otopics
Introduction
TOPIC 1
“Welcome to Convergence Culture” precedents: architecture and culture potential tactics thoughts and recap
TOPIC 2
The Proposition concept via cookies site/program structure/finishes
TOPIC 3
Days and Nights in MacArthur Park -w4ww- Friends! FloBuddies!Pool Parties! LOST TEDDY at the lake help. electronics? medications? ID’s? u got it. duck feeding, tai chi practicing 75W
EXTRAS
Striptease good night humans
introduction Dear Reader, Welcome to my fifth year thesis book. Flotopics is a hodgepodge mix of (hopefully) fun things to read and look at. I’m using this book as an opportunity to, not only share my thoughts and “stance” on architecture, but also to share my work and my fifth year experience. I hope that those who come upon this book finds it useful or at least enjoyable. One of the things I enjoyed most from fifth year was how I was able to help my classmates and my mentees. I would like to use this intro page as an invitation to extend that help to future fifth years. If you need advice, or an opinion, or you just want to chat/ show off your cool stuff, feel free to email me or add me on facebook. email: aelichung@gmail.com fb: https://www.facebook.com/anneeliseh Sincerely, Anne-Elise Chung
welcome to convergence culture “Convergence is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process.� American Media Scholar, Henry Jenkins
Image found on wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkins
bottom up-ness culture Modern day social culture is becoming more and more prevalently inhabited by shared sounds, images, and virtual information. Websites like Reddit, Youtube, Tumblr, Instagram, and Soundcloud make it extremely easy to self publish and be exposed to the work of many non-experts. Information is easily attainable, and people don’t neccesarily need a degree to learn how to use Photoshop or Garageband. DIY tutorials and videos provide expert advice in the comfort of your own living room. Not everyone is an expert, but we’re living in an age where we can get away with doing some things without being one. Not only is this empowering, it also allows for people to connect, collaborate, and create meaningful group experiences. These next few pages will examine examples of this, and how architecture can begin to borrow aspects of each.
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sound, sample, and song making
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Subway and the everyman
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image-context conversations
sounds, samples, and song making In Umberto Eco’s “The Poetics of the Open Work”, Eco describes a few examples of music production in which the actual musical work is a product authored by both the composer and the performer. The composer will allow for various facets of the musical piece to be “open” for the performer to manipulate to their own design. An example of this would be Luciano Berio’s Sequence for Solo Flute, where the performer is allowed to change the duration of a note, but not its sequence or intensity. This sort of free form, call and response relationship is distilled and mass distributed via modern day recording and production software. Songs can borrow and reference from other songs, they can be performed, recorded, and remixed by whomever. The author of one can become a “co-author” of many. The ability to convey and communicate sound via the internet is key in this sound sharing creation culture. Because sound files and video files can be accessed in seconds, people can expose themselves to a multitude of media, without even seeking out anything in particular. In that way sound exposure can be somewhat happenstance and organic, reacting to the flow of a browser rather than that of an author.
sounds to song
A still from Skrillex’s “Equinox” music video. In the music video a little girl demonically hunts a lurking pedophile. In this particular image, the girl yells “CALL 911 NOW” into a telephone receiver. This vocal sample is the most iconic part of the song. image from “First Of The Year (Equinox) - Skrillex [OFFICIAL]” youtube.com
The song uses the voice sample as a the turning point of the song. After “CALL 911” the melody becomes noticeably more glitchy and dramatic. The action in the video also begins amping up as the girl proceeds to punish the stalker after spending the first 2 minutes skipping down the street.
A still from the video where Skrillex took the vocal sample. A passerby records a very loud, irate woman yelling at skaters for recording her. The video was first released in 2005 and eventually turned up on sites like CollegeHumor and Ebaumsworld. It appeared on “Last Call with Carson Daly” and TruTV.
image from “Crazy lady yells at skaters” youtube.com
Subway and the everyman The main reason why people might feel compelled to make a remix, a cover, or a parody music video is that they can get an instantaneous reaction from it. The performer-audience relationship has been distilled into text comments and view counts, these of which have the potential to escalate overnight. Many creative decisions are made with the goal of to thrill, to entertain, and to hopefully “trend”. Otherwise, without the ability to publish one’s creativity, people are more likely to make decisions as they need to. Thus creative platforms from day to day life revolve more around neccessity and practicality rather than exploration. The main difference is that decisions become much simpler and more like a preset than a creative work. The range of choices become simpler and generic. An example of this is the Subway sandwich.
sandwiches
image from seriouseats.com (you wouldn’t believe how hungry this picture makes me)
Subway and the everyman Subway is the creative domain for the non creatives. As mentioned before, your average person usually needs a high payoff to motivate them to invest the time and creative effort into making something. For some it’s the ability to get lots of attention, really quickly. For others, they might actually like being creative on a day to day basis (i.e. architecture students). But let’s face it. Most people don’t really care enough to be creative, especially not if: a)it takes time and effort b)it does not give you anything meangingful Subway is the in between. It gives people choice and some freedom, but the choices themselves are really bland and boring. It’s so easy to order a sandwich, takes almost no time, and suits individual tastes. While Subway is not the ideal creative platform, it is very successful.
Therefore, if architecture were to become a successful platform it definitely needs to be:
a) easy and straightforward b) worthwhile, as in fun
If the design was purely practical, there is little reason to explore and innovate. But if it’s fun and spontaneous, like browsing, there’s little reason not to try something new. However, it is difficult for something to be both free form and easy. Too many choices can overwhelm people. It’s easier to have some structure and some constraints that give people something to work off of.
image-context conversations Photoshop battles are an exmple of how giving constraints can still result in interesting creations. Here are a few things you might need to know. In a photoshop battle, one person will start a post on social website (i.e. Reddit.com) by submitting an image that looks like it could be funny out of context. People respond to that post with photoshopped versions of the original image. In this scenario, the constraint is that the photoshopper needs to use some part of the original image. For the joke to be successful, the new photoshop manipulation needs to play off of some part of the original, and also key into the humor of the target demographic (most reddit users are 20 year old college students). Other than that, the grounds for manipulation are really loose, and the popular posts usually have up wards 200 comments responding to them. For architecture, this means that there should be enough structure for users to get an idea of how they decide to make changes. Like playing a game of Mad Libs, there needs to enough context to give meaning to what is filled in the blanks.
“Angela Merkel and Obama at the G7 summit in Germany” Posted by user kafkian image found at: (reddit.com)
“Obama decided to change his meeting room environment.” Posted by user beerandabike image found at: (reddit.com)
“The hills are alive with the fucks I’m giving” Posted by user staffell image found at: (reddit.com)
So what about architecture culture?
Architecture currently operates as a top down process... Could architecture be more bottom up?
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why bottom up architecture?
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purely practical vs. purely creative
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what could be the future?
why bottom up architecture? There are certain qualities provided by current media that are integral to contemporary culture. One of those is how it enables a user driven, bottom up approach, rather than being completely defined by the “professionals” who are selling the product. Architecture currently mainly operates as a top down corporate-driven process. Most of the process becomes realized by the “expert” authority of the architect. Mass media,as previously discussed, is commonly user driven. The people that interact with media from day to day have the power to choose, format, collectively challenge what and how they interact with something; from websites, to television shows, to music and even video games. Even the most established, traditional mass media, such as news media and the music industry, have shifted some of their top down authority in favor of some degree of bottom down participation. Most anyone with a computer and internet access can tailor their web experience on personal websites, vote for their favorite contestants on reality TV shows, and collectively define the reality of their gaming world.
Architecture and much of the built environment does not reflect this much power for its consumers. Spatial experience is instead usually dictated by the client’s needs and how the architect’s design addresses those needs. Sometimes, neither the client nor the architect ends up being users that interact with the built work on a daily basis. By involving all the users, architecture can tap into potential for more engaging, creative or challenging spatial experiences. American media scholar Henry Jenkins notes that “convergence, as we can see, is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottomup consumer driven process.” Architecture can become more contemporary by tuning into convergence culture and allowing users to creatively define space.
practical: predetermined choices
Fun Palace, Cedric Price, 1961
Predetermined creativity based on mere function is not explorative. Rather it is more akin to a Subway sandwich; basic but also banal. It also does little to suggest valuable or spatially unique program spaces, only really responding by allowing for circulation or change in volume.
