Basic Building - I

[Ornea]

...

Basic Building - I
Timestamp: Winter 516 AV
Location: Lhavit

PROLOGUE

”Build?”

Ornea felt confused. What the cuckoo did Edward mean? She understood that they needed a building for the small scale telescope prototype they aimed to develop and try out, but she had figured they would commission somebody to set up the shack on the roof, not build it with their own hands!

“We’re going to build a small temporary test observatory on top of this house, for the tiny telescope test project. It’s a temporary thing, so we’ll build it ourselves. We’ll go for simple architecture. You can make a simple design for it under my tutelage and build a model before we proceed to the real thing; it will be a good opportunity for you to learn more about crucial skills for Lucis and Lucis. I’ll make sure you learn the basics about construction and carpentry as well, more gadgeteering, more astronomy, some other things too, let me see ...”

A whole mountain of unfamiliar work was incoming. But as Ornea was Inarta she didn’t try to object. Firstly, Edward was the boss. She didn’t question his orders. Secondly, hard work was always good, wasn’t it? She nodded and listened, while Edward continued to list all the tasks he imagined she’d get done in short time. Work at Lucis and Lucis was no joke !

“I think we’re ready to start!” Edward said enthusiastically. The Inarta nodded in agreement.

She was going to roll up her sleeves and dig into the work, just like she had done in Mount SkyInarta when she’d been sent to clear tunnels instead of doing the normal work of an avora. What needed to be done needed to be done. If Edward wanted her to build a shack on the rooftops of Lucis and Lucis she would do it. Eventually. When she had figured out how to go about it. Building a model before going on to the real thing seemed like a good idea to her, as she was an absolute beginner.

...

[Ornea]

...

TO BHARANI LIBRARY

The first thing Ornea did was naturally to seek more knowledge. As a competent metalsmith and experienced crafter she was aware that pure trial and error isn’t the best way to achieve things. There’s an existing body of knowledge about most things in the world, and reading up about it can many times be the quickest way to understand how to go about things.

She wasn’t sure if it would be worth the while to search for information in Lucis own small technical library. Instead she went to Tenten Peak and the Bharani Library, with it’s big collection of books. Many of the books were said to be about practical, mundane things, so she expected a visit there to pay off.

When she arrived to Tenten, she stopped at the first tier and gazed up at the top of the peak. The library was located on the third tier and the road looked steep. Ornea decided to try something she mostly didn’t want to do; ride there on an okomo. She had started to think that as the city was overwhelmed by goats, she could as well try to make use of them. The Inarta looked around for an okomo, but for once there were no okomos around. Annoyed, she waited a bit, and after a while a goat finally appeared, on it’s way down from the second tier. It had no rider. She fixed her gaze on it and followed it’s slow descent toward her, observing how easily it moved, like it wasn’t bothered at all by the sloping ground. Perfect. The okomo looked free and the only think she’d need to do was stop it and then ride it up to the top of Tenten Peak.

The okomo didn’t seem to hear her when she called out to it and waved her hands in order to make her notice that she needed a ride. She’d heard other people speak about it, how hard it was to find an okomo when they needed one. Now she gained this experience, as the okomo passed by her like she didn’t’ exist and continued towards the bride from Tenten to Zinthia. Ornea chased after the animal and manage to get hold of it. This didn’t help any. She pulled at the okomo with all the strength she was able to muster, but it was a strong and stubborn animal. An attempt to climb up on it’s back was a mistake; the okomo just moved away and the Inarta found herself performing an acrobatic mix of little steps in order to regain her balance and not fall on the road.

“You clipped horned little monster” she muttered.

The okomo bleated at her and then it was on its way. "Baaah!"

Ornea looked around but no other okomo was in sight. Obviously she would need to climb the steep streets up to the library. Resigning to her fate, she started to walk, or more correctly, climb, in her opinion. The part of the street where she was right seemed steeper than average, for Lhavit standards. She slowly worked her way up, holding on to the walls of the houses on the roadside, occasional tree branches and whatever she could find to support her. The Lhavitians didn’t seem to even be aware of what an ordeal some streets in this city could be. It was different to her, who hadn’t grown up in this extreme topography. It might be a walk to them, but to her it was climbing, no less.

Finally she reached the third tier and climbed the huge glittering step leading up to the shiny big doors of the library. The library had once been a temple for Zintila , and this showed. Like so many other monumental size buildings in Lhavit, it served to make the people look small, Ornea thought. The houses, the plazas, everything in Lhavit was giant size, like it had been constructed for a totally other kind of beings than the humans who lived there.

The shinya guards beside the doors didn’t say anything when she entered. She didn’t know why they were stationed there. Perhaps it was some kind of symbolic presence meant to show that the library was protected by the shinya. She continued in and looked around. The interior was impressive, framed with skyglass ornaments and with shelves upon shelves full of books. Ornea hesitated. She didn’t have the slightest idea where to start. But soon enough a white robed librarian approached her and asked of she needed help. The Inarta explained her errand: “I need to read about the basic of architecture, construction and carpentry. As I’m new this I don’t want too complicated books. I’m looking for simple but good guides for absolute beginners.”

The librarian nodded. Ornea followed her helper in among the many shelves in the mundane section of the library. After a little while she carried a small tower of beginner’s guidebooks the librarian had picked for her to a table where she was going to sit and read.

...

[Ornea]

...

READING UP ABOUT ARCHITECTURE

Ornea started with the books about architecture. There she could read that architecture is about developing ideas for a building and illustrate these ideas by making drawings. The drawings were needed for being able to explain how the building was meant to be constructed. This seemed to be just what she was looking for, the Inarta thought to herself, as she leaned over the books and continued to study.

There were certain things the drawings ought to show, she understood. There were special views that were useful to draw. Examples were drawing outlining the floor plans, drawings of sections of the buildings. All this could hardly be needed for a the quite small building project the Inarta was embarking on, but she found it best to learn as much as possible, as Edward had seemed to think the future might demand a lot of knowledge about how to build houses and other construction work. The more she managed to learn from the books before she did anything, the better.

The drawings, she noticed, was an art to itself. It seemed like a lot of work to make them, drawing with meticulous exactness in order to get everything right. It made her think of the gadgeteering drawings in Edward’s office in Lucis and Lucis. Architecture and gadgeteering were similar in that way, she thought. They both needed a lot of preparations, development of ideas, and drawings. It was amazing how much of the work to make gadgets or build houses was only preparations. Architecture even seemed to be pure preparation work. It was a whole own kind of drawing, dedicated specifically to drawing houses.

The architecture drawing were of course meant to be in a smaller scale than the future building. This meant it was important to master mathematics in order to be able to understand the relations between the size of the drawing and the size of the building. Not only that; the drawings were two dimensional abstract descriptions of a three dimensional object ... at this points Ornea started to feel suspicious and checked the title of the book she was reading. The basics of Architecture. Basics? The Inarta wasn’t the person who had written the book meant the same thing as her with basic! The text was getting complicated, in the Inarta’s opinion. Scales, mathematics, relations, abstract, two-dimensional, tree -dimensional ... what the cuckoo! What was this?

Edward had given her a task though, and she would deal with it, even if this meant she would need to read mystery literature like this.

The next parts were more concrete and she was happy to read and understand that the floor of a building could be used in different ways and the space could be divided up by walls. This was easy! Anybody who had ever entered a house could testimony to the truth of that text. Encouraged, the Inarta continued to read about this topic. She found that the architect should draw a plan for a floor, which showed where the rooms would be, just like a city had a plan that showed it’s streets and locations. It made sense to her that this was called a floor plan. Each floor in a several story building should have its own floor plan.

All this made sense. There was also a lot of mathematic birdy babble in between this essential practical stuff, but she ignored it and went for what the average person would be able to understand.

It could also be important to make a plan for how the building would be fitted into a place with other buildings. This was more complex, but it was still called a plan, a site plan. It could include not only the new building, but also existing buildings, streets, parks and whatnot. The Inarta stopped reading for a while, feeling impressed. Architecture was about way more than she had expected. It could be about creating whole areas in a city. Perhaps it could even be about building a totally new city. It was mindboggling.

