Cad Factory Studio Build, Rural NSW, Australia

[Viccy]

We lived in a warehouse in the inner city of Sydney for years. In this warehouse we had monthly gigs and exhibitions and did the odd recording.
We were the first underground warehouse space in the country to receive Presentation and Promotion Funding form The Australia Council for the ARTS.

CAD FACTORY » HOME

When we started there were hardly any of those types of spaces. Now they are springing up everywhere, so we thought it was time for a bit of a change.

So, we bought an old one room school house in the middle of rural NSW. About 6 hours from Sydney.

It was built in 1886 and operated as a school until 1959 or so.
It had one teacher and about 15-20 kids.

It was falling apart and we have slowly been fixing it up.

Now, we have actually moved down here.

We have just been successful in obtaining some more funding to run an artists residency program out here. This will involve us inviting out 4 different artists per year to work with the local community and or landscape to create work in the given genre. In the first year there will be a photographer, a dancer, a sound/installation artists and a painter.

One artist each year will be an international artist. on 2011 that international artist will be Bruce Odland from NYC who has just finished creating a Sound Design Garden in a theatre complex in Sweden with Laurie Anderson.

Anyway, that program will kick off in April 2011.

On top of that this studio is for ourselves to work in and for bands to come and stay and record in.

It is the realisation of a very big dream.

I live here with my wife and new born daughter. My wife is a musician also (she plays drums and piano).

That's the introduction, now I will post some photos

[Viccy]

THis building will host a CR, Live Room, Iso Booths, Lounge Room, Bathroom, Bedroom and Studio for My wife, Sarah. It is 210 Square Meters in total size. (21m x 10m)


Here you can see Graham Strong driving his tractor, or Grader I think it is called, from teh farm next door to level the site for the slab.




Here he is leveling the ground




We pored a seperate slab for each room. So the whole slab is actually made up of 5 smaller slabs



Laying out the shed components



Starting to put up the shed frame







As the build got held up for some time due to the floods in Regional NSW late last year, I had a rehearsal with Dancer Linda Luke scheduled in development for a performance in Sydney. We made do with what we had.

[Viccy]

Digging a trench to run power to the studio.


Framing for Control Room. Although it doesn't look like it in this photo, the ceiling will be built flat.



That's all for now. More drawing of entire layout and photos to follow.

[Viccy]

ooops

[Grahamdwc]

Hi Viccy,
Lookin forward to following your progress, best of luck with it!

Graham

(P.s congrats on the the new baby.)

[Syncamorea]

This looks to be a great project, with plenty of room to work with. Is your height is on the order of 3 to 4 meters?

[Viccy]

Hi, Thanks for both of the messages.

The Shed height is 3.5 meters at the external walls and rises up to something like 4.5 meters in the middle.

We are looking at building the ceilings at about 3.35 or so.

I will have drawings of the space up soon.

The nearest house is about 3 or 4 km's away, except for our house which is about 30 meters away, so we jsut need to keep outside noises out of the studio really, and isolation between rooms.

Vic

[Viccy]

And one of the most exciting parts is once this part of the construction is finished, we will install a disused Grain Silo as a Reverb Chamber !!!

[Grahamdwc]

Originally Posted by Viccy

The nearest house is about 3 or 4 km's away,

Vic

Oh Vic, i hope you know how lucky you are! :-)

Graham

[Viccy]

Yes, the isolation is great in terms of noise, not so goo in terms of going to the shops in the middle of the night.

Today 170sq meters of 16mm FireShield Gyprock arrived.

This is the first of a number of deliveries.

Unloading


Pile 1


Pile 2

[Guitarman28]

Looking good!
I can't wait to see this project unfold.
Cheers.

[Viccy]

Wow, It's been a really long wait trying to get the right equipment and people out here for the next par of the build. Lining the roof in 16mm firestop. There are no machines around to lift it this high, local tradesman don't want to do the job. It IS heavy stuff.

Then we have to build the ceiling with two layers underneath the roof.

But anyway, it looks like we have found someone, so this should hopefully move forward next week.

