glocken-steps
a set of miniature musical steps
ARCH160
Dana Buntrock, David Jaehning
Group Project: Daniel Barrio, Isabella Kennedy
UC Berkeley || Spring '19
In this Introduction to Construction class, the assignment was to design and manufacture a flight of metal stairs at 1/2 scale, according to building code requirements. Aesthetically inspired by the sleek simplicity of musical tuning forks, these stairs embrace the sleek lines and industrial aesthetic enabled by metal building materials.
instrumental inspo
Inspired by simple beauty of musical tuning forks, we designed a simple pattern for the framework of the staircase whose. The size of the openings were strictly determined by the maximum spacing dimensions described in the "Baby Head Rule", thereby restricting each of the openings of the balusters to a maximum of 2 3/16” (translated to 4 3/8” on a full-scale model).
Following the theme of musical metal instruments, we decided to form our stair risers and treads out of a sheet of aluminum flashing to achieve an aesthetic reminiscent of a small metal glockenspiel.
the assembly
The stairs were built out of a single sheet of aluminum sheet metal welded onto a frame of 1/2” stainless steel square bar. In order to embrace the peculiarities of metalworking, we relied solely on hot, welded connections throughout our design and elected to embrace the scorch marks on the treads which resulted from this process. These markings are also reminiscent of the rivets that hold a glockenspiel together.
