Well its finished! What can I say? I didn’t think this day would ever arrive, it perpetually seemed like that build still had another ‘eight weeks to go’ and then suddenly it was done.
I’m simultaneously relieved and enormously disappointed that this very exciting project has come to a completion. It will be odd not to have 14 people for dinner each night, early starts, and a tired but satisfied body at the end of each day.
I have been trying to reflect on what has been the greatest learning experience, and it’s hard, there have been so many. I think, for me, it would have to be the relationship that we built with Daniel, Joe and Zack from EF Building solutions. They shared their skills and knowledge and allowed us to be involved in the built to a much greater extent than we ever thought would be possible. They taught us about the structure, but most of all the finer details of finishing a building. They shared their tools and their time freely and I have learnt so much from their patience. Their dedication to the build and to the students involved has been fantastic and I can’t thank them enough. Hopefully we will be able to team up again for future projects.
Another wonderful aspect has been the support from the building industry. We have had 39 local and national companies jump on board, providing almost $300,000 worth of support for the build. Their willingness to be involved, surprised us, with some companies volunteering services and materials without even being asked. They all supplied us with a greater knowledge of the products than would we would have gained from a normal build. Many came on site and explained the way to get the most out of their products, and all were involved simply for the unique educational benefits that the project was supplying to architecture students.
It has been great to have so many students involved. I haven’t done the final count but there were a lot, from 7 different universities, all adding a different flavour and perspective to the build. Collaboration is such a great way to learn about anything. I thank you all for your time and assistance, it was a pleasure to work with each and everyone of you. We have many fond and funny memories that we will continue to laugh with over the coming years.
From a design point of view I have learnt that so much of the success of a building comes down to the finer detailing. Its time consuming and costly and is often overlooked in projects that have fantastic award winning designs, but up close fail to deliver on the detail side of things. We were lucky that we were on site every day and able to make these decisions as we went, rather than being locked into design at the beginning of a project, with all alterations being timely, expensive and difficult to make.
I have learnt what extremes I should push materials to – not ‘can’ but should, to make the most of them to retain their integrity. Rick Leplastier came to visit and pointed to a tapering piece of timber and said :
‘why did you do that? One of the first things the Jorn Utzon taught me was never to take a material out to infinity – it can’t possibly perform as it should to that extreme’.
When we asked what detail he would have done, he said he couldn’t/wouldn’t say, but it is an aspect that we shouldn’t take lightly. The funny thing is that John Roberts, our favourite lecturer from Uni also often spouted that same advice. Rick also commented that a relationship with your builder is the most important part of a build and I totally agree. I see on Facebook all of the time people complaining about their tradies. I loved them all! They were all so willing to share what they knew about building, working as a team with them made everything so much more successful.
I have learnt a lot about budgets. Grand ideas need grand budgets. Even with $300k worth of sponsorship we still managed to blow our budget out of the water! What you want is not necessarily what your budget can afford to build.
I have learnt just how important the specification documents are at the start of a project. We wrote ours with almost flippant abandon, not realising how much they should direct a build, and how much a part of your contract they should be. Variations from those words can be timely with contracts needing to be amended and costly delays resulting. Thankfully ours was pretty much tossed just a short time into the build, as it was clear to all involved that this project was going to be a very fluid one, which changed and matured along the way. An agreement and a handshake has been the strongest contract that we had with our builders, and often suppliers, all who were true to their word.
My knowledge of design has been greatly enhanced, with so much time on site being able to reflect on every design decision. Did we make all the right ones? Not a chance, but we learnt as much if not more from the ones that didn’t go quite as planned.
And lastly, a huge thanks to Dean, who has been with me right from the start of egresStudio, from inception, to design, to admin, to building, he has been a fantastic partner to share this experience with. He has become part of the family, and it will be weird and sad not to have him around all of the time
This weekend we have our first guests staying in ‘The Longhouse’ and in the tradition of things it was finished with about 2 minutes to spare. I spent the last 48 hours building, shopping, decorating and cleaning up – no sleep and not much in the way of food, but we got the thing finished on time, with builders helping to the last minute, writing welcome notes on blackboards, sweeping floors, getting linen and assembling furniture.
The guests love it. It has been great to see them with the breezeways opened up, sipping wine and eating cheese, gathering around our concrete benches, using the building exactly as we intended.
Hopefully after a short break we will launch into another project, perhaps not quite so grand, but no doubt just as rewarding!
Thanks for all of your support and interest over the past two years, it has been great to have you all on board.
Design is a team sport and I am very lucky to have been part of this team 
Jo
