technē and poiēsis

I've had to change the design of the floor slightly, but I have a system now that mostly works. I still need clay plugs sometimes. I'll write more about it later.

I seem to be constantly trying to plug gaps between things. If I had to start over I would do many things differently, and one of them is to design the first two courses of the walls without gaps. That is where the hypocaust system is passing, and it would be kind of useless if all the hot air escaped through the walls. So instead I have to plug the holes. This time, I used pieces of broken bricks and tiles. The bricks on these bottom courses are already looking weathered. I want to see what they're like in 100 years...

Should the intersection determine the layout of the wall? For Wall 2, I was interested in creating an interference pattern between the two layers. Maybe I should have made sure the number of bricks was the same as the roof, like I did for Wall 1. Instead, I found I had to make a flat surface before joining the roof to the wall, because the courses didn't line up. For this, I used some bricks sliced lengthwise before firing. Also, I used some half-bricks to finish the roof in the same pattern.  When I was mortaring the sun came out and I realized that I liked the shadow line that I get on the roof bricks when the joint is slightly recessed. So I went back over them all again!

Today was a moment of pride- I have succeeded in making a brick roof! I was only going to take a little bit of the formwork out, but then I realized that it was all loose anyways. I pulled it out amidst a shower of dried clay bits (the plugs I used). And a cloudy morning turned into a sunny afternoon, so it was a pretty good day. and the In the above photo you can see the test system for the hypocaust. Some of the prefabricated pillars are there. The late afternoon sun comes through the wall.