Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Foamcore Architectural Model!

hey guys adam savage here in my  cave with a one-day build that is   it's not too much to say it's  about the future of making   yeah sure okay obviously i love making i am a  maker but i'm also a proselytizer i want everyone   to enjoy and embrace the incredible  results of reaching out into the world   using your point of view to make something  from nothing i want everyone to understand   and indulge their inner maker and as such i pay  attention to the maker community all around the   world and i have to admit something that's really  clear that there is still a significant digital   divide that leaves behind marginalized communities  when it comes to the tools of digital fabrication   but i have also met many people devoted to  crossing that digital divide and one of them   is my great friend and hero sonia pryor jones  who has embarked on a project in the glenville   district of cleveland called fab house this this  is fab house four floors devoted to teaching kids   the tools of digital fabrication and steam  education in general and sonya has buttonholed   me to be on the advisory team for fab house  which i gleefully accepted instantaneously   and we are working towards turning this house into  a mecca for digital fabrication and whenever i am   dealing with a new building in my life i tend to  need to build it um this is a model of my shop   that i'm standing in right here in fact in this  model i'm standing right about there uh i built   my house here in san francisco my storage  space that's the house i grew up in   making quick and dirty architectural models of  these spaces is how i put the space into my head   and that is what i'm about to do with fab house  i have architectural plants from their website   and i have made copies and blown them  up of each of the four floors yeah   it's significant um and i'm going to make a 1  24th scale foam model of fab house i'm going   to start at the basement and move all the way up  to the attic and uh yeah you'll get to see how i   do this i know i've done this untested before i  just think it's a fantastic exercise not just in   how easy this kind of fabrication can be but  also in the perspective it lends your brain when   you walk into the space you have replicated yeah  seriously like you should just consider walking   around your apartment or your house measuring  all the rooms and making yourself a model of it   you will learn more than you think okay that's  enough of an intro let's get into it let's say   that this is i'd say this is probably  nine feet this is probably eight feet   one of the key ways i do a model like  this is i cut out all the walls first   obviously as i have each of these maps i'm  going to be transferring these maps to pieces   of foam core four pieces that are the same  size and i'm going to be starting to just   put up walls so what i need first and foremost is  tons of foam core cut to the height of the walls   i am i believe that the main  floor has nine foot ceilings   yeah i believe that the main floor has nine  foot ceilings and all the other floors are   eight foot ceilings um and so i'm going to  be cutting out two levels of floor of wall   uh right and i have to figure out how much i  need of each one here's some quick and dirty   estimating how much wall do i need for  this attic space let's see uh 3 6 34 38   42 56 60 inches uh that's at eight foot uh  this is the second floor 245 to six 50 62 90 give her tank let's say 100  inches plus 36 46 yeah a hundred 110 inches let's do let's do 120  inches of 4.5 inch to the table saw these will be the bases just doing my math 24 inches  times 12 is 288 right yeah   20 12 inches times 12 144 24 inches times 12  is double that so 288 i have 2 4 6 8 10 12.   that should be enough walls for all the  floors with the main floor okay now we go   four and a half i need 120 inches that's  10 feet so at two feet that's five of these   right yeah that's five of these okay i'll do seven one two three four matt what the hell  i'll just do eight then i'm covered okay hopefully that is the last  of the table saw cutting   i'm gonna need to build a lot of stairs in this  house that's definitely a thing the basement   in the basement is that piece of foamcore now we  are going to start to build this these are top   right the basement is half submerged so these  are little tiny windows that one that one   that one and that one and these are windows  that are like okay let's make this long wall i'm gonna go with the outer extents of this  the walls in the drawing are quite a bit   thicker than the actual walls  i think might be but we'll see now the windows are here here here and here now the question is how high   it looks like the windows go almost all the way to  the ceiling so i'm going to do that and this goes but the windows look roughly square so much of  the time when i am doing this exercise i am uh   not working from nice blueprints like i get  to this time but i'm frequently working from   plans that i drew of my house so i'll like my  preferred technique forever has been to go get a   grocery paper bag and unstick it at  its seams and use it as the piece of   paper and i roughly draw out the floor  plan of what i can see and then i go in   and crawl around the house filling in  all the measurements on the floor plan this is quite a luxury to  have have such good drawings now we have the outer perimeter is set so i got to  transfer it onto here and make sure it's all nice   and square so this is the this is the basement  and now i'm going to transfer when you're making   a model like this there's the numbers and then  there's the numbers like i there's a lot of yeah   it's just basically this is the right way to do  it yeah i know you're thinking i should somehow   make these measurements and draw it along it  actually works better if i cut the foam cord   of the drawing and then mark it here on the on  the base so there's a corner and there's a corner and here is a corner and here is a corner and here is a wait try to fool me and i don't mind these witness marks  like to me the witness marks of the   of my pencil lines are always really interesting  i'm gonna cut them out at the same time this blade feels weirdly dull  and that's a door with a sliding so and the door is six feet high it is a six  foot door like all doors are like 72 inches   hold on let me just double check this oh no  it's seven feet 84. okay so seven feet is   three and a half inches 24 scale is really easy  to do the math on uh if it's a seven foot door   it's half inch to a foot so you divide it by half  so a seven foot door is not seven inches because   that's twelfth scale it's half of that so it's  three and a half inches yeah so three and a half   all right there we go there's my little accordion  door i know it's a little bit of a funny conceit   but we'll see i guess i could start to glue  this together i'm kind of like trying to do   a little bit more than i need to oh i'm sorry  i'm still wrapping my head around the totality   of this project um i need to transfer some  pencil lines to this base before i glue the   walls on it'll just make it a lot easier to  make the measurements that i need to make   you know what i'm just going to start gluing it  down i'm definitely trying to do too much at once the pencil lines when you put them  down on the foam core allow you to   lay your stuff down much straighter  than normally yeah that's great great the other thing about these models  once they're done they become   tremendous documents for discussion  so i'll give you an example joey familia and i've been talking about a  different lighting scheme here in the cave   and as part of the discussion i just pulled  this out and started to like describe   what i was thinking about constructing rather than  pointing and all this we could have a discussion   here around the model of the cave itself  and even talk yeah it just provides a much   better way for two people to discuss an interior  than actually being in the interior if that makes   sense it's peculiar but amazing what i end  up hoping that this becomes for fab house is   just like that a tool for being able to  discuss the things they plan to do in the space i keep my hot glue for operations like this set  at a lower temperature if you have the hot glue   set at too high a temperature when it hits the the  open cell foam of the foam course interior liner   it can tend to bubble up and that will really like  it's just a pain in the butt it's no it's no good   no bueno slightly off there but that is the  basement um now let's put in this little accordion   door room i have built these models with hot glue  i've also built just as many of them with ca glue   i don't have a preference i think i can tend to  do slightly cleaner work although it takes longer   with the ca glue but i really love the immediacy  of what low temp hot glue can yield for this   so that's what that's a little room and then  i'll just drop it in here test fit it good   and if they want to cut that  door out they totally can   so here's what we'll do a little  bit along all the mating edges bingo moving along at pace yes all right one thing about this that i really  want to stress is don't be too careful   seriously i know it's an architectural model and  throughout your whole life you've probably told   yourself that architectural modeling is like uh  super rigorous and what i've come to understand   is that there's no such thing as a  perfectly accurate set of blueprints   and you're not going to use this model in a way  that a high degree of super granular accuracy   is necessary i use these models for talking about  renovations for talking about how to where to put   the tables for a party i talk about them for  future thinking about ways in which we might   want to reconfigure a room but you can be a lot  looser than i think you think you might need to be   also i love this is one of the things i  love about doing exercises like this is like   this is a blank space this is a play the  room you go into and there's a bathroom   in that room and this bathroom has this  blank space here that could be where the   hvac runs you don't know this is how i figured  out how the hvac ran in the first house i owned for me when i know that i can when i know that i can relax a little bit in terms  of accuracy it just allows me to go a bit faster   so i usually work hard to get the outer  perimeter nice and tight and square and then i   now is that a door i think it might be a  door so i'm also going to give it a kepper um yeah i work on getting the outer perimeter roughly  as square as i think is reasonable and then i   button in wall one wall at a time um and i have you know i think my uh sometimes  my low standards for accuracy are are pretty   clear um but i've never suffered  for it in any of these architectural   models there's never been a thing where  it's like you built it the wrong size   oh don't get me wrong i build stuff to the  wrong size but not because of the model we were doing a renovation in our laundry  room and we ordered a piece of marble spect   to a measurement that i had figured out and i  was off by two inches we literally had to add   in order to make this piece of custom woodwork  done work that we had had done we had to have   an extra two inches glued onto the marble and  the look of pure surprise on my wife's face   of like she didn't say it but the look said  i thought this is what you did for a living okay i think the basement is mostly  done i have to work on the stairs but   all three of the four floors have all  the floors have stairs i'm gonna have   to just worry about the stairs after  i've gotten these all fleshed out uh   basement okay i'm gonna put this that's pretty  good that's pretty good yeah most of what we   need is in here all right great so i'm gonna move  this aside and work on the first floor the big one it's big that's ah right okay so now i see  this is the house that's the front porch yeah since i'm going only building this level i  can build the porch out onto the right i just do   a little fancy poo great great great so this  oh i've actually gone bigger than i need to   with this so i may actually cut this no no nope  i put the porch on there if it seems like i'm   making this episode go along it's probably  because i'm making this up as i go along when you're doing this kind of build  save every scrap you're gonna end up   wanting them so just don't toss anything away  when you're first putting it all together so there's that i think if this is a transition between the  living room and the dining room it's also   it's not those these aren't going to go all the  way to the ceiling this is going to be like a   door opening and i think i can see that i'm right  there yep yep yep yep yep and it's seven feet good 1.55 that's seven five five that's off to the oh this is the  one thing i can't see is the kitchen   all right we're gonna go with  some standard window action here okay so that's the first floor windows   they are uh-huh uh-huh i say they're  putting like about like there   to about like there yeah that seems reasonable  we're going to be following that on all of them that's my window template the window  goes here and i will cut it out   this is one of the more labor-intensive parts  of this kind of modeling is you've got to cut   all the portals out of every when every wall  you've got to cut all the windows and doors   before you put it together right so you just have  to you can cut them out afterwards but it's no fun now on this one there is only one window  on this long wall yep yep yep okay oh why i first met sonia pryor jones  actually because of the obama administration   in obama's second term one of the clutch  connectors in his office of science and   technology policy ostp by the name of tom khalil  tom i like to think of myself as a connector like   i know a lot of people and i like putting  people together tom khalil makes me look   like a rank amateur in that department he's one  of the more impressive connectors i've ever met   his joke is that his pickup line is have you  considered public service tom button-holed me   at a party in la and i'd already met him  several times at that point but he button   hold me at a party in la and said um how would  you like to work with obama administration on   promoting making around the world and i was like  sign me up coach and he did uh right so tom then   i we talked about various things to do and  i talked about traveling around the country   visiting maker spaces and he said if you're gonna  do that let me send you to cleveland first and he   sent me to cleveland and i spent an incredible  day there uh under the wonderful tutelage of   sonia pryor jones and lisa camp they had worked  together on many projects but the biggest one was   a think box a seven story maker makerspace case  western has in cleveland an amazing maker space   but sonya and lisa took me around cleveland  and showed me what an amazing city cleveland is   they took me to every aspect the high the low  they showed me the damage from the economic   downturn they showed me the way in which cleveland  as a city and a municipality and a community was   really looking at itself and looking to heal  the racial economic socioeconomic divides that   pushing parts of the city away from each  other consequently i have grown to feel like   cleveland's one of my favorite cities in the world  uh i've made great friends there i love that place   and it's all because of sonja and the almadman  administration um that was pretty cool there we   go another wall off my list yep good hot glue nice  and fast i think i'm gonna have to glue this down   soon because i'm gonna run out of room and i'm  gonna end up with a piece too unwieldy to lay out this may be i i'm now realizing i may have been  too ambitious with this but we'll see where we get   to and this is one of the reasons why ca glue with  an accelerator is great for this kind of project   because with hot glue i've got a limited amount of  time the first bead i let down is already curing   and let's see here we'll do this to there great  that's nice and straight and then we'll lay   this down here and bring this over to here damn i  wasn't sure i was capable of making that work but i am happy about that one of the spaces we looked at in cleveland was a  former school that had unbelievably been designed   like a prison with a panopticon like a central  viewing platform from which all the classrooms   could be viewed by an administrator  in the center it was really intense   and had been turned into a real maker  space a real maker based education space all right great okay you so now i have a kind of a bay window that boop  boop and rather than do it in multiple pieces i'm   going to do it all as one piece yeah we'll see so  what i have here is a bend that starts there score then once i'm there there's a window and this is a score and then once that is scored there's a window here and once that is done and i score here and then here i have   the same let's see how good my drawings are i'm  going to get a new blade because it's about time all right let's see what i got here  score yep score score yeah see that   there we go and now this comes like this  like this all right i think i cut it here so this is a closet with a tiny  little door tiny little door so i'm going to cut it out that is a doorway yeah oh i have  to glue this in right all right this is one edge of the stairwell i  haven't i'm still not doing the stairs yet goes right about yeah one of the things that i particularly love about  cleveland as a city is how much people from   cleveland love cleveland i mean and it's not just  like blind city pride like they really love the   city sonia and her husband will rent hotels in  other parts of cleveland to get to know those   neighborhoods better like they'll do a staycation  in town just to kind of learn about a neighborhood   i find that really inspiring i mean don't get  me wrong i've i i've thought about doing that in   san francisco i've just never done it right it's i  just to me that speaks volumes to loving your city   seriously uh and i find that with every cleveland  ite that i end up meeting and enjoying spending   time with uh tested contributor frankie polito  from cleveland uh if you're into theater   cleveland has a theater district that is  literally like second only to broadway uh yeah great city it's been too long since i've been back putting in the columns of the  porch this just helps set the   visual space that we're talking about i don't want to cut a lot of porch  slots that's just really specifically   something i don't want to do right  so one thing is there is a yeah good uh excellent the first floor  the main floor is just done okay here's something i love here's something  i love so blueprints are show me this slanted   this diagonal fireplace so then when i place the  fireplace over the fireplace hey the walls line up   right like this is how you figure out the shape  of your house and what's above and below it's   totally really like part of the process  for me moving into a space gotta build it okay so there's that okay so now i got to  draw some windows in here let's see this is window door that's a window wait ah there we go window door and now  this one window and then this one here score window window score then window window score and cut it a little  bit oversized just in case so you know as i as i build this and i build boxes  to house the things that i love the vessels   it it brings up a question in my head of  like what is the house what is a house   like fab house a vessel for and the answer is  it's a vessel uh for a vision of the future   it's it's not too it's not going too far at all to  say that's exactly why a place like fab house is   coming into being um our responsibility to our  kids is to prepare them for the world and our   responsibility to our communities is the same uh  both to survive and to thrive and and to prepare   them for a future that we won't see um and this is  sonia prior jones's vision of what's possible this   will be filled with machines and tools of digital  manufacturing and maker tools and workshops   but it's also going to be filled with people  and their enthusiasm and their encouragement   i find that a really beautiful thing and each  house is a vessel for for what it holds yeah   just thought i was having  while putting this together okay so that lives there now let's touch and go for a sec there's a window in this wall at the end  of the stairs here on the third floor   but i don't know what height it is i can't  figure out where it's supposed to actually   go so i'm gonna leave it uncut i will  leave it to the lovely humans at fab house   to put in the stairs because and to do this  window there may be a couple more things i'm not trying to leave you with extra work   i think we might be at this i  think we might be done with the   third floor here moving on to the attic i just  got to put in a little closet door topper here and that's it good closet door porch stairs closet closet bedroom bedroom good  okay that's a roof down to the downstairs   third floor is done there it is this is a weird shaped room oh it goes all the way to the extents yes  it