7.3 INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONS

After this long period of working on the Bucky Lab project I have a satisfied feeling. In the first few weeks it was hard to find a sunshading solution that could compete with an umbrella on my own. I got stuck a bit and a had lack of motivation because of this.

Bucky lab was one of the courses I was looking forward to in the master’s track of building Technology. The hands-on approach to design was exactly why i applied for this course. I was quite excited with the design brief as it was something that had never been done in my bachelors or my professional practise. The best part of the course was also a perfect amalgamation of engineering and design.

After the elevator pitches I saw what everyone did and what was possible; I looked forward to further developing a design which was not my own. The choice of joining OSTRA made sense because it most resembled my initial design and I really liked the way the bollards were given an extra function.

After the bachelor degree where what you drew did not have any consequences, this was the first time my drawings came to life. This way of actually building something you design makes you think twice of the decisions you make. In the end the prototype has to work in real life, there is no photoshop where you can hide small mistakes or leave out what you do not like. It thaught me to go further into detail than I had done in my previous projects.

The OSTRA team was a very nice group of people who respected each other and listened when someone was suggesting a design proposal. We had some small discussions but we always found an agreement and we never really collided.

In the end I think we have turned Shashvats initial design into a workable shading solution. Although it may not be the cheapest and most simple product, our expectations were met and I had a great time doing so!

Eloy van Kessel

This really helped me develop my design ideology in terms of solving complex assembly problems. “Why, what and how?”, these questions were the fundamental blocks of the Elevator pitch. It was a first-time experience for me where I had to sell an idea to group of students and tutors. To do that, I understood that one must have the confidence in their own product to be able to sell a story. I was fortunate enough that some people actually liked my concept and eventually became my team members for the rest of the course. Working in a very diverse cultural group, with my colleagues coming from different parts of the world was an enriching experience. All of us had some field of expertise that we could capitalise on during the weeks. Eloy was really good at figuring out moving parts of our design. Daniel brought his 8 years of field experience on the table by critical analysis of problems and detailed construction drawings. While Ece brought forth her design skills with softwares such as Rhino and Grasshopper. Guidance was given by both Nadia and Marcel along the way. It was an amazing time whenever we had discussions with the tutors. I personally feel that we as a group could have worked on physical models a bit more to have more iterations of our design coming to life. But I am still satisfied with the scaled models that we made eventually. Building weeks was by far the favourite part of the entire course. The excitement of working with power tools and seeing a prototype coming to life was the reason to get up every morning and cycle all the way to the factory in temperatures below 0o. Finally, caping the course with a presentation and report helps put all the learning together in a cohesive manner. Another drawback that I found in our process was lack of structural design and building physics calculations to make our design even more sound, but one cannot dream to achieve everything in such a short span of time. However, I learned a lot from course about ball bearings, combination of gears, rotating mechanism and finally designing light weight structures. Our respected tutors have been very patient and encouraging with us and were very polite to point out flaws in our design every week. Their constructive criticism made us work together as a group and I can say that we were quite compatible. I have learnt a lot from my fellow teammates and look forward to working together again.

Shashvat Shrotria