Module 4: Reflection

Teagan Lewis 558444

Module 1:Ideation

Material SystemsProfile and SectionThe material system I chose to work with was profile and section. The object through profile and section material sys-tems, gains it’s volume through a series of sections. Countour lines and grid work are examples of profile and section.

In the beginning I did struggle with un-derstading what was meant by pofile and section. Looking back I would have made my concerns with understanding what was mean by profile and section forward much sooner.

The Siphon Pump‘Profile & Section’

The siphon pump was a very difficult object to be handed to explain the material sys-tem of profile and section. If I could go back, I would have asked for a different object.

In order to fully appreciate an object and to be able to correctly re-create that object through measured drawings, first we must be able to ap-precieate how it works (Jenson, 2000).

In order to be able to represent the siphon pump assigned to me by my tutor as a representation of the profile and section material system, I firstly explored its movment before unscrewing the pump, deconstructing the pump into the two main parts. Strings and rules were used to gather correct measurements.

In the image to the left you can see the siphon pumped drawn when in two seperate pieces and place of movement mapped by arrows.On the right is the same siphone pumped,

drawn when all pieces are connexted. Notice that the high is smaller, as some is lost due to the pumped being screwed back into place.

I have learned through this measured drawing exercise the important of understanding how the object operates and functions in order to find a way to best represent the objectt by drawing (Jenson, 2000)

If I could go back and change anything, I would find a better way to map the movement of the pump, inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings of the human anatomy.

Personal Space Sommer’s reading explored the meaning of ‘personal space’.

To me personal space is an invisible boundary surrounding the body that is not al-ways spherical or sysmetrical in shape. This invisible boundary is a line in which strangers, intruders, may not cross. I agree with Sommer in the sense that we are more likely to feel less threatened by an intruder who stands to our sides, as opposed to a stranger standing directly in front or behind me. I also define personal space as being what we can sense, and so the head, containing majority of our senses, is an area of interest while investigating personal space.

Sommer also discusses, while we don’t enjoy having our personal spaces invaded, we also fear the point of alienation. This boundary between one exteme, of being invad-ed, to the opposite, being alienated, is also something of high interest to be investigat-ed.

Looking back, further investiagtion into studies of personal space could have been completed to support my definition of personal space, or to widen it’s horizons.

This deifinition of personal space became a big part of forming our design. Finding a way to express our definition of personal space through our fabrication.

SketchesUsing my deifnition of personal space, I was able to start to sketch ideas for my fabrication.

I really could have put more detail and versatility into my designs, now that I am looking back at it. I really did struggle with understanding profile and section as a ma-terial system though, which hindered my ability to get crreative.

Module Two:Design

Precedent Study: Yokohama Terminal

The FOA used a folded and bifurcated surface of wooden panels. This design also held structural benefits, as the surface is able to distribute loads through the surface itself, diagonally to the ground. It also holds structural integrity against lateral forces, particularly seismic activity, which is prevalent in Japan. The used of profile and section is evident in the Yokohama Terminal through the appearance of contouring lines through the lev-elling of the wooden panels. The application of the profile and section material systems provides a fluid continuity between the different levels of the building.

This precedent study was the only in depth study completeted. If I could go back, I would deffinately undertake more precedent studies, however at this stage, Justin and I’s understanding of the profile and section material system was still shakey. Hence, why my biggest criticism of ourselves in the first two modules, was not coming forward with our struggle of grasping the concept of profile and section early in the subject.

The Inspiration & the Design‘The Elizabethan Collar’

Applying our definition of personal space, as derived from Sommer’s reading, we were inspired by the ‘Elizabethan Collar’ used on animals.

As explored in our definition of personal space, it is what we sense, with majority of our senses being contained within our head, the collar, when applied, restricts those senses, restricts our personal space and brngs about that feeling of alienation we disucssed.

We were inspired to find a way to incor-porate a way to involve movement in the collar, so that when unthreatened the col-lar could remain down, with full sensual awareness and wider personal space, be-fore being threatened, feeling invaded, and that collar could be pulled up to restrict personal space and senses, and get back to that feeling of alienation, uninvaded.

I do think we could have looked at more inspirations, rather than remaining fixat-ed on the single idea. This is something I would do different next time.

RhinoDigitilising Ideas

Initial Design After creating our design for visual reasons in rhino, we decided the body seemed to lack any creativity. So we de-cided to design a body volume, formed through a series of discs, connecting by sections of chains, to keep with the pro-file and section material system and al-low movement. We also decided to keep the head static and to remove the face area of the cone for visual purposes.

