Enthusiasm level: Busy.
Progress: One step forward two steps back.
Quote: “So we can we keep the wood chip?”

Sunny roof meetingSo today was an epic four hour meeting for the design team. It was the first time everyone was present together and as well as the architect, structural engineer, quantity surveyor, mechanical engineer and project manager we were joined by the exhibition designer and acoustic engineer. This meeting was to be held our small 18th century building and remembering that some of the contractors seem to travel in pairs it meant 13 of us had to get a little cosy. Not wanting to intrude too much on Tuesday morning visitors I managed to squeeze everyone into the back parlour on the second floor of 23 Brook Street (the floor below the Hendrix flat). It is usually our activity room so complete with 18th century dressing up costumes and colouring projects. I think the team were disappointed I didn’t allow them to conduct the meeting in full garb and take notes with crayons – we need some boundaries.

Luckily the HH staff team pulled a hat out of the bag with a ready supply of coffee and water, a table and chair arrangement that almost constituted a formal meeting room and meeting and greeting a succession of people who wanted to get to different parts of the building throughout the morning and into the afternoon. But despite the conducive atmosphere they created we were forced to discuss some knotty problems not least the fact that now the report from the site investigations has been received it seems that, as we probably all knew in our heart of hearts, the foundations of 23 Brook Street are not particularly robust. In fact they consist of “made material” which basically means rubbish and material that builders, over the decades, have thrown away. The structural engineers therefore have no idea how it will react to having a single story added for the Learning Studio and it seems underpinning is likely to be necessary. This is a nuisance for everybody: noise, cost, time and inconvenience. The team are working on trying to find the best way around this dilemma but it is a tricky one.