#ccao #iLabChallenge

                              Challenge 6: Cement Furniture“Piped Stool”Christine and RadWe decided to make cement stools, but to change the design as much as we thought possible.  The first change we made was the color.  Instead of the dull gray cement color, we added red pigment into the cement mixture. We learned quickly that this pigment was extremely concentrated, and not much was needed to affect the color of the cement strongly.  The second variation was the seat texture and indentation.  For the first stool, we placed a ceramic inverse bowl form into the bottom of the bucket (looks like half of a sphere), with the round tip touching the bottom of the bucket.  In order to prevent the form from slipping and sliding around in the bottom, as well as creating a clean lip for the cement to form over, we secured it using silicone gel. For the other stool, we placed a circular cut out of the bottom of a postal service tub (with the ridges) that perfectly fit inside the bucket.  We placed that in the bottom of the tub so that the concrete would fall over it and form the pattern on the top of the seat. Instead of using wooden legs, we decided to use black pipes.  We placed the flanges on the cement after we poured it, so that enabled us to screw in the pipes.  However, as we learned when we took the cement out of the bucket, the flanges with the nails did not stick as well as we had hoped.  We then proceeded to glue them onto the concrete using glue that took overnight to dry. Then we added 45 degree elbows and screwed in the remaining pipes to finish the seat. Although the bowl of the seat is small and fits the butt of a child more so than the butt of an adult, we attempted to make it more aesthetically interesting and more ergonomic by placing the inverse bowl form in the cement.  However, we learned that the ceramic material stuck strongly with the cement so we had to chop it out with a hammer.  We thought the pipes added an angular design that was not possible with simple wooden legs.  Throughout the processes, we were thinking about the possibility of adding wheels so that the stool could be more easily portable. We would have to figure out how to attach the wheels to the bottom of the pipes.  