Upon review we discovered we were giving up to easy. By removing the face and making it static we weren’t sticking to our original design and rather than find a way to make it work, we decided to cut corners. We needed to get more creative in our design, find more inspi-rations.

To place our design in context in Rhino we photoshopped Justin’s dimensions into Rhino, as we had difficulties completing 123D-Catch. In reflecton, we really should have kept trying to complete 123D-catch, rather than resort to other measures which turned out to be more time consuming.

This whole process of Rhino related heavily to the ‘Lost in Parameter Space’ reading and the concept of abstraction, Scheurer and Stehling (2011) discuss the process of abstraction as being the elimination of unrequired information, and finding the best and most minimal way to present the information and design. Which we had to do through our design processes through sketching. Rhino however is an example of reduction, as Rhino represents our design so simply visually, but behind it is a series of very complicated mathematical logarithms and systems. Reduction involves rather than eliminating un-needed information, better finding the correct medium to rep-resent it, through modellers of high complexity, like Rhino (Scheurer and Stehling, 2011).

Prototyping

From our initial design we were able to develop a prototype.

Our prototype wasn’t really a prototype, more of a representative model. The model showed our design on a small scale but failed to be functioning. This is the point where we started to very much doubt ourselves and our design. We needed to go back to our design ideas and refine them, find new ways idea explore new materials. We were still at this stage really struggling with understanding the concept of profile and section, by this stage we really should have gone to Kim and asked for more help.

Materials

For our design we started looking at materials to use. As we were using Fab-lab for material cutting we chose to use the materials they had on hand. White perspex is what first jumped out at us. It was rigid enough to hold the shape, with an excellent finish. It was however extremely expensive per sheet, and our design required many sheets.

The material we were looking at for the connectin component of the rings for the body, to allow movement, was metal chains.The material however is very diffiult to attach to the perspex, too different to allow a fluid attachment to the rest of the design, and heavy as well as unat-tractive. This material in hindsight, was a very poor idea.

Thomas Heatherwick in his TED talk spoke of the importance of effect of design and creation. This learning material inspired us to make sure our design gave a desired effect to those who saw it and those who wished to invade it, tying in with Sommer’s personal space.

I feel like at this stage of our design process our materials did not at all match the effect we held in our minds, a design of fear. The white was not simply fright-ening enough. We had to go back to the drawing board for Module 3.

Module Three:Fabrication

Design DevelopmentThe Head

After prototyping the head from our very first design, of a completelty enclosed head design we decided it was too rigid, and we needed to go back to our idea of incorporating movement into the head. We decided to create a series of rings, duplicated, with material inbetween in order to connect the rings, so that it may lay flat and when pulled up, extende,d the material acts to create the collar shape we wanted,

This used both a profile and section and a skin and bone material system.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<How the materialworked between the ring duplicates

Design DevelopmentThe Body

We decided to take inspiration from the human form, and have a design body than compliments and exagerrates the bodies natural design. Amplified in the chest and rear. These are places explored in Sommer’s personal space as being highly guarded against intruders.

Our first design saw weakness in the design if the material was not strong enough.

We were so impressed with our second design that we dei-cided to protoype it and keep the design idea. It had extreme volumes that explored many complex geometries.

In reflection, if we had more time, I would have gone and pushed those volumes and geometries further, trying to cover the arms and legs. Our process may have been slower than others, but by this point we were becoming confident in ourselves and our design. It was all looking up!

Prototype DevelopmentPrototyping our new head design I discov-ered how difficult it was to find a correct way to measure the material that needed to cut to be attached to the next ring, as the rings got smalller and smaller. I also found it heavy on the rings as there was very few of them. From this point we decided to further tweak our design, incorporate more rings to support the weight, find a new method of measurement by going back to Module 1’s readings, finding in-spiration from Jenson (2001) and Miralles ‘How to lay out a croissant (1988).

Our Fablab laser cuts for our prototype of our new body design was a huge learning curb. The boxboard we had decided to use for our design, was a fatal flaw. The mate-rial chosen due to its cheapness showed. The cuts came out too thin to hold any structural integrity, were not nearly rigid enough and tore constantly. The cuts were also of poor standard.

We had to change out material.

