Here’s one of the tools in the toolbox:

Not your average mitre saw.

Speaking of Sound Locks, they are now have their drywall on the sides and full decking overhead.  Here is Sound Lock 1, a 135 sq ft vocal booth/amp closet:

Note the small coil of wires down low.  Those will be passthroughs between the Sound Lock and the Control Room.

Here is Sound Lock 2:

You can see the passthrough wires to the Control Room, but you can also see our empty Variac panels.  Here’s a closeup of that:

Well, that’s about it for now.  By way of departure we’ll pass by a huge new pile of gravel:

Then will observe the amazing symphony of parallel lines made by the roofs:

Notice the seamless transition between 5:12 and 5:24 pitches at the triangular facets, and the parallelism betwen the 5:24 pitch of the Control Room roof and the 5:12 pitch at the edge of the Annex Lounge roof.  Amazing!

Finally, this posting would not be complete with another acknowledgement of the beauty that nature herself provides each and every month everywhere on the grounds: