As part of the work tasked to us by the Building Committee, Scott and I have been spending some time dreaming of what the super-ideal-awesome ceramics studio would be. I’ve put together some drawings to visualize our ideas and help put some scale to it. Initially, we were thinking something around 1,000 square feet would be great, since we currently only have around 400. Having worked through the drawings, we think more around 1,500 would be better.
What do these drawings have in them:
- A separate kiln room, with it’s own exhaust to keep heat and fumes out of the studio, with two kilns, and all the storage necessary to accommodate all the bits and pieces to go with them.
- A glaze room, with room for a spray booth, a sink, lots of storage, room for lots of dip glazes (not drawn yet), and it’s own exhaust to keep dust and chemicals out of the studio (particularly since we want to be able to mix our own glazes to save money and make awesome).
- A clay / recycling room , with a sink, big wedging tables, big storage cans for clay, lots of shelves, room for a pug mill (not pictured), and it’s own exhaust to keep clay dust out of the studio (particularly since recycling creates a lot of dust, and mixing slip from dry creates dust, and possibly mixing clay from dry).
- The studio has six wheels to accommodate plenty of people working, and to allow for teaching classes. Wheels are each in their own cubby and will have a shelf around the perimeter where work-in-progress can be set while you’re working. We imagine cabinets on the wall behind, and coat hooks to hang up your stuff. Each cubby will have electricity in it for the wheel and to bring a fan or heat gun while working.
- There are six work tables to allow people plenty of room to spread out and, again, room to teach classes.
- There are lots and lots and lots of shelves for drying and storing work-in-progress for studio members so space doesn’t constrain our ability to be productive and grow.
- Not pictured on the near wall we imagine a wall full of shelves / cubbies / lockers for members to store their tools and whatnot that would be rented space to provide additional income to the studio.
- There is covered outside space where folks can go to clean / sand work in the open air, work on messy things, hang out, and room for a raku kiln or other gas/fire based cool stuff.
- The interior door to the rest of the makerspace could be on either of the open walls not pictured.
This space is just about 1,500 square feet inside, plus the outside space. For comparison, the current studio is a bit bigger than the kiln and glaze rooms drawn here.
This has been really fun! Though, Sketchup in a web browser can be a little frustrating… Again, this is the ‘perfect’ studio that combines all the ideas we have had so far together. It really helps to dream though!
If you have ideas, please toss them in the comments below!
