FMP Blog post 7 – Majamajawurio house

Having decided on what materials and scales each model would be made in I could begin to plan and make.

I decided to start with the Majamajawurio model as it is top of my priority list.

I cut out a hard base of plywood for the model to sit on, as neither card nor cork are stable enough to stand on their own at the thicknesses I am using them. This plywood was offcuts from other student’s projects in the workshop. I tried to stick to the ‘3 R’s’ of ecofriendliness during this project - reduce, reuse and recycle. I used leftover or waste material and offcuts where possible to avoid them going to waste, I used recyclable materials as much as possible and tried to use those materials to their fullest to avoid waste.

The cork layers were easy to cut out and piece together. I did have a few shades of blue card to choose from when it came to the water, I ended up using this warmer turquoise shade as it complimented the colour of the cork. The other card will be saved for use in another project.

To begin with I made a card version of the shed, however I decided after making it that I

would prefer to use metal. However the card version was a good way to test the shape, size and placement of the shed, as well as helping me to decide to include the solar panels that the building has. The wooden deck that the shed is on is made of balsa wood. Sadly balsa wood itself is often not very eco friendly. While it is an incredibly fast growing hardwood, the tree itself is a tropical rainforest tree which means rainforests being cut down to supply the wood, unless it is grown on a plantation and even then some plantations used to be rainforest so overall not ideal - however this bala wood is another waste product of another project of mine from several years ago. If I had not had this wood I would have purchased a more sustainable type of wood such as bamboo or basswood.

I used a 0.5mm thick copper wire for the trees, however I later managed to find a much thinner 0.1mm wire which made much more delicate and detailed trees and so I decided to replace the trees and recycle the old wire.

To start with I tried to make a new shed using steel. I planned to saw the shed shape out of an inch square block of steel, however the steel proved much too hard for me to saw through by hand, and the metal was too thick to waterjet cut. I had intended to rust one side of the shed and polish the other to create an interesting finish, however after struggling to use the steel I switched to aluminium which was much easier to work with. The steel went into the scrap metal box to be reused by someone else later.

Because aluminium does not rust, I decided instead to apply a thin layer of black acrylic paint and then wipe it away to reveal the texture of the sawed and filed metal. I felt that this was an even better finish than the steel would have had.

I made 2 solar panels out of the black card I already had, and with the shed applied the model was finished.