does because it's a weird-shaped room   yeah okay it's like station of the cross okay so there's that there's that out there there  there all right this one comes all the way across   that one and that one i'm i'm just in one of  those states where i'm kind of excited because   i can smell the end coming a bonus of the top  floor of fab house is that there are no windows   i mean it's like a kind of a dormer narnia up  there uh lots of slanted as you can see here   right i think this is the ceiling so everything  comes in i'm still gonna make the walls   9 uh eight feet tall um if the denizens  if fab house choose to shorten them they   can but for discussion purposes it's still  enclosing the space in a way that makes sense   there's one window and it's over here  at the front so this is right window uh excellent all right here we go edge of foam core is always a little  beaten up i could cut it two of those as i'm putting the finishing touches  here on the attic i want to note   i'm at the end of my glue stick i've done three and a half floors on one  glue stick i i didn't mean to be thrifty   i don't know why i'm always yelling at the  camera from over here i know i'm wearing a mic   sometimes when i watch our videos just to  see how we're doing and what's going on   i'm like why is adam yelling so much and then  i realized my wife asks the same question talk about getting it under the wire   this is uh i turns out i cut  precisely almost precisely as much uh wall as i needed let's see  here yeah we're gonna do this look i know sometimes to some of you this may  seem like a ridiculous exercise but for me it   it is such a i learned so much more than i  ever think i will about the space that i am   doing i learned about its proportionality  i learn about the flow of the space it's   yeah it's a way of kind of recapitulating you  know how you look at a picture of a place and   like you end up with a different  relationship to it because the picture   changes the way you think about it same  thing three and a half feet let's see when you want to cut straight lines with an  x-acto blade a shallow angle really helps you   hew to the line the shallower the  angle the more accurate my cuts become   and keep throwing out your exacto blades when  they're no longer sharp enough and they dull   so fast you'll feel like you're wasting them  but what you're not wasting is your bloody time   uh because trying to make something work with  dull exacto blades takes way more time and energy   than just working with sharp blades and i'm  using foam core because it's nice and white   but i've done this with cardboard i've done it  with matte board i've done it with black foam   core white foam core i've done it with styrene i'm  material agnostic when it comes to these models   this is this weird little  closet that lives right there   i love the fact that it's is that like the best  hide-and-seek spot somehow i used to live in an   apartment that was just like this it was the top  floor of a uh three-story building if you must   know it was on 30th in san jose in san francisco  and it's all dormers it's like the closets went   way back because they were all slanted ceilings  we called the closets narnia because it just   went like the closet would be like a three foot  high door but the closet was like eight foot deep   it was crazy all right i have one more thing to do  to the top floor here and it is to add this window and we're gonna slice let's see that floor ceiling the stairs come up here and they have  this little thing but because it's   yeah i'm just gonna leave that for those guys   this is an interactive piece that's my way of  explaining why i'm leaving some stuff undone i'm not being i'm not being a jerk no you know what when you say i'm  not being a jerk that's never true   like the the necessity to say that phrase  means it's questionable um i think his name   is smiley and there was a philosopher  who wrote a a piece about a guy who it's a long story but basically it was  a philosophical thing that when you say   i think it's red the philosopher is like no you  don't you're qualifying it by saying i think   instead of it's red you're saying i think it's  red that means you don't believe that it's red   so shallow angle and then it sort of follows the  score i did this video a couple weeks ago where i   talked about never trying to cut  through on the first cut uh on the   first cut with this kind of foam core  i just try and draw the line that i see   and i'm cognizant that as i cut on this shallow  angle i'm cutting past the line i need here but   not even up to the line here so frequently i'll  turn it around jam that in there and also do that   you don't want to be tearing out any of the parts  of your construction you want them to fall out i also do i tend to gang up my cuts and i do like  all the cuts in one direction at once there we go okay now i have the difficult cuts which is  these cross cuts and i don't want to lose   this middle mullion so i'm going to start  by going there you go see that that's it and do the same thing on the other side also my exacto holding technique isn't amazing   uh i do end up kind of often  imparting a little bit of mitered vagaries to my cuts so once you've made  the once you've made all of the cuts for   the window i turn it over and i look at the  back