Sketching, Making and Re-thinking the model

I HAVE THE IDEA that the model should 'be there' throughout the making of the project, the thesis. So I am projecting. I imagine the model in its final stages, as if I know already what it is I am going to make. The model is not only a big piece of something, it is also performing, doing things. It is testing out experiments, playing with the parts of itself in its context, testing limits. The model is an interactive tool for determining the form, the program, the questions, the next set of problems I face by making something on the Pont-des-Seigneurs. Jumping ahead: sketches of the model have me thinking about all of its the components. Which are the ones I could make, need to make, can't make...just yet. I have begun to make the big parts of the model: the silicone canal systems, three in total (1825 is submerged into 1848 because nothing is added or taken away), but next to that are questions about what else needs to figured out. It's not possible to embed (nor does it make sense) the wiring in the silicone. And then the question of how to suspend or lift this water tank off the ground? And then, there are the questions I hadn't thought of yet, such as, how to charge the water with an electric current?





Above: Sketches
Below: Photos of the clay models of the canal systems at three stages of development: the present (top) 1909 (middle) and 1848 (bottom). Below these are photos of the clay "under wraps", keeping 'em moist.









Working in the sensor lab with Elio has helped to explain some questions I had about making the model. But it has also triggered new questions, and problems. And it turns out, these problems are more interesting than the ones I had set out to solve.

Below: Sketches of how to detail water and power connections into the silicone mold. There is a photo of the female connection for power supply. Below that I photograph testing the resistant of water charged with an electric current. The resistance of the water is at about 25%, and the number doesn't change if I run a current through small or large quantities of water. That's good news.

Modeling the Canal System: Test Un

TODAY, I made a test model of the canal system in 3D using clay and silicon. There are two parts to the model: a positive mold and a negative mold. I want to make a negative mold that can carry water (like the canal!): it should be elastic, somewhat clear, and able to withstand heat (steam?). The positive mold is made out of clay. I use clay because it enables me to cast a positive which is water soluble. This is necessary for removing the positive mold after the negative is cast all around it (like taking out a 'crunchy candy bar' from out of its delicious chocolate shell without damaging the shell, except at its ends). The negative mold is made from silicone. I am testing this to find out. Other materials I thought of using but nixed included balloon rubber, a latex material. It has greater elastic properties than silicon, which could prove advantageous. But it wears down very easily.







Top: Making the clay positive. A section from the 1:1000 scale drawing of the canal. Behind it stands one of the two jugs of silicon mixes; the two part mixture is easy to handle, and sets in about one half hour.

Middle: Covering the positive with the silicon. I use a spatula to spread the silicon over the clay. Several layers can be added through the curing process. I can even embed 'stuff' into the silicon, or draw on it too, with magic marker. I have spread the silicon in uneven layers, a way to test different thickness properties.

Bottom: The clay and the silicone have now been separated. Also, a photo of a spritzer, one of my favorite modeling tools.

Drawing and Sounding Out

Above: Axonometric drawing of the canal system eminating from the Lachine Canal and coursing through the site. There are four drawings in total, scale 1:250; one for each of the four different phases of canal construction at the Pont-des-Seigneur & Ecluses Saint-Gabriel. Next I layer the drawings one ontop of the other to make a fifth drawing of the canal system, one which collapses all of the canal systems into one system. The drawing, like the landscape, becomes a palimpsest. The drawings demonstrate the volume of the canal, and gives a offers glimpses of the shape of the landscape above it. The drawing also becomes the basis for making a model of the canal system. This, I plan to make in such a way that I can recreated the flow of water through the site.

Below: Making a contact mic: sound as another way to disclose the buried canal system.

Building as Lens / Mediation device.

The position of the CN Wellington along the Railway leading into, and away from, the centre of Montreal establishes itself as a sort of mediating body between the city and the observer (rail passenger). There is a certain physical dialogue which exists between the rail (observer) and the CN Wellington (former observer).

(Writing in progress)

Pont-des-Seigneurs: the Canal System: le site GBR

THE SITE IS THE CANAL LACHINE at the Pont-des-Seigneurs & l'Ecluse Saint Gabriel. A bit of background: The Canal Lachine, after it opened in 1825, transformed the St. Lawrence River from a natural waterway into a hybrid technical and natural infrastructure. Before 1821 the site of this hybridization was the Lachine Rapids. It stretched fourteen kilometers, dropped over fourteen meters and for over two hundred years blocked the continuous transit of ships traveling from the Atlantic Ocean up the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and back. Prior to the transformation of the rapids into a canal, all cargo had to be transferred from the vessels to ground transportation at one end of the rapids, brought over the land before being reloaded onto new ships on the smoother surface above or below the rapids. The city of Montreal, the former industrial and economic centre of the nation, owes its history to this transit obstacle. After 1825, the four years of construction to transform the rapids into a neat plumbing system enabled the city to expand and extend outwards into the young Dominion and further across the Atlantic Oceans in ways previously not possible without the control over the waterways.

FIRE MAPS 1879-1940

Fire Map Investigations

Animated



1914


1909


1907


1890


1879

Peter Zumthor - The Thermae of Stone Part 1, 2 & 3

CN Images of Canada Gallery

Levermen at CTC Board Wellington Tower
Montreal, Québec, Canada
ca. 1945


Levermen at CTC Board Wellington Tower
Montréal, Québec, Canada
1948


Battery room of the Wellington Tower
Montreal, Québec, Canada
July 1947


Centralized traffic control

CTC control chart records


Electric passanger train traveling over lift bridge
Montreal, Québec, Canada
Oct. 1943


Steamship "Brampton" passes under a lift bridge on the Lachine Canal
Montréal, Québec, Canada
ca. 1949

MLHP SITE