Virtual Environment Student Journal Module Two
Xiaojie Bian 633796 Semester 1,2013
Week 4 Readings TED talks - Thomas Heatherwick - (16min) Q: Discussed how Heatherwick uses design to create spatial effects? Use one project to illustrate your discussion. The central concept released in the vedio clip is ‘less is more’, which means get rid of the obstructions and just focus on only one thing which is essential for the design process. As he said ‘to do only one thing, instead of tryin gto do everything’. To illustrate his point, Heathewick presents one of his most famous design, which is the seed catherdral project. Heatherwick built a building and left a large amount of space for public playground. He composes the elements that are inefficient and create one composition to achieve a high space efficiency. Heatherwick uses a basic form a box as the fundation and added his creative surface that could move in the wind. The lighting tubes were inserted inside the ‘hairs’ which are strips all over the surface. The electric wires are also hide in the strips that it does not waste the space with in the building any more. Also the surface of the building is translucent that would make the people inside would think the space is larger than it actually is..
Reading: Scheurer, F. and Stehling, H. (2011): Lost in Parameter Space? IAD: Architectural Design, Wiley, 81 (4), July, pp. 70-79 Q: What are the key differences between 'abstraction' and 'reduction'? Can you relate these ideas to process analysis you undertook in Module 1 (and the reading by Poling)? The reading ‘Lost in Parameter Space?’ is basically talking about the how technology (the CAD)can help us in today’s design process. In the reading, abstraction refers to eliminate unnecessary information, just needs to ‘as little as necessary to describe object unambiguously’. I found the idea of abstraction sort of similar to the concept of analytical drawings, which also requires you to analysis the structure of the object and redraw in the simplest geometric shape. And the reduction is about finding the optimal way to transport the information. The reduction is very much a recipe writing process, by finding out the regular pattern of the reoccurring incidents and describe in the least words. The only difference is one need to be done by hand and the other can be automatically generated by computer program, which makes life much easier.
This is the first model I have made, it can be seen as a gradually changing radius cylinder wrapping around the arm. In this case, I use a pencil in order to hold the model in the proper position.(In the ratio of 1:1.5) I used three cylinders to model the tracks of the lantern however it might be too much, the spacing between the cylinders is very small, which limits the size of the 3D panel and I decided to use one in my rhino modeling.
Rhin0 this is the base model developed from the clay model. It is generated by tracing the contours, and then loft them one by one. The helix and the spiral models are both derived from the same clay model. Only difference on the triangle and finedges.
Model One
paneling 2D triangle
Custom 3D prism pentagon
paneling 3D grid
Custom 3D cone
Aqua is designed by Jeanne Gang, and it is her first skyscraper project. The Aqua was named the Emporis Skyscraper Award 2009 skyscraper of the year, and was shortlisted in 2010 for the biannual International Highrise Award. Aqua is an 86 story mixeduse residential skyscraper in the Lakeshore East development in downtown Chicago. I took this as a precedent because I like the the way how they structured the frame for each floor, as the extending balcony form an appealing outlook of the architecture. I do like the idea of extruded curves.As regards to my lantern, I would like to model it with the wavy curves on the surface and see if it works out well.
Clay model no.2
this is the refined model I have got from the clay model. and using 2D wave paneling tool, modeling the effect on the lantern
Model Two This is the second model i made and it’s designed to be held in hands. Tracing the contours and loft to get the basic shape of the model. Then refine it to a better shape.
3D paneling , triangle.
prism-triangle
finedges wave—correspond to the Aqua Tower this model is quite similar to the presedemt study i found before. i like the layers of the . edges Finedges Box trying different 2D paneling tool
custom 3D: irregular arrow.
Model Three
Scale1:1 Paneling 2D triangle
finedges
I want this model can be wrapped around my arm, and using my arm as a context, i set up a 1:1 scale model (22cm*9cm). By tracing the contour from my model and refining it, i get this helix-shaped model. And then I play around the 2D paneling tools in Rhino, by using the 2D grid and also my designed shapes.
Prototype Prototype 1 This is the first prototype I made from my model. It is made from the pentagon prism panel. I unrolled a section from my spiral shape model, print it out and cut with a knife. Actually i did two versions of this model. Frist time I printed out the unrolled face on my printer, and just use the normal paper to construct the model. The paper model is very fragile and it is easily sag at the folding lines. The other time I trace the pattern on the paper purchased from fablab and because of the quality paper, the model looks better than the one i did before. But it looks dull without any changes of light, and i decided to make another panel with holes to produce light effect.
Front
Top
Prototype 2 The second prototype is very much the same as the frist one, as I want to see the lighting effect from my model. I made a triangular hole on each face of the pentagon prism, print it out and cut on the paper. It is very tedious to cut the triangular holes pattern, definitely i will use the fablab next time. After the cutting process, I glued the edges together folded them by the folding lines.
Lighting effect I put the prototype under the lamp and see how the light goes through the model. I like the way the light dispersed through the holes, creating the pattern on the wall. And i can also generate patterns in circles, stars, rectangle....and make a combination of all these geometric patterns. Which might create a complex lighting effect.