Old furniture to be discarded.

 

The basement is filling up with boxes.

 

The moving process is well under way. We've got a labelling system for all of our supplies and furniture (red=discard, orange=bring to temporary offices, green=store until September, yellow=deep archive). Everyone will be moving into the library on 1& 2 June, and construction work will begin in earnest on Monday, 05 June. Greatest difficulty so far? Getting people to actually throw things away.

Well, the prelims of Phase 2 have begun. After extensive negotiations with the Comune, and even more extensive negotiations with Sig.ra Anna who runs the park next door, we finally have the permits and permissions to borrow a piece of the garden this summer for our construction site. The below picture shows the entrance we have created in the park wall for our trucks, and the bottom picture shows the cordon/fence that we built to shield the park goers from the construction work (we opted for green instead of the standard orange or red--Sig.ra Anna won't allow any red in her park).

Phase 2 begins

Many have asked to know exactly what Phase 2 consists of. Fair question, complicated answer. Short version is that we will (a) bring the building up to governing health & safety codes (these include adding a disabled-accessible elevator, new HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and addressing recently introduced earthquake legislation with several structural interventions), (b) finish placing the fire escape (which was delayed last year due to uncertainties about the looming earthquake legislation), (c) build several new seminar rooms on the east terrace (no worries, we are moving the terrace to the "good" side of the penthouse, i.e., facing the two towers), (d) building a glass-enclosed portico area in part of the bar garden so we can take advantage of the garden all year 'round, (e) build a new wing on the west side of the building to add sorely needed classrooms, offices and a student lounge (new wing will be partially complete until summer 2007). The above description, I believe, doesn't even begin to do justice to what the building will look like in October. But we'll see... [click on picture to enlarge, I'll post more designs when they become available]