Architecture has the potential to serve as a social medium for which people can explore spatial affect beyond that of reorganizing furniture, making changes that may affect their own program or provoke further change in other users. Previously there have been attempts to design spaces that respond to the need for change in user program or promote user input and creativity. These include Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, Bernard Tschumi’s Parc De La Villette, and Collin Fourier’s and Peter Cook’s Kunsthaus Graz. The Fun Palace is a conceptual project that was commissioned in 1964 as a “transformable machine”. “The only fixed element within the Fun Palace was to be the structural grid of steel lattice columns and beams. All other programmatic elements – hanging theatres, activity spaces, cinema screens and speakers – were to be movable or composed of prefabricated modular units that could be quickly assembled and taken apart as needed. The columns, or service towers, in addition to anchoring the project, also contained service and emergency stairs, elevators, plumbing, and electrical connections. In conjunction with the main Fun Palace project, Cedric Price developed a smaller scheme or pilot project that could be assembled more quickly and disassembled and re-erected on a new site as required.” Citymovement.wordpress.com
practical: predetermined choices
Gary’s Apartment M-2007, Gary Chang
image from newslinq.com
Gary Chang’s apartment in Hong Kong takes practical predetermination to the next level. He customized his apartment as a challenge to make full use of his tiny 3442 ft apartment. Basically, his living room has about six other programs compacted into it. These programs are available via steel rails that different walls and furniture systems can slide around on. Architecturally, this design makes complete sense as a response to a size constraint, but it does not really respond to explorative bottom up architecture.
purely creative: authored choices
Merzbau, Kurt Schwitters, 1919
What if the “expert paradigm” could be readjusted in architecture? Peter Walsh’s “That Withered Paradigm: The Web, the Expert, and the Information Hegemony” describes how “the expert paradigm must be a social construct, a dialogue between the experts and the rest of society,” (Walsh). Architecture is currently operated by “experts,” architects and their consultants carry an accumulated body of knowledge unique to their profession, they set themselves apart from the rest of society with this knowledge, rules, and specialized language (like zoning, code, how to read different drawings). While maintaining a discipline necessitates the fact that those within the discipline have access to knowledge that those outside of the profession do not have, the architectural discipline is unique in how most of its value is derived from contributing meaningful spaces and experiences. For a society that is becoming increasingly accustomed to bottom-up participation in the production of content and experience, the creation of “meaningful spaces” might require a reduction in its top-down disciplinary control over form, space, and experience. On the other hand, building design in the hands of the everyman would probably be a complete disaster and requires a certain level of creative drive that most people may not have or care about. But what if creative power shifts such that users can claim more ownership over their spatial experience beyond that of moving furniture around? It would be interesting to see how each individual user might construct/ design their space, how architecture might be redefined for those users. An example where the user takes over the architectural space is Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau.
Schwitters began assembling the interior of his house in Hanover in 1919, creating one of his Merzbau, a project that can be termed as a collage, a sculpture and an architectural space. These spaces were made from plaster, wood, random objects, and “things taken out of everyday circulation” (Mansoor). Jaleh Mansoor describes the “most striking dimension of the Merzbau” to be “the intersection of material accretion—including bodily, industrial, and artisanal production—with the endless flux of Schwitters’ process. The artist exteriorized parts of his own body and incorporated them into the tunnels or architectural shell. He placed hair, nail pairings and his own urine in small containers throughout the project. Rendered impersonal, these bodily remains and refuse proceed along a circuit beginning from the anthropomorphic armature of the artist’s body, through various containers and objects, and then into the crevices of the architectural armature,” (Mansoor). In some ways, Schwitter’s Merzbau is an example of extreme personalization. This change has the potential to allow the space to become ambiguous, non-definitive. Architecture authored under the “expert” side of society does not undergo the same flux. Instead, it runs the risk of becoming irrelevant to the cultural conversation as ideas change and trends pass. However Schwitters was an expert of sorts—he was an artist and he was compelled to create as a result of the constrictions on his trade and free expression during the Nazi regime. Those two factors were a large factor in how much effort and expression he put into the Merzbau and this is not representative of something the general population would necessarily do even if there were oppressed by some sort of Nazi Regime.
“Creativity as a Matter of Choice..” from Columbia describes how creativity does not come easily for everyone. They describe how in a situation where they provided people with many choices and alternatives, people were more likely to make decisions knowing less about all the alternatives than if they were presented with less alternatives. “In a study that examines the decision strategies of people encountering different number of alternatives, Timmermans (1993) found that as the number of alternatives increases, people were not only more likely to use an elimination strategy, they also made use of less information.” “In this research, we argue that the two critical boundary conditions are the person factor of prior experience in the task domain and the situational factor of whether explicit instruction to be creative is given.” Roy Yong-Joo Chua, Sheena S. Iyengar
They argue that there are limits to how creative a person can be in any given experience where they need to make design strategies. The first limit is that the person knows what they’re doing, that they’ve done this before, for instance, a chef knows how different ingredients taste together and what type of treatment they need to bring out the best in them, but a college student with little prior cooking experience might only know about ramen and microwaved foods. The second limit is how much instruction is given in context to the creative decisions. The Fun Palace design arguably provides instruction through how all the changeable conditions of the Fun Palace are all predetermined that only switch between an on/off modality. While having too many options may be derogatory to one’s ability to choose, giving people something to use that is already predetermined may not demand enough creative expression to really afford real creativity in how spaces are changed and defined.
what could be the future?
Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette
There are also other architectural projects that also attempt to give their users authorship. Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette strives to “provide a truly honest relationship between the subject and the object” (Papadakes). The park is an open space defined by a grid of red sculptural follies. These follies don’t carry any programmatic value other than to act as a way for visitors to cross reference locations in the park. Their emptiness, their unassigned programs, is an attempt to give users the freedom to come up with possibilities for how each folly could be used. However, one might say that this attempt didn’t turn out as expected. Some of the follies have been re appropriated to restaurants, information centers, and other programs, and with this re appropriation, the intent to preserve ambiguity for users becomes nullified. The Kunsthaus Graz also attempts to give users the power to challenge their architectural experience with their Bix façade. Bix is a word made from the combination of the word “big” and “pixels”, in terms of its technology Bix is 930 40 watt fluorescent rings embedded in the 900 m2 outer skin of the building. Ideally users might have the ability to control the images displayed on the area of the skin, transforming the atmosphere of public spaces at night. However, the actions and decisions of the public have the potential to be more than changing how the skin lights up. The interior of the Kunsthaus Graz is barely affected when the skin lights up, the effect of the Bix façade is that of a giant screen, not really that of a changing, transforming architecture. There is a fine line in the gradient between a Merzbau and a Kunsthaus Graz, the gradient between complete user power and a very little user power, where the user has enough power to actually make meaningful change, but the entire structure can still be read as a comprehensive whole.
Shifting the expert paradigm and empowering consumers opens up architecture to new possibilities and allows it to evolve in a faster and more varied ways, similar to how media is currently evolving. More importantly, users can begin to have more freedom in physically altering their space, and engage space in communities that can lead to larger scale architectural change. Not only that, it would allow non-experts to critically challenge the kinds of spaces desired for certain programs, it would challenge the kinds of spaces that people currently interface with on a day to day basis. If according to Tschumi’s “De-, dis-, ex” there is “no way can architecture today claim permanence of meaning,” then perhaps it should not try to (Tschumi). Perhaps it should embrace change via user choices. Perhaps it can evolve as fashion does, granting it more of a contemporary stance in present day culture. Instead of presuming some sort of expertise and authorship over architecture, one could, like Tschumi’s follies, begin with a blank slate void “the historical and the traditional”, void of authoritative presumptions, and embrace “transience and temporality” (Tschumi). Collective creation of space can be a form of self-expression, it can also be a form of pure recreation. As long as people are engaging with the architecture in a way that keeps them intrigued, architecture can be meaningful, relevant and innovative without necessarily catering to any need.
potential tactics Here are a few attempts at identifying strategies towards making architecture more bottom up via abstract physical tidbits. They are not all that successful, because at this point in Fall quarter I had not yet fully realized what I wanted my thesis to be. Therefore, a lot of these were kind of like small exercises I used to preoccupy my mind. Believe it or not these lighthearted exercises still demanded more late nights than I had expected. It also always seemed like none of them were all that satisfactory to Doug or my peers so this was a frustrating time for me.
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pre-vellum hamster wheel
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a milk bottle and a box
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pouch
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early architectural iterations
pre-vellum hamster wheel exploded axon
This first exercise was actually more of a study of how a designed object/piece of furniture could inspire play. “Play� for our studio was somewhat loosely understood as a new set of rules that multiple people could engage in, resulting in some sort of fun non-reality. This chair is kind of like being in a big hamster wheel that has two different wheels of varying porosity that change how the person sitting inside is buffered from passerbys. The one sitting inside can spin the interior wheel to change it, and the passerby can also spin. I thought spinning was fun.
Though this was a fun and challenging exercise, I definitely had a hard time coming up with a good idea that I could work off of. Most of my design process was looking for a type of interaction that could be interpreted as play.
a milk bottle
This is probably the most far off the thesis map as I have gone with these things. It’s a milk bottle that I put little zip tie wolverine claws into because I thought it might be cool. Ended up taking me an all nighter because making the thing took longer than I thought. The idea was that it was an object that wasn’t what it appeared to be at first sight, thus provoking people to look at it longer, or try to find out more about it.
x,y, a personalized box experience! exploded
What is x,y, 3? It’s a box! But it’s not very easy to understand what it’s like inside the box. Rather, that experience is up to you!
