‘ju:femaiz

The Background

Saturday was a rather busy day. Went out for a morning photo shoot at Long Reef with the guys - surf was actuall half decent, but no one was really doing much unfortunately. After we got back to their unit in Collaroy we got a call from Toby (went to school at Manly High with us for a while) who needed some help moving a few hundred kilos of concrete into place as the base of a large shelving unit he’d designed.

The Designer: Toby Breakspear

Toby is currently studying a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Sydney. The shelving unit featured is partnered with a desk, also designed by him, in the same thick plywood. The process he used was to design the works in CAD, then had the wood CNC machined at a local business in Mona Vale. The concrete was poured into moulds in his garage and left to set for over a fortnight, with the pins and holes in place.

The Design

Toby’s mum works from home, as a result she wanted to separate the “work” area from the “home” area - and what better way than a set of shelves on half a tonne of concrete. The base is roughly half a tonne of concrete, with a set of draws built into the base. On top a set of shelves in thick plywood sit, with metal half-shelves where needed. Now it’s there, we hope they don’t plan on moving too soon - I’d love to see the look on the removalists face though!

The Problem

As simple as it may sound, getting a 200kg block of cement to sit on 300kgs of cement blocks in the right place is not exactly an easy proposition. Ever the perfectionist, Toby’s allowance on the pin-hole combination was +2mm on the radius of the pins. So what started off as a simple proposition turned into an afternoon adventure.

Two car-jacks used to hold the ~200kg cement slab in position above the pins.

The Shots

flickr slideshow of the day