MODULE 4 JOURNAL_Jin Wang_786047 S1, 2017

DIGITAL DESIGN + FABRICATION SM1, 2016 YOUR PROJECT TITLE DIGITAL DESIGN + FABRICATION SM1, 2017 Jin Wang 786047 Matt, Group 4B

DANCING TOGETHER

Jin Wang

786047 Matt, Group 4B

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Dancing together

SECOND SKIN PROJECT 3

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contents 0.0 Introduction 1.0 Ideation Abstract 1.1 Object measured drawings 1.2 Digital drawings 1.3 System analysis 1.4 Volume 1.5 Sketch proposal 1.6 Reflection 2.0 Design Abstract 2.1 Design development 2.2 Development of personal space 2.3 Precedent research 2.4 Refined sketch model 2.5 Developed design version 1 2.6 Developed design version 2 2.7 Prototype 2.8 Testing Effects 2.9 Reflection 3.0 Fabrication Abstract 3.1 Design development & Fabrication of prototype v1 3.2 Precedent 3.3 Design development & Fabrication of prototype v2 3.4 Reading applied to design 3.5 Final Prototype development + optimisation 3.6 Final Digital model 3.7 Fabrication sequence 3.8 Assembly Drawing 3.9 Reflection 4.0 Second skin 5.0 Reflection.

6.0 Appendix 6.1 Credit 6.2 Bibliography

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0.0

Introduction Our system is skin and bone which means we need to combine two completely different elements together and deal their relationship under the given standard.

We have different objects in the ideation part which are lantern and umbrella. The way how their surface connects with the supporting structure became our inspiration, however, our second skin design was also influenced by precedents and readings a lot, especially in the way of the fabrication process of bone and skin texture.

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1.0

Ideation

1.0 Abstract We got the basic understanding of skin and bone system from the physical relationship between the supporting structure and the paper surface, while it provides the original inspiration as well.

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1.1 Measured drawing

OBJECT

The lantern had been measured by the maximum radius in both of horizontal and vertical way, and them radius of each circle, it was easy when the lantern is folded like a planar without the inside supporting metal element.

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1.2 Digital drawing Following the measured data of the circles first, create the whole bone structure and change their positions for making sure the distance between the circles are accurate. Then pipe them into 3 dimension bones rather than just curves, and use the command loft to create surfaces between each gap. The supporting element inside was drawn by the same method as other bone structure.

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SKIN & BONE

1.3 System analysis This is an object which can be folded into a plane when the surface is not in tension because of the relaxation of the bone. As it is opened and added the vertical supporting element inside, the skin outside will be in tension while the bones are in compression, and the press forces are pointing on the joining points between the circle bone and the inside vertical supporting one. At the same time, a much bigger volume is created.

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1.4 Volume

The iron inside lantern is the bone system, I have released them from the circle into a more flexible shape as well as created a volume as a protection system for the shoulder.

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1.5 Sketch proposal

version 1

version 2

version 3

I got my idea from my object-the lantern, with a supporting element inside as the bone and curved lines outside as the skin, this design covers the whole upper body of people on both front and rear. Furthermore, there is also defense system on the other two sides. Totally, it is an absolutely safe zone for people who has an all-sided personal space.

This design is consist of the triangle and rectangular frames and a flimsy gauze cover. The frames are joined with the gauze covering on them. As what I have learned from the reading when people are unable to see something, the influence of that object or human beings should be reduced, which means that if I can provide a blurry eyesight, people’s personal space may have a decline to some extent. In this case, we do not require to occupy too much space.

I got this idea from the real ‘skin and bone’ . The frame is just like pieces of curved fish bone and with a light skin on it. Apart from that, this design also comes from the branches of the roses.

These features not only are getting inspiration from nature world, but also giving people a sense of defense while the roses always stand their thorn and stop other creatures from coming too close. And if looking at it as a whole structure, it start from a point at back and tend to end at a point in front, this modality can contribute to helping people express their emotions, especially for introverted group.

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1.6 reflectio

When I first cover surfa ing about t developme the skin and drawings w skin and bo the standa pression an helping me the new sys

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on

heard the word skin and bone, I misunderstood it as just frame structure and ace, I spent lots of time on selecting which object to draw rather than thinkthe hidden significance of the object, so I was not able to make a satisfying ent from the ideation part. I did not realize the physical relationships between d bone, but fortunately, my rhino skill was good enough to finish the digital well. As the first idea of the design, I did not make strong relations between the one object and the three sketches, and also, none of the sketches can meet ard of skin and bone system, because they are just frame structure not in comnd surface not in tension. Although as a start part, it was not good enough for e with the coming design process, it was still a good guide for me to recognize stem.

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DESIGN

Jin Wang & Daria Lysenko

2.0 Abstract In this module, we decided to design the project for a young girl who is spending time in a club for the first time. In this situation, we have analysed her personal space first, then under an organized process, finally we got two versions of designs, with similarities, but different.

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2.1 Design development

Sketch 1 comes from Daria’s object, we wanted to create folding bones just like the umbrella, and connect the skin inside for holding the bone. The whole structure covers all around the body and becoming higher at back, we did not decide the personal space at that moment so this is just a concept design.

The second one is also a concept design, we wanted to explode different patterns, and add skin randomly, we attempted to make the second skin beautiful instead of thinking more about the system standard and the reflection from an object which is not right so we abandoned the idea.

Then we got our concept and tried to decide the personal space, so we got sketch design 3, also it is influenced by precedent in the way of skin and the shape of the bone structure.

Sketch 1

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Sketch 2

Sketch3

2.2 Development of Personal space

According to the previous page, the personal space of girl’s back should be thicker than the one in front of her while the side personal space is not as wide as the back one as well.

The pictures clearly show the space, which had been taken to create the composition.

The dark black medium refers to our primary personal space which is more emotional, While dark gray refers to the secondary personal space which is the sensitive area of a person in a physical way.

The aim of the primary space refers to a protection and inclosing friends to the personal space of the person who wears it. As what has been illustrated in the plan of the personal space, the shape of the primary space tends to hold something just like arms.

The design which will be created is related to both defensive at the back and closing tendency in the front. Thus the measurements, which had been chosen for personal space are following the criteria.

Our original personal space is not strong enough and after further explorations, we have changed it into more convincing one.

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2.3 Precedent #1

This design is consist of curved bone and lines, we absorbed the idea of how to create an always in tension skin system, we tried to sketch similar structures while keeping the whole shape can meet our personal space..

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Precedent #2

A Dutch designer, Wine Reinstra presented a collection, where the major role plays an idea of strips as a skin, which plays connecting and holding the role.

In Reinstra’s project strips are supporting the bone construction. By rotating and overlaying strips, Wine created a new pattern and illusionary textures, thus using Moire effect.

First Concept: By rotating and laying strips can be created a different composition.

Second Concept: Strips give a fundamental form to the composition and hold bones.

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2.4 Refined sketch model

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2.5 Developed design Version 1 Looking forwards to create the parent by overlaying parts of the model.

Trying to have strip skin design which could hold bones.

When parts of the model move they create different patterns in different parts of the model.

Different colours show make clear a pattern which possibly can be created.

We attempted to implement the First and second concept. In our design, we will try to create layered strip skin, which could be able to change the pattern depends on the angle as well as hold bones. A grid will vary within the parts of the model, but by connecting all parts the model the moire effect will be created.

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2.5 Developed design V

Based on the previous refined have added new structures in and also improved the shape for meeting our new analysis o al space, and this new version more things which we got from dent research.

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Version 1

d design, we nto the design of the bones of the personn 1 indicates m the prece-

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2.6 Developed design Version 2

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The development of the shape of the bone and the way for adding wires provide more space in the front.

We did enhancement based on version 1 and another thing as I mentioned in the personal space analysis, we were aiming to reduce the girl’s sense of touch, this has been reached in our final outcome here, her arms and hands will be protected inside the skin while she can still move in range of the gap between or hold the bone elements.

When people are unable to touch, they will focus on other senses such as sight and hearing, we can provide opportunities to the girl who is the first time in club focusing on these two senses more.

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2.7 Prototype version 1

We made the first one in the material of iron wire and hemp ropes but found it really hard to stay by itself, and the iron wires are too heavy for the hemp ropes to hold and stabilize.

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version 2

The second version is consist of iron wires and bright cardboard, the bone system is the same as the version 1, and the skin is thin pieces of the cardboard.

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version 3

The third one we utilized plastic board and tapes to make a small model, and we found that the plastic is really lighter and more convenient for holding.

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version 4

After the previous experience, we found that plastic board is better for bone elements and the cardboard is better for the skin system. As a result, we tried to combine them and come out with the version four.

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2.8 Testing effects What we got from the prototype process is majority regarding the materials. our design has very complex bone shapes which mean we need a light but stable material, and after testing, plastic could be a proper choice.

Furthermore, for the skin elements which should always in tension but some parts in the press for supporting the bone elements, we found that soft cardboard might be a good choice.

This kind of intersecting joints is used in this model. because it is a bit hard to shape the plastic board and make it stable, we must use this sort of joints to make sure that we can curve the bone.

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This testing complete our thinking about the material, we are now tending to create plastic tubes as the bone and instead of using the soft thread, we will shift to utilize a sort of line with a little bit hardness.

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2.9 Reflection At the start, we combined our ideation and developed the design in the digital way which is on the right way, however, there was a lack of relation between ideation part and the design step, meanwhile, we carelessly forgot to consider that how we could build the model in real when I was drawing in Rhino. As a result, after trying to do some prototypes roughly, we found the ideas too difficult to realize, the production process was painful because of the feeling of running on the wrong track.

Then we realized that it was impossible to make sure the relationship between skin and bone just in the digital way because they meant to be an indivisible whole in terms of mechanics. But fortunately, we have got an idea about the material and got suggestions from the guest tutor, which was helpful to us for the coming fabricating process.

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Fabrication

3.0 Abstract

Started with plastic tubes, we tried to fabricate bone structure by hand at the beginning, according to the previous module, the design was settled in curve shape bone and line skin, however, after producing the bone, we were suggested to make the skin by planes instead of the unstable wires. New materials are tested and different sorts of methods for fabricating were explored. We found out what we really should do at the end of the module though we failed to complete the final model.

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Jin Wang & Daria Lysenko

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3.1 Development design &Fabrication version 1

Digital model

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Fabrication For the first fabrication, we tried to explore the chosen material for bones and new connections of the skin and bone. However, there were plenty of problems.

To start with, the idea of plastic tubes was not as successful as we expected. It took days to bind pipes in the right shape. However, they still did not have an aesthetic look. Moreover, connections were not stable enough and the model was always breaking into pieces. Another problem was that when we reduce a complexity of the bones we actually reduced an overall complexity of the design and, as our skin was just a hips of triangular surfaces, the model was not creative enough and did not look well.

However, the major concern was that the connections, which we have created were not holding the skin.

The positive outcome was that we finally bring an idea of “skin under tension� into life. Thus, an outcome of our first fabrication was the solution of how skin and bone system can work sustainably.

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Fabrication progress We selected the plastic tubes and tried to bend them. Heating was our best solution and we have spent most time on heating the pipes. It was hard to control at the beginning, the pipe might be burnt if careless. We also used different tools for making the shape nicely and without mistake.

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Joints The two kinds of joints for this version model, the left picture shows how we connect the fabric and the pipe. We used this kind of nail and fish wire to stabilize the fabric.

And for connecting different parts of the pipe, we selected this kind of joints, it is stable at the start but when we try to move when wearing the model, the two connected part.

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3.2 Development design &Fabrication version 2

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MATERIAL Adding complexity to skin through special texture

After we figured out the form of bones, our further design development went through discovering perfect surfaces, which could be made out of skin instead of just triangulated form. We explored that to create surfaces we at least needed four connections or even more. We also tried to overlap and interconnect surfaces.

Testing helped us to understand how the skin was able to interconnect with bones because in our case digital modeling was not as useful enough in terms of testing skin.

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3.2 Precedent 3 As we decided to make the skin more diverse and creative because of the simplified bone. We were looking forward discovering some effects which would suit our design. An outcome of our research was dedicated towards the moire effect. We found out many types of moire effect but the one most suitable one was moire waves. The figure shows dotted walls, which overlapping create the wavy effect, which visually changes depending on the side. The figure gives an illusion of caustic effect, which visually reminds waves depending on the angle of view.

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3.3 Development design &Fabrication version 2 Digital model

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Prototype We started to explore the design of bones first.

As before it determined to be very simple layer design, we decided to overlap bones a little to create a volumetric form.

We did not want to increase an amount of bones in order to prevent failure of the design.

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3.4 Reading applied to design we did pretty much formative fabrication Firstly, as what we have found from Module 2, we attempted to bend plastic tubes by heating them for several minutes as our bone structure, however, hand making is not as accurate as what the machine does. And we also found that the plastic tubes are so hard to stabilize just by the skin which we want to present by transparent fabric. And during the crafting process, a lot of problems exist which led us into another way for manufacturing.

Two-dimensional fabrication, should be the better choice for production as for the design at that moment, the bone is consist of closed curves in three layers but every element can be taken as a horizontal structure if just simply rotate them, the situation was completely suitable for Laser-cutting which is a general fabrication method for cutting material sheets just in x and y-axes. we started to illustrate the same structure in Rhino first and still keep the relationship of the individual elements, for the preparation of lasercutting, and then tried to figure out the rough position of our skin and prepared lots of holes on the surface which are gonna be our joints for combining the skin the bone. As for indicating our concept before, we selected perspex as laser cutting material which is in transparency.

Rhino played the most important role during our design process, while we were doing the file for laser cutting, We used it for checking the width of the gaps as well as matching the joints, this step should be necessary for finding whether our design will work or not.

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3.5 Final Prototype development + optimisation Digital model

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Joints 1. Detachable Lengthening with Key: 2.5 D joint which is very practical with a suitable form for out design.However, we had to use glue to connect joints to bones as the laser can cut just in x and y directions. Moreover, these type of joints can be settled without tools.

2. Rotating key: joints, which uses a rotating or sliding elements.

Such joints are very suitable for an intersection.

3. Linear or interlocking joints: type of joints, which will be used for connecting one bone with another.

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Prototype

Fabric

This kind of fabric is still used because of its unique texture under tension. However, we decided to use white one instead of black one because of the material of bone.

A prototype of part of the design had been produced before fabricating the final model.

For testing the material of bone structure which is perspex as well as the new joints.

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Failed to make final model

This should be our final model, but we failed to make it because of the unstable joints and crispy perspex. When we add fabric on the structure, we tried to keep it in tension all the time, unfortunately, this ruined the bone, we were not able to make the final model.

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Prototype

Tried to keep all the joints this time but change the material into MDF which is much stronger than perspex when under forces, but the joints still does not work well. Also reduce the size of the bone structure, to keep a suitable gravity.

Found MDF suitable for the model, and the size was good but still need to paint the MDF into black.

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3.6 Final digital model

Reduce all the complicated joints to simple inserting joints, decline the size of each bone structure, to make sure the gravity is not over weight, and make it more easily to be held by fabric.

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3.7 Fabrication sequence

MDF was painted black. We use fish wire to stabilize fabric onto the bone structure, meanwhile, under skin’s assistance, the bone became much more stable.

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3.8 Assembly drawing

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3.9 Reflection We started to do the physical attempts instead of just sketch on rhino in this part. Followed suggestions from Matt and other assistants, we began with the plastic pipe. Heating pipes in the kitchen became our daily life especially on weekends, we utilized different tools for keeping the curve as perfect as possible but still found it too hard. Joints were one of the main problems not only for connecting the pipes themselves but also for stabilizing the skin with bone. After trying to straightly insert the ties of the fabric triangles into the hole we made on the pipe, we found it not stable enough. Matt introduced the special nail to us which actually works well on our prototype version two of this step. We completed two versions of plastic tube prototypes, and each one is 1 to 1 scaled. Just thought we were already on the right track and wanted to develop more from that point, however, Rosie reminded us that our fabrication method was not professional production which was the turning point to me.

