Building confidence

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Building Confidence

Photos by Pieter Sijpkes

When John Perring, BA'86, saw photographs of a handsome summer cottage designed and built by craftsman Jonathan Rousham (who is also supervisor of the School of Architecture's modeling workshop), he and his wife knew it was exactly what they wanted. The couple contacted Rousham who agreed to build a similar model on lakefront land they owned in the Gatineau hills north of Ottawa. Because the site was so remote, Rousham decided to try a new approach. He would prefabricate the whole structure and ship it in a few trucks to be reassembled on the spot.

During the summer, architecture professor Pieter Sijpkes, BScArch'71, BArch'74, saw the meticulous computer drawings Rousham was preparing for the various parts of the structure, and realized there might be an opportunity for some of his students to get experience in the real world of construction, away from their classes and drawing boards.

The Perrings agreed, and arranged lodging and meals at a private hunting club on the lake for the second-year students who eagerly signed up to take part. On a Friday afternoon in October, Sijpkes,15 students, four cars and a truck set out from Montreal to rendez-vous in Ottawa with two more trucks loaded with materials, tools, two generators and a compressor.

On the Saturday and Sunday, the student crew worked long hours unloading the trucks and erecting the first floor of the cottage and beginning the structure for the second floor. Hearty meals and campfires filled the dark hours. What was learned? Sijpkes says his students came away with an understanding of "the complexity of constructing even a simple structure -- for example, making the rough site work of the concrete foundation columns fit with the precision of the prefabricated structure -- and that construction is hard but exhilarating and truly creative work."

Back in the architecture studio on Monday, Sijpkes says, "there not only reigned a new sense of realism, but there was also agreement among the students that some kind of construction experience would be a valuable part of future undergraduate design courses."

A cottage for next fall, anyone?

In the war room

On December 31, many members of the McGill community will be out on the town indulging in millennial festivities (and waking up the next morning feeling a century older), but a more temperate group of key McGill computer whizzes will be staffing the University's "Y2K War Room."

Located in the McGill Telecom conference offices in the Ferrier Building, the War Room will serve as command central, and staff giving up their Y2K weekend include Vice-Principal Information Systems and Technology Bruce Pennycook, Year 2000 Project Manager Tanya Steinberg and technical experts from McGill Telecom, Computing Centre, Information Systems Resources and the University community. A McGill Y2K Call Centre will coordinate all information, help requests and activities during the millennial change, and the team will also be participating in an international Y2K phone chain "in order to identify Y2K problems immediately as the date rolls over in other parts of the world," according to the V-P's office. Information gleaned from the phone chain "may well prove invaluable as we anticipate the effects of our own date roll-over to 2000."

Despite fanciful terms like "War Room" and technological "SWAT Teams," the Y2K project leaders are keeping their fingers crossed for a rather dull weekend, having planned for that since McGill's Year 2000 initiative started in 1995, when the University began ensuring its systems would be Y2K compliant.

For the Year 2000 changeover, the McGill Today information line will carry recorded updates on the Y2K status of the University, so if it's business as usual or "if we have to delay the start of the semester, people can call and get that information from the recorded message," says Tanya Steinberg. The McGill Today phone number is 398-1234.