Anne-Elise Chun Jackson Stud
First, take a peek through the red opening. Feel free to extend the red portion towards your face. Let someone look through the other end!
ed box experience!This box is an experiment about user controlled space, and space mediated between multiple people. exploded
x,y,
a personalized box experience!
tight configuration
axon
y easy to understand what it’s like inside the box. s up to you!
extended configuration exploded
a box
Anne-Elise Chung Jackson Studio
exploded axon
h the red opening.
What is x,y, 3?
your face. sdaportion box! Buttowards it’s not very easy to understand what it’s like inside the box. ather, that experience is up to you!
h the other end!
rst, take a peek through the red opening.
nt about user controlled space, and space mediated between multiple people.
eel free to extend the red portion towards your face.
et someone look through the other end!
his box is an experiment about user controlled space, and space mediated between multiple people.
ght configuration
extended configuration
extended axon
extended configuration
The box design runs along a similar design goal, I wanted people to spend some time with my creation, thus the initial encounter with the box only acts as the trigger for some hidden reward. This time however, the reward can only be activated by having one person on each side. The ends of the box are capped with rectangular fresnel lens and the insides have moveable colored transparent flags and moveable mirrors. With the right amount of tweaking the flags and the mirrors, both users will be able to look into each other’s eyes. The flags and mirrors were accessed from the exterior of the box via thin wires.
a box
pouch Pouch is a chair that you wear. Users activate the expression of the chair by sitting and sleeving themselves. Once seated, they are suspended in a pocket lined with soft, shaggy fleece. The exterior consists of a rougher dark gray automotive felt. This felt transfers most of the weight to the steel pipe frame.
the many moods of pouch uninhabited
inhabited
snuggled
social camille
social david
knocked out
hanging out
glamorous
early architectural iterations
late fall ideas a modular housing thing on r2d2 legs
A
hypothetical droid legs (via r2d2)
hygiene wall
A
D
B
E
C
F
B
sleep wall C
food storage wall D
food prep wall E
recreational wall F
wall wall...
a modular housing thing in plan
a spiral grocery store
early winter struggles
meet the characters
flow -undulates gently -possible skins: 8 -possible expressions:3
elbow -regular bend -possible skins: 12 -possible expressions:5
squiffle -undulates irregulary, nonextruded -possible skins: 8
robot wiggle -multiple regular bends -possible skins: 9 -possible expressions:8
schizo wiggle -multiple irregular bends, -possible skins: 8 -possible expressions:2
character skins
grassy green comes in seasonal flavors including: -dandelions -unmown -the hills are alive
waff. structure comes in various assortments including: -inset strobe lights -colored tiles
wood comes in various assortments including: -walnut -cherry -recycled
hex. waff. structure comes in various assortments including: -inset LED tickers -heat/air conditioning
carpets comes in all your favorite scrapbook patterns
lin. waff. structure the most exciting one yet.
glass great for showcasing apple products caution: potential nsfw opportunities
fur comes in all species including: -buffalo -sexy blob fur -mustang pelts
rotating character platforms
art pieces scattered around as dialogue and context
sectional relationships
midwinter struggles
walking/selling program
mode A
mode B
stadium/spectator program
section
lake/lounging program
section
23 naps and 5 all nighters later..
the proposition
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concept via cookies
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site/program
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structure technical aspects
flotopia concept
Time to revisit the Subway example from page 12, but this time with something cuter and more appetizing: macarons. Like architecture, macarons typically do not offer much user creativity or choice. They consist of two similar halves and a filling in-between. Usually the filling is something that makes sense in accordance to the flavor of the cookie halves.
By allowing users to mix and combine different elements of space, one is allowed to explore and discover new and unique flavors of experiences.
site
The challenge was to think of a way for users to easily mix and combine with little effort. The rotational structure of the last design iteration required that people actively search for new possibilities. This might be too much effort, as well as too much required structure. In an effort to simplify the structure and the premise, it was suggested that the structure rely on water to float around. Parts of the design would float, controlled by a downloadable app. the other part would remain static, suspended above the water. The next challenge was then finding a site that provided an acceptably sized body of water within a populated, recreational environment. The resulting site is MacArthur Park.