Fabircation: Final ModelThe Body

Our final model saw a change in material, discussed later, which saw our final model come out better than we had hoped! We had no difficulties with the new material in forming a rigid structure, held in place with glue and spray painted black for effect like Thomas Heatherwick said was needed, explained later in the materials section.

The final body was cut using Fablab laser cutting, and provide an extreme exaggeraation of the human bodies, exploring the geometries and volumes, which simoultaneously protecting our areas of most concern as explored in Sommer’s per-sonal space.

Fabircation: Final ModelThe Head

The final fabrication saw a much better improvement from the protoypes. The increased amount of rings saw a better effect, and the red giving the full damger effect. The miss-ing sides represent that we don’t feel so intruded from our sides, mainly our front and behind (Sommer, 1969).

If we could go back I would try find a way to hide the red when the head is at rest, only seen when extended. I really wish we had of had the time and budget to really explore that.

Materials

MDF was the material selected for the final model for the body componenet. After some material research, due to the boxboard’s failure of rigidity on the body, we came across MDF (medium density fibreboard).

It was not much more expensive than boxboard, lightweight and rigid enough to hold shape without being too rigid to not allow the body to move. It was an excellent fit and couldn’t have been happier with a different mateiral.

We decided to still use boxboard in the final piece, but purely for the head piece. We did this as the head did not require the material to be extremely rigid, it didn’t have extreme shapes and volumes. Plus the only movement it needed to support was an up and down motion. So to save on cost, we used box-board, extremely leight weight, on the head.

Stretch rayon was used as the fabric in the head because it accomodated the stretch needed in the head while remainng thin enough to fit between the two discs.

Black was used as the colour of the body as it is powerful and scary, warning potential intruders. Red was used for the head as is signifies danger, as experienced by the wearer when they feel intruded and ex-tended the head to show danger.

Reflection of ProcessesThe fabrication process truly allowed me to better under-stand the readings, as I was now experiencing it first hand. Our fabrication process relied heavily on digital fabrication processes by means of Fablab. By using Fablab we were able to use a subtractive fabrication process, by use of card cutting in which the components of the head and body were created by cutting them from the boxboard and MDF sheets (Kolarevic, 2003). The problem with the subtractive pro-cesses through Fablab is that it can be quite expensive, de-pending on the material. Also the cuts must be organised in such a way to maximise usage of the spacing and minimise sheets otherwise again cost is quite high and so is wastage. Justin and I used card cutting at Fablab four times, and in our experience there was a lot of material wastage and it turned out to be an expensive venture, costing almost two hundred dollars in laser cutting alone. In the future, I would spend more time on shifting and moving the cuts in a man-ner that reduces material wastage and uses minimal sheets to save on costing. However if done correctly, I have learned, in collaboration between my experience and the readings, that new digital fabrication processes, such as Fablab uses, allow for a more accurate (through NURBS and meshes), economic and less labour intensive way of manufacturing that is also more fluid in process, as well as more economi-cally beneficial and bringing the designer cloers to the final product (Iwamoto, 2009) (Rifkin, 2011). This is the future of digital fabrication, where additional fabrication is favoured above reduction, to reduce wastage and expenditure for a more efficient process (Marble, 2008).

BibliographyM1 Heath, A, Heath, D & Jensen, A 2000, 300 years of industrial design : function, form, technique, 1700-2000 Watson-Gup-till, New York, Selected ExtractsMiralles, E, Pinos, C “How to lay out a croissant”El Croquis, 49/50, pp. 240-241Sommer, R 1969, ‘ Spatial invasion’ in Sommer, R, Personal space : the behavioral basis of design, Prentice-Hall, Engle-wood Cliffs, N.J, pp. 26-38

M2 Heatherwick, T (March 2011) Thomas Heatherwick: Building the Seed Cathedral [Video file] retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_heatherwick.htmlScheurer, F, Stehling, H 2011, “Lost in Parameter Space?” AD: Architectural Design, vol 81 pp. 70-79

M3 Kolarevic, B, 2003 “Digital Production” in Architecture in the Digital Age - Design and Manufacturing , Spon Press, Lon-don, pp30-54Iwamoto, L 2009, Digital fabrications: architectural and material techniques, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, Selected Extracts

M4 Rifkin, J 2011 “Distributed Capitalism’ in The third Industrial Revolution Palgrave Macmillan, New York pp107-126Marble, S 2008 ‘Imagining Risk’ In P Bernstein, P Deamer (eds). Building the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture/, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp 38-42