There was still lots left to read. She continued, and learnt that architecture also meant drawing pictures of the intended building from different angles. This could obviously be made super complicated, but as the Inarta didn’t understand the parts of the information dealing with what she’d call “star science” and not basics, she skipped them. It seemed to be important to draw the building in a lot of different ways in order to make the ideas as clear as possible. For this end it could be good to use perspectives, the book said. Ornea was under the impression this might mean a need to read up about drawing. She felt troubled. How hard could it be to design a house? Were all these preparations really necessary?

The answer came promptly when she read more. If was essential to all the development and drawing work before starting the construction work, because construction could take long time, the materials could be expensive, and the crafting involved in it, like carpentry and other core skills for building a house, could be expensive too. Good drawings were particularly important when different crafters were meant to collaborate. It’s easier to understand each other when there’s pictures, the book said. Quick and simple sketches had their use in the beginning of an architecture job, but there weren’t enough. Proper drawings were essential.

It was also important and useful to make special drawing of special details. This could be about showing things like special kinds of windows, or decorative elements. Ornea made a mental not to remember this as she figured even a very simple building could need special details when it was meant to house a test telescope. Perhaps a need of detail drawings would arise at some point.

There were drawings for a multitude of ends. Drawings just to present the idea, drawings to give the architect a good survey to use as input for further work and get the dimensions right, record drawings to document the buildings, and work drawings that were meant as input to the construction projects and their crafters. Just reading about it made the Inarta feel tired. Architecture was one huge drawing project! She hoped it wouldn’t come to her having to draw all this. Perhaps she would get away with the last thing she read up about, drafting, which could be done by less skilled amateurs like herself. She hoped so. Enough was enough! She closed the books about architecture resolutely and put them to the side.

...

[Ornea]

...

READING UP ABOUT CONSTRUCTION

Little did she know it, but Ornea was about to learn that an amazing lot of knowledge was needed for construction. Once she held the fat book in her hands she started to suspect this though. Being Inarta she steeled herself and started to read. She was going to learn this!

The book started with easy things. She wasn’t surprised to see that construction was about how to construct houses and other infrastructure parts of a city, like bridges, roads, harbors, agricultural facilities and so on. The construction, said the book, wasn’t just about crafting elements for buildings and such; construction meant the whole project for building something in a specific place. The architecture she had been reading about was only one component in construction!
When Ornea saw this she started to feel worried about getting overwhelmed by the task to learn about construction. She continued though. She wasn’t going to give up just because this promised to become a huge challenge.

So, the person who knew architecture would often be the one who managed the total job. This made sense, she thought to herself. But this wasn’t enough. First off, the construction work needed to be planned, and this seemed to include most everything. It wasn’t just to start. On no! Time shedules for everything was necessary and it was essential to keep an eye on costs as well. One needed to make sure the new construction would work in the environment, and it was vital to ensure that the workplace would be reasonably safe to work in. There was also a lot of other things that needed to be taken into consideration, like which building materials to use, how to get them and how to transport them to the construction site.

This seemed huge, but after reading for a while she concluded a simpler building project would require knowledge about basic construction, basic architecture, basic carpentry, and perhaps some simple masonry too.

The construction could setting up a whole new structure, but it could often also mean changes and additions to an existing structure. Exactly how to make a building was in practice dependent on which materials were available in the area. In forest areas timber was a common material, and in hot and sunny places with a good supply of clay for making brick this was an often used material. Stone could also be used, in areas where this was the best option.

A not too complicated wood framed construction could often be good for building small houses for families to live in, she learnt when she continued to read. This cheered her up. She noticed that the book also had a lot to tell about how the place where construction would take place must first be cleared. Then the ground must be checked in order to mark where the foundation was going to be placed. It could also be necessary to excavate and to flatten the ground. Ornea learnt this, but it was a relief to think of how a small shack on the roof of one of Lucis and Lucis buildings wouldn’t require all the ground work.

They would need a foundations though. She pondered this when she saw the book suggest that a foundation could be constructed by building a mold of timber and then pour some kind of clay material into it and ... she didn’t really believe this would be so smart. Not on a roof. It might be better to just make a wooden frame and fill it with a lighter material, perhaps those brick stones or adobe if it was available. Or maybe they would make do with a wooden deck? She hoped to find out more later, when it was time to read about carpentry and such.

This book was petching thorough and informative! As a crafter she quite appreciated this. She knew of course that she didn’t know how to do in practice, but she learnt the basic things she needed to even be able to try to build, and this was a good start.

It was time to read about framing. When the ground was in place next step in the construction was to build a main structure that would carry the lion’s part of the houses weight. The frame also served to give the structure its shape. It needed to be built of logs or other thick wood pieces, and it could also be good to use metal to reinforce especially important parts of the main structure. Ornea like that metal was involved, though she hardly thought it would be needed for such a small structure as she was planning. She wasn’t sure though. Perhaps they needed metal parts. She would discuss it with Edward.

More than this? A house naturally needed a frame, and then also floor, walls, roof, doors and windows, all those things people just take for granted. The book said there was a lot of information about this, but refereed to carpentry literature for those who wanted to read more. The construction was about assembling a multitude of elements, many of them made carpentry. If Ornea understood it right, this meant whole parts of a house could be made by carpentry and they assembled to a structure by mounting them on the frame. It was complicated, but due her experience in another craft she felt like she all the time understood well enough to learn things here.

So, first a foundation and then a frame. After this the construction would proceed to preparations for making a floor and a ceiling. The other walls would be fastened to the frame, and then it would be time to complete the roof. Windows and doors came later, and possible painting of inner walls and ceiling. Covering the floor with tiles was an even later step.

Well. It seemed like she had in theory grasped the basic steps in the construction from planning to a complete house. The book was thick like cuckoo and there seemed to be much more, but Ornea felt enough was enough. She had already learnt what she needed right now. She closed the construction book and put it to the side.

...

[Ornea]

...

READING UP ABOUT CARPENTRY

There was a lot of reading left to do. Ornea shut her eyes for a moment and wondered why she was doing this. Because Edward had said so ... because they needed a shelter for a telescope prototype ...but this wasn’t the whole answer. She was reading intently because Edward had been so worried about the future if the climatic change they experienced this winter would turn out to be permanent. Ornea could see the possible ramifications. It could come to a situation where Lucis and Lucis would need to engage in huge scale construction work in order to try to adapt the city’s infrastructure to new conditions. He had spoken about water, alternative wellheads, transportation, changes to the bridges, irrigation for Sharai Peak, and other things the future might demand. She obeyed orders by reading up, yes, but she also knew she was preparing for unknown future challenges.

The book contained a mix of the topics she was interested in. The next volume was about construction and carpentry alike. These two skills seemed to be closely related, like two sides of the same coin, and both were used simultaneously.
A carpenter would sometimes also be responsible for the whole construction project, and oversee or take part in the preparations of a building site. When it was time to make the foundation for a building it was time for carpentry. The carpenter would build wooden frames for the footing. The elements (logs or thick wooden pieces) that were needed for the buildings frame would be prepared by carpentry, before they were assembled by construction to create the frame and shape the building. Ornea observed the way of dividing the work up into crafting of elements by carpentry and then assembling the by construction. She found it interesting to learn this approach and was for sure going to apply it.

The carpentry was then used to craft a lot of building elements. It was walls, floors, roofs, and stairs, windows, doors, and it could also include fixed furniture like built in shelves and cupboards. Wood and stone was often used in Lhavit. The skyglass, rare as it was, was used more on some buildings than others ... for example, the interior of the library where she sat was embellished by ornaments made of the expensive material. The skyglass gave Lhavit the special beauty the city was known for, but it wasn’t the only material they used there.

A carpenter needed tools. Ornea continued to read about those. Hammer! Ornea knew a lot about hammers and hammering as he was a metalsmith. It was a commonplace tool and it’s use was easy to get; the hammer was for hammering in nails and plugs to fasten smaller or bigger elements of wood to each other and keep them in place. The basic saw wasn’t hard to understand either. It was like a kind of big knife with teeth, with a handle that made it possible to operate with one hand, while holding the material with the other hand. More intriguing tool were something named a square, which looked like two rulers combined to a perfect ... square. It was used in order to make sure the construction elements wouldn’t be skewed and so become impossible to assemble in the intended way. The book pointed this out as particularly important. As a crafter she found it easy to grasp. It was the same with all kinds of crafting; if the parts weren’t good, the total result would be flawed.

The tool named carpenter’s level intrigued her most ... it looked simple, but it could actually be seen as a kind of gadget. It seemed to be a plank with several embedded bowls mean to hold a liquid that would spread evenly in the bowls in a surface was flat, but tip to the sides if it wasn’t. This way it would be possible to find and mend skewnesses the bare eye wasn’t able to see. Ornea studied the carpenter’s level for a while, and started to think of how to craft one, if they couldn’t buy it somewhere. Perhaps she’d be able to make this tool if she had a plank and used her metalsmithing skills to make the small bowls?

So, she had learnt about some tools and she had memorized this and the idea about crafting the level. This didn’t mean she was done with the topic. The text seemed endless! But, for the sake of being properly prepared she was going to tackle it all. Hard work was naturally a good thing to an Inarta whether it was practical or about reading to gain knowledge. Ornea didn’t pity herself. She didn’t whine inside and wasn’t feeling frustrated. She felt determined.

The footing form construction looked simple when she read about it in the book and watched the drawing the author had made, but she knew that in practice it would be harder than it looked. In theory it was about first making wooden poles, preferably perfectly square, and put then where the corners of the foundation was meant to be. This done, it was time to build a kind of mold, by fastening logs or planks to these corners. Within this frame, made by carpentry, the foundation would be constructed, often using some kind of stone, gravel, mud, brick and sand depending on what was available in the area.

As she had already seen in the previous book, after the foundation it was time for the frame. The drawings the architecture had resulted in showed how the building was supposed to appear, and the dimension. Based on this information, carpentry was used to craft the elements for the frame. Construction was used in order to assemble them, and then carpentry was used again in order to fasten them properly and make a strong, stable and lasting frame.

Again she observed that carpentry and construction were interlaced skills, simultaneously used, and it wasn’t easy for the beginner to differ between them. She was starting to discern a pattern though. First it was draw, plan and prepare on parchment; this was the architecture that would be the loadstar of the work and guide it to the final result. Then came the planning and preparation phase of the construction, when the whole practical operation was outlined, materials were acquired and transportations arranged, crafters were hired and the basic labor with clearing and excavation was done. After this the carpentry came into play and carpentry and construction were interlaced until the building was finished. This was if the building was going to be made of wood only ... she could already see that there were other options too, if other material were to be used. Right now it was only about a wood shack at Lucis and Lucis though, so she skipped over the parts about masonry, mud, brickwork and things. She figured she could learnt about it later if she ever would need it.

There was a lot more to read about carpentry too. She read about how to craft framing for floor and frames for walls, frames for roofs of different shapes ranging from simple shed roofs to complex ones. She read about how to craft elements for exterior walls and how to put them in place and fasten them to the frame. The book was detailed and she also found out how to sheet and cover roofs and how to make stairs. It seemed like a bit of more knowledge than she would need for the shack, but it was always good to have knowledge and now when she was here she could as well learn as much as possible.

She read about how to do the interior floor tiling, and about carpentry tecniques for the work with the inside of the walls, and the ceiling. Ladders ... this was yet another thing that looked fairly simple. In addition there was information about how to build scaffolds if these were needed during the construction.

There was still lots of more knowledge about carpentry and woodworking, but the Inarta felt she would need to learn more in practice before she would even be able to understand the more complicated tings. There was a limit to how much she could learn in one visit to the library.

Enough was enough. She shut the book.

Hoping the essential basics of architecture, construction and carpentry was solidly learnt and understood (in theory) she left Bharani library and went to report back to Edward Lucis.

Continues in Basic Building - II

...

[Estrellir Konrath]

Ornea

Observation +1
Research +5
Intelligence +1

Construction work for Lucis & Lucis
Okomo: Stubborn monsters
Lhavit: Bharani Library
Architecture: Drawing different views
Architecture: Drawings need to be exact
Architecture: Floor plan
Architecture: Site plan
Plan well before you start construction
Architecture: Special detail drawings
Construction: Depends on available materials
Construction: Building foundations
Construction: Building frames
Construction: Many skills required
Carpentry: To craft building elements
Basic carpentry tools
Carpenter’s level tool
How to construct building foundations
Construction & carpentry are interlaced

Notes

It looks like you gave a pretty good overview, so well done! I hope these lores are what you were hoping for. The intelligence xp is for discerning which information is relevant. PM me with any questions or concerns!