and take a look at the back and you   can see how in some cases i've cut past the  corner and there's some place right up to it   any place i haven't yet actually cut the  corner those are the places i want to   kind of put in a little bit of a slicy  poo and then they're ready oh yeah i'm rarely going for like total constructive  perfection with the glue line being laid upon   every mating surface i do a lot of taking part  of these models so just the fact that it all   holds together is good enough i gotta  just see about that little piece there oh wait yeah inside the inside all right remembering which corner you're  gluing it's good to try and remember tell you the invention that i need a hot glue  gun that no matter how hard you pull on a trigger   the glue comes out at the speed you've set that's really good i don't have the time to do  it but if you do when you make a million dollars   maybe you send me a check all right uh what am i  doing here this is that one and that goes there   and that's the other side of the stairs so here  we go this is the last piece and my architectural   24th scale model of fab house will have been  fabbed this awesome there we go okay so closet   window window over here i forgot this  window how did i forget this window   i forgot the window we have to cut out  the window after the fact less than ideal always like this there's always some last minute  like oh i forgot that part there are mistakes that   i make that i really enjoy thinking you saw me  make the mistake and you spotted it before i did   i don't know why for some reason that level of  interactivity and like well here's the thing   i love knowing that a viewer of one of my videos  might be watching and like yelling at me and going   you don't know what you're talking about and  then i actually say i don't know what i'm   talking about like like it's almost like we're  having a conversation um not that i like people   yelling at me on the videos or that i'm like  aiming for that but i do like when i surmise what a viewer is thinking and answer it  okay let us assess our current situation   i am not going to do any labeling on this because  i'm going to leave that to fab house itself   i am going to put away some of these  things this is the second floor right   that is the attic yeah oh yeah there  we go yeah so attic second floor first floor with the porch and the basement there it is ladies and gentlemen juve present uh yeah this is fab house  this is the four stories of fab house there's something i always find really  satisfying about witnessing the completed project   it's it's always inspiring to me to to check it  out um as far as the decoration of the rooms this   is this is this is where it's up to the future  owners i'm gonna ship this up and send it to the   folks at fab house uh they can do what they like  with this use it for planning hang it on the wall   i usually take a picture of myself bring it  down to 1 24 scale which is three inches tall   and i usually put it in there and uh i'll have to  send them one that they can print out and cut out   and put in here um but yeah i'm i'm really happy  with how this came out there's a couple of things   that aren't quite perfect in there but that's  kind of what the whole point was um thank you   guys for joining me for this one day build and uh  there is going to be a link uh there is now a link   i'm talking in the past but i'm speaking to you  in the present and right now if you want there's   a link to fab house in the comments below uh  and if you'd like to donate something they could   really use it they're an amazing organization  i will be there physically in person hopefully   sooner rather than later uh we were planning  on it for early 2019 or for early 2020 and   for all the obvious reasons they didn't  make it but hopefully soon all right guys   have an excellent day and i will see you next  time thank you guys for watching that video if   you'd like to further support us at tested you can  do so by buying some merch from us in our store   a link is below but i wanted to tell you that  for the first time we are releasing a discounted   bundle of tested merch specifically our  original five demerit badges these are   ways in which every maker screws up so we've got  the measure once cursed twice uh releasing the   mysterious blue smoke from electronics and  stopping them from working breaking a drill   bit uh 3d printer going all flying spaghetti  monster on you and my personal most common one   cutting your finger yeah get yourself over to  tested store.com and uh line yourself up with some   demerit badges i'm gonna sew these to my apron  oh that actually would make a good one day build

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 202,475

Keywords: tested, fab foundation, fab house, sonya pryor-jones, adam savage, one day builds, foamcore, architectural model, adam savage one day build, adam savages one day builds, tested adam savage one day build, one day build, adam savage one day builds, one day builds adam savage, foam board, foam, model, miniature, adam savage model making, adam savage foam core, adam savage foamcore, adam savage one day build foam core house, how to make an architectural model, adam savage tested

Id: NNNcGCZHvxE

Length: 53min 52sec (3232 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021