As a freshman to laser cutting, the lack of experience and time led us to the failure of module 3. We only have one week left after deciding to do laser cut, I was responsible for the digital file which stressed me a lot, I have spent lots of time on figuring what the new shape should be, how we gonna join the different elements and many other detail problems while Daria was doing the journal. I was not sure whether the new design will work or not but we did not have a chance to develop more because of time. We just did one simple prototype for testing the new joints and the material they shift into the final model. I should notice the potential issues when we did the prototype. For instance, the crisp material, Perspex, can not be made into very big structure, the joints were not suitable for laser cutting because it can only cut in vertical direction which means we still need to use glue to make sure the joint can work, but unfortunately, the joints did not work and when we tried to add skin onto the bone, the Perspex fell apart under the excessive force, and the force comes from not only the gravity itself but also the compression created by the tension in skin.

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Dancing together 58

4.0 Second skin

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The design and fabrication process was full of challenges and variability.

I feel like I should do better work as an architecture student, but something was wrong from the start and the precarious emotions always behind chasing me. Me and Daria were not actually familiar with the design process like this but fortunately under Matt’s help and all the other people’s assistance, we did complete the model, although not the one we expected at the start, it is still satisfying. During the period I prepare for Module 4 journal, I realized many issues in different aspects which could be a very precious experience I’ve got from this subject.

The continuity in design The whole process of design was not continuous. Each of our previous sketch design almost has no connection with each other. It is good to have impactions of ideations while designing, because according to the lecture on week 11, the design process should start with defining the solution and goal space, then develop with testing against goal prototyping and end with developing new solutions based on test results, many completely different inspirations and problems might impact together during the testing process and what we need to do is catch the point which we should focus on and develop on. Although a lot of changes we made were seemingly unnecessary, they led us to have a clear thinking and find the point to focus on at the end.

The big gap between digital and physical At the start, we have combined our ideations and developed the design in a digital way, after trying to do some prototypes, we found the ideas too difficult to realize, and our system is skin and bone, the bone should be in compression while the skin must be in tension, it was hard to make sure their relationship just in a digital way. So we started to do the physical attempts instead of just sketch on the Rhino.

Understanding and mastering of new technologies After trying different materials and fabrication methods for both of the skin and bone elements, we settled on laser cutting for fabricating the bone structure at the end, for the skin, we selected the kind of fabric which has the special texture to illustrate our concept better. To shift into laser cutting was a decisive turning point. As what has been pointed out

by Scott Marble in his writing ‘Imagining Risk’, architects require the reconnection with fabricating process, with both of intelligence of human beings and machines, we need to release ourselves from the totally abstract word and go back into the making process more. What we have experienced during doing this subject, according to Scott, is a continuation of obsessions, how to control, how to proceed improvements as well as how to efficiently utilize modern techniques which are great skills for the coming studying and designing life.

Our failure at the end of Module 3 made a lot of sense to me. To present without final model was unpleasant, however, we still have all the process to talk about and under Matt’s encouragement and suggestions, we were able to complete the presentation as well as the following final model. We made big changes at the end not only in terms of material but also changed a lot of the structure. I was satisfied with the final outcome.

In conclusion, DDF taught me a lot in various aspects. Hopefully, I will take all these gains and make better work in the future designing life.

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6.0 APPENDIX 6.1 CREDIT

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6.1 BIBLIOGRAPHY precedent photography, retrieved from: http://textilesystematisms.tumblr.com/post/122875070414 Winde Rienstra, potography, retrieved from: http://collectiftextile.com/winde-reinstra/ joints photography, retrieved from: http://www.southwestcnc.co.uk/joints.html Branko Kolarevic, 2003, ‘Architecture in the Digital Age - Design and Manufacturing’, Spon Press, London Philip Bernstein, Peggy Deamer, 2008, ‘Building the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture’, Princeton Architectural Press, pp 38-42

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