I have uploaded a drawing from John Brand which is the plan for the studio at this stage.

We will add an iso booth in the top "blind" corner of the CR.

WE are trying to keep the live room as large as possible and not have many smaller rooms as we want to keep the live room flexible enough to be used by dancers and different types of performers to develop new work in (soon I will start thinking about a load bearing sprung dance floor in the live room, but that's for another day.

The rooms at the bottom of the pic are accommodation (lounge/kitchen/bedroom/bathroom).

Okay, hopefully much more to post very soon.

Vic

[Brenton]

I'm jealous. Hope all goes well.

[sineborg]

Wow, nice location. Looking forward to more build pics.

[sandking782]

Looks like an inspiring environment to plant a studio. Looking forward to more updates!

[Viccy]

Today we started insulating and lining the double control room walls.

[IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k7...m/IMG_0179.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k7...m/IMG_0183.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k7...m/IMG_0185.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k7...m/IMG_0186.jpg[/IMG]

Didn't take very long to do this today. Only one layer so far, but will be double layer of 16mm Firecheck Gyprock

No time to do any more until next week, but the plan is to have the control room done by the end of the easter break coming up.

[Viccy]

oops accidently posted this message twice and can't seem to delete it.

[Viccy]

Photos from the last week.

It moves along.

In a pink fashion.

Pink insulation

Pink Gyprock (16mm Firestop)

A few cuts on the hand, pink flesh showing.

Layer one of 16mm gyprock going up with double insolated stud walls behind.

We need to finish the Control Room before moving on to the live room and booths.

The control room dimensions are approx 6.5m long x 5.5m wide and 3.07m high

In the mean time, we had our first artist residency at our old school house

Cad Factory Rural Residency Artist Blog










Closing up all the gaps




Starting Layer two !!

[Viccy]

In the meantime, in between building, we have just launched the first artist in our 4 artist per year residency program. 100 people travelled to our remote location to see the installation created by Mayu Kanamori and Myself during her three week residency inside the old Birrego School, a remote one room school built in 1886

The installation consisted of four projections and 2 sound installations within the school house.



Opening Night.

[Viccy]

Happily we were on the second last piece of 16mm gyprock for the ceiling. When the 16mm x 3m x 1.2m piece of gyprock about 3m in the air the lifter snapped and it came crashing to the ground.

Broken lifter.

No-one was injured and with some planning we managed to get the last two pieces up without the lifter (in smaller sections).

The Control Room is now all double lined with 16mm, all sealed up. The echo in there is absolutely huge.

Next we will start with the ceiling treatment.

[Syncamorea]

Have you measured the CR dimensions now that the drywall is up?

[Viccy]

Originally Posted by Syncamorea

Have you measured the CR dimensions now that the drywall is up?

Yes, CR dimensions with Drywall up is 6340mm long x 5375mm wide x 3040mm heigh. Then there is a suspended ceiling for treatment which drops down to 2850.

[Viccy]

Ceiling Grid Frame going up for acoustic treatment

[Viccy]

[Viccy]

Ceiling Grid going up ( insulation to go on top), lighting in.




At the last minute we decided to put a doorway in the western wall, so this is the start of cutting out the first double layer of 16mm gyprock and the first frame, will cut out the second frame and second layers of Gyprock on Thursday.



Eastern wall framing complete, ready for insulation, fabric, slats etc.

[soulfield]

Originally Posted by Viccy

And one of the most exciting parts is once this part of the construction is finished, we will install a disused Grain Silo as a Reverb Chamber !!!

Thats awsome!

A little John Bonham big drum sound.

I like it alot!

You will have a great place Sir!

[Viccy]

Today I had my first even nail gun nail though the finger. Luckily I had just swapped to the small gun.

Insulation going into the absorption panels and slat panels



then covering in fabric



then painting slats



Putting Slats up



More Slats



More Slats other side



And finally for today, front panel slats mostly done.

[AnthonyRochester]

looking great

[Viccy]

Control Room getting close

[Syncamorea]

That's a wild looking slat wall. Very nice. I'm looking forward to seeing it completed!