MacArthur Park, West Lake, Los Angeles
perspectives from yelp
MacArthur Park, West Lake, Los Angeles
KEY metro red line retail/food housing education
spatial sketches
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programs
ironments: 8 out of 31 total latot 13 fo tuo 8 :stnemnorive tneibma
ylit passage
c5 light cove
b7 anechoic
top taxonomy
ciohcena 7b
evoc thgil 5c
egassap tilyks 2d
eneres/dercas 4f
ambient evironments: 8 out of 31 total
ient evironments: 8 out of 31 total
ambient evironments: 8 out of 31 total
ambient evironments: 8 out of 31 to f4 sacred/serene
d2 skylit passage
ambient ambientevironments: evironments: 88out out of31 31total totalG31 J12 F6 of
pmar laitrap 4a
oculus
evoc yk s 2hlightwells lennut D Etunnel L 6d colorful LED
LED d2 tunnel h2 skyc5cove skylit passage light cove
4 sacred/serene
d2 skylit passage
d2 d2 d2skylit skylit skylitpassage passage passage
N3
c5 c5 c5light light lightcove cove cove
skylit passage
curtained screens
c2Q2 rainy
yniar 2c
b7 anechoic
d2 skylit passage b7 b7 b7anechoic anechoic anechoic
d6 Z4 LED tunnel
anechoic chamber
c5 light cove
h2 sky cove
c2 rainy d6 LED tunnel h2 sky cove G22 tunnel V5 A2 a4 partial ramp d6 LED tunnel d6 LED h2 sky cove h2 sky cove a4 partial ramp
c2 rainy
c2 c2 c2rainy rainy rainy
colored littunnel tunnel d6 d6 d6 LED LED LED tunnel tunnel
rain tower h2 h2 h2sky sky sky cove cove cove
b7 ane
a4b7partial ramp anechoic
c5 light cove
f4 sacred/serene f4 f4 f4sacred/serene sacred/serene sacred/serene
c5 light cove
sloped projection surface a4 a4 a4 partial partial partial ramp ramp ramp
a4 par
bottom taxonomy
3M
88B
6V
half bowl
ramped stepway
LED tunnel
8F
3T
56H
ramped corner
slightly sloped ramp
slight sloped partition
2E
91R
5L
submerged view
slight slope at
group seating
F6
J12
88B
8F
3T
5
A2
C9
5L
7
6
G31
5L
2E
97
Q2
7E
36F
88W
f4 sacred/serene
c2 rainy
d2 skylit passage
c5 light cove
b7 anechoic
d6G31 LED tunnel
h2 sky cove
a4 partial ram
colored lit tunnel
2E submerged view
g31 1
2e
1. LED light panels wired to 2. transmitters hung from 3. lightweight steel truss
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3
1. Outboard motors on all sides for directional movement 2. Ballast tanks with 3.air pump control height displacement.
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1 2
b6 structure
steel arches and beams
adjustable rotational ligatures
chromed panels
3M structure
gfrc tiles
secondary steel casing structure
steel truss structure
steel hollow ballast
flotopia moment 23B
23B
23B
B22
flotopia moment 26B
5M
5M
B22
f10 structure
lightweight concrete shell
steel trusses and columns
gfrc cast lightwells and steel clips
light, breathable woven acrylic fabric
3f structure
chrome ďŹ nish steel tiles
secondary steel casing structure
steel truss structure
steel hollow ballast
flotopia moment 6M
3F
3F
F10
flotopia moment 3B
3B
3B
F10
37 naps and 9 all nighters later..
physical model built at 1/8th scale With the physical model I was trying to show different material finishes, the variety of spatial environments, and how the bottom floating pieces would be able to move ambiently between environments. In order to do this, I made the structure of the model akin to that of an air hockey table. There are two hidden fans beneath the dark blue acrylic surface. These fans blow air through a grid of 1/32" diameter holes to levitate the small foam pieces.
ambient evironments: 8 out of 31 total f4 sacred/serene
ambient evironments: 8 out of 31 total
serene
d2 skylit passage f4 sacred/serene
out of 31 total
ight cove
y
sky cove
d2 skylit passag
c5 light cove
d2 skylit passage
N3
c5 light cove c2 b7 anechoic rainy V5
skylit passage
rain tower
b7 anechoic
Z4
c2chamber rainy anechoic
b7 anechoic
d6 LED tunnel
d6 LED tunnel
J12 h2 sky cove oculus
h2 sky cove
d6 LED tunne
a4 partial ramp
a4 partial ramp
a4 partial ramp
from above
Thanks for visiting flotopia! See you next time.
topic 3 is coming soon! for further content, please see:
striptease
good night humans a few candid shots of people in pouch
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