building the initial wall

Adding in a mesh

Finished and baked from grasshopper

Making the mesh and piping

Final mesh and piping

                                                         Various Photos from our Dystopian Plant room.

Group 15 – NeoStudio (WEAVING) – Chanmi, Laura, Triana

This week we had the pleasure of viewing Chanmi, Laura and Triana's work from NeoStudio.
NeoStudio was working on hotel facades this week that incorporated weaving and mesh work. They had to use a range of different computer softwares. Starting off in rhino and grasshopper, exporting it to 3dsmax to edit and then archiCAD, and finally submitting it into secondlife to work on their wall kinematic wall experience. NeoStudio's overall concept of the project is that everybody is an individual in the city and there isn't a clear dystopia and utopia. It's what people make of it.

For their dystopia hotel, they adopted a fragmented and spiky mesh  to use as the facade. The entire form has a twisted structure and the main material for this building is glass. Their moving component was an interior elevator which transported people to different floors. We could see these different moments in the videos they created. The whole atmosphere of the building is quite dark in terms of luminosity. The interior seems quite sophisticated, contrasting to the harsh jagged exterior of the building. The idea behind the jagged exterior is its symbolic in showing an individual's failures.




As for their utopian hotel, they used domes in the arrange of 'the garden city' to give it more of a community orientated space. It is situated on a river which flows through the hotel, giving the interior quite a interesting space. They have incorporated their stairs from their  other workshop and have added a script to make it light up when a person steps on it. In contrast with the Dystopian hotel, the utopian one seems more playful and spacious. It gives expression to colour in various ways - even using the river's reflective surface as an element of colour (when the time of day changes in secondlife, the colour of the water changes with it).

Neostudios found importing the mesh from rhino into 3dsmax and archicad the hardest part of the workshop. A a lot the time their file size was too big and they had to edit it. They enjoyed putting the meshes into secondlife and making prims and scripts for the hotel. Overall, NeoStudios have shown great work process and development in the overall hotel project. We think the highlight of their project would be their videos. It really captured the atmosphere of the buildings and kinematic elements.

http://thetricycles.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/peerreview2.pdf

This is a developed design of  the initial Utopian plant room

 What we tried to do here was to make a warped form for the plant room. We went with an airy and open atmosphere by using a string facade. We tried to develop the idea of opposites (enclosed by is perimeters but spatially open). We hope to make the final out of clear perspex and fishing wire for a transparent look.

Another development of the model

This is another development for our plant room. This is more horizontally stretched model that resembles the shape of a lotus flower. In between the frames there is a walking space for the public to walk through. The center will be where most of the plants are kept. Again, fishing wire/string will be used on the outside of the frames to create an enclosed space but not limiting the air flow between the interior and exterior. For our final plant room we will reduce the base size so there is no circular plate and make it more irregular so it does not resemble a perfect lotus flower shape.

These are a series of developments for our dystopian plant room. The idea we have for this room is to create a solid, dense exterior that is closed off from the outside and  have a series of wooden panels on the roof of the plant room to restrict airflow and ultimately, make the plant room air tight. This design is very sharp in terms of the angles used in the building. It will also deal with a range of materials that will aid to the dense structure.

Paper, focused on the joining method

Foam Board, Pins, String

We like house this building (in Chur, Switzerland) has a really dense, logical and cubist feel to it. 

Very solid, complex, with lots of different parts to it. There are a lot of edges, repeated rectangular prisms. Highly geometric and enclosed

This is something we want to pursue in one of our atmosphere - enclosure and density

Our group quite likes the natural qualities of this building and its irregular shape.

 

Interesting how they used natural food/corn as insulation and wall cladding. We can see that is quite bright in the center due to the oculus. Very natural/organic feel.

It is really interesting to see how the joining system was done for this project. No glue or tape was used in the making of this honey comb wall,

They used little laser cut triangular joining pieces that allowed for MFD panels to be slot in and joined together without any adhesive. I think it could be a pretty interesting idea to pursue in our atmosphere designs. For more information, visit here

This pavilion is a great inspiration for what our utopia plant room can be like. We love the simplicity of this design, however, still containing fundamental structural elements to create the form of the pavilion.

This pavilion is located in Winnipeg, MB, Canada and is designed by Kevin Erickson. It is near the Assinboine River (world's longest naturally frozen skating trail). These pavilions are placed every kilometer along the trail for visitors to shelter from the cold. It uses this simple materials, unmanila rope and a birch frame to form a shelter that keeps in warm and shields from the wind but also lets light in. The hut's dome-like form is designed for heat retention with an oculus to view the sky above.

- Transparency film paper can be used safely for printing
- Commonly used on overhead/projection machines

- Transparent qualities

- Comes in a variety of sizes and thickness 

- Melts in warm temperatures, leaving the surface distorted

- Can be used to draw on

- When engraved, there are subtle qualities that look quite refined

- Bendable and waterproof

- Quite sturdy, won't tear easily

 

- MDF is a medium-density fiber board that is commonly used in the furniture industry ie kitchen cabinets, cupboards and wardrobes

- It is broken down into soft wood fibers from hard wood and soft wood and compressed together.

- Stronger and denser than other woods
- Denser than plywood

- Smooth finish

- It does not contain any wood like texture (ie knots and rings)

- It contains urea formaldehyde which is an irritant for eyes and lungs. Masks need to be worn when sanding.

- When using this on the laser cutter/engraving, it gives off really nice rustic burned edges 

- Perspex, also known as Poly(methyl methacrylate)
- Was developed in the early 1900s
- It is a lightweight transparent thermoplastic
- It is often used instead of glass
- Perspex has properties that allows ti to be engraved and laser cut
- It is waterproof, sturdy and durable
- Heavier than wood
- Comes in a variety of colours - transparent or opaque
- Disadvantage of using this would be that it scratched easily
- Often used commercially

Trying to create a plant room defined by layering and joining together different panels to create a dense and enclosed effect.

The cell form is quite interesting in the fact that it has a thin barrier and an unfixed form. We can interpret an image of a cell as a plan (like the one above) where the little systems inside the cell could be an arrangement of furniture or household objects.

For both hotels, we are quite interested in stripping back to the fundamental building blocks of their respective backgrounds. The utopia hotel will be based on a cell or membrane from a living organism, where as the dystopia will be focused on geometries and industrial mechanisms.

We will also focus our utopia hotel to be more of a horizontal structure than vertical to emphasize the organic system of the cell.

Source

This fabrication above will also be used in our design. The irregularities in the fabrication are quite nice to show the a formation of natural/organic systems. It also gives a structural quality to the piece as it arches and bridges together to connect as a whole system. It is also quite porous, hinting at the idea of the system being breathable and needing air to circulate in an out of the material - almost as if it is alive.

Source