Module 1-Ideation Module 2-Design Module 3-Fabrication Module 4-RReflection
Ut Thi Hien Tran 633948 Group members: Johnny Wang Sara Webber
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SKIN AND BONE
Module 4 REFLECTION
Semester 2/2013
Virtual Environment
MODULE 1
IDEATION
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OBJECT
I choose a trolley to draw. It is a foldable trolley which can move and fold, as functions of a normal cart. The metal cage, handle and sticks visualize bone structure. The reason I choose trolley is its size and the volume created by the cage. The size of 70 cm in width and height is big enough to contain a person. It would be a good start for me to examine objects with sizes that are approximately the same with human body. Hence, that would be helpful to generate ideas of Second Skin while I draw the object.
foldable shopping trolley
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HAND DRAWINGS
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How I measured my object? The reading 300 years of industrial design: function, form, technique gives me very first senses of detailed drawings. As what I comprehend, industrial design drawings require accuracy and meticulousness and additionally, a specific line hierarchy which is easier for process of making the designed objects. I tried to apply those requirements into my trolley drawings. I focus on not only the general shape, but also small details such as wheels, joints, screws and material. I took of some joints, used ruler to measure all dimensions, even small elements. By that way, I started to perceive new visions about Skin and Bone system and its basic structure.
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RHINO MODEL
By using basic tools such as: pipe, rotate, revolute,... I built up 3D rhino model of the trolley. I attempt to visualize the hand drawings as detailed as I can.
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EXPLORATION & IDEAS From the Reading Sommer, R. (1969). Personal space : the behavioral basis of design ,I found some very interesting concepts that basically draw in my head general shapes of my forming design. Firstly, personal space has similarity to individual distance, which means, there are borders wrapping people’s bodies so that enhances and provides privacy and domains where that person dominates over. The reading also gives several examples on how people react when their personal spaces are violated. However, there is another aspect mentioned in the reading: society’s expectation. It is a contrast of personal space, which means, everyone are meant to accept violations from external impacts, in order to socialize and communicate. This encourages me to think of a cover, which is rough, but also flexible , depending on the people around are strangers or friends.
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misunderstanding
The deI started the wrong way. My perception is too simple and banal so that my idea becomes “out of sense”. I thought about air movement and how air creates personal boundary. However my development does not completely interpret my ideas. I reckon, the way I decribe my understanding through designs is too direct and straightforward. There should be more symbolization and polishment to make it more elegant and meaningful. However, from this mistake, I learnt a lot. My persception has been changed: personal space is not as simple as air movement. There are more factors that are needed to go through.
Whats wrong with my object? It was a misunderstanding. While I made it, I thought : “I can make everything, as long as it has “skin” and “bone””. It is not that easy. My perception was completely wrong. Even though I made the structure of framing, however, it lacks of Skin. Skin means to be wrap up the whole thing in order to hide the bone underneath (maybe not). I tried to meet the requirement of “volume”, but, the outcome ended up nowhere.
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MODULE 2
DESIGN
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precedent study
A knight is the core theme of inspiration. A knight is well-known with his equipments, especially cape and scale. Cape symbolizes outer boundary that warns anyone who intends to come closer. We wanted to develop that into second skin. We wanted something that was not a literal cape, but a cover. For example, naturally, oyster, snails, armadillo have their shells which are created by their own body in order to protect them from predators. For that reason, we are interested in borrowing that concept to visualize a rigid boundary wrapping up human bodies to describe human defensive system.
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visualizing movement...
TED talks - Thomas Heatherwick The project of fordable bridge brings me ideas of movements. Movement is the difference between COSTUME and SECOND SKIN. Using mechanical joints to create effects of a design is a good way to visually describe second skin, also how a person establish his/her personal space via movements. I start to consider, how to apply joints into Skin and Bone system. It will add up more functions to second skin design, which means people can “use” it, rather than “wear” it.
By developing the sense of “movement”, we thought it would be good if we use mechanical joints to allow elements move, rotate , spread or close. Leonard Da Vinci wing design gives us fundamental steps to approach moveable elements. Different status those movements ultimately visually delineate personal mode of that person.
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To envision what I have learnt from the readings and precedent study, I thought about cages and ribs. I was strongly obsessed with cages that can form volumes around the body to create an inner space. Moreover, I also put joints to enable movements and rotation. However, these look a bit “section and profile�.
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We started designing by defining our own definition for personal space. With our perception, we consider, personal space includes variety of themes, rather than just privacy. Precedent studies have brought us a new concept: personal space sometimes, not really for one person. Personal space via second skin has duty of maintaining privacy, additionally, guarantee social communication and human interaction. Otherwise, second skin is no more than a shell, non-spirit shell. Keeping that in mind, we think about elements that can help us to transfer these understanding.
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3 ideas interference...
Cape: privacy, avoiding interacting with strangers and people that we hate or do not feel good to be with. Wing: socialize, inviting people to come closer for hugs and kisses (for specific people) Tail: interact, invade other's spaces.
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my moveable wing
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Wing
prototyping.......
Initially I attempted to make it move, spread out and close in but my thought is not deep enough since the movement operate in planar surface only (single direction, horizontally). That does not result in any effective volume to wrap up the body, which makes the design look narrower in 3D perspectives. We decide to eliminate the literal "wing" off in next module and put something that is more volumetric. However, we enjoyed building that thing since we had more experience on mechanical design which is helpful for future study.
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Tail We prototype the tail with a series of regular and irregular cardboard polygons. Those are placed parallel to each other connected by a wire core. The effect turns out to be a curvy solid cover by thin membrane which is literally black stretchy stocking. We were extremely impressed of how this kind of elastic fabric. It ultimately shows the tension and the shape of the polygons underneath, which partially describe skin and bone material system. However, the ideas of “irregular and regular� random shapes of the polygons misinterpret our concept.
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FINALLY... Since we separate the thing into 3 parts: cape, wing, tail with different functions and names, the wholeness and connection within elements of the design are lost. It seems like 3 designs of 3 people are put together, do not match up. Although we attempted to make them similar in look by using same paneling pattern on the cape and the wing, they are just different things ungracefully combine together. That leads to the loss of aestheticism, it looks awkward and “funny”. The aim of building a “knight” is not reached. Instead, we made a weird creature. The problem made in last module due to ideas tangle and misinterpreting should be fixed. We reckon, the reason for it is too many concepts and ideas were going on in our head, and instead of choosing the most suitable one, we used all of them. Ut Thi Hien Tran 633948 2013/2
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MODULE 3
FABRICATION
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Armadillo cover is a huge inspiration for us. We love how the layers of scales placed on top of each other, creating a tough looking pattern. Those scare strangers by their spiky and rough skin. It is even more attractive since the skin has different modes that depend on the scales, lying down horizontally or standing up vertically if things happen. We consider to build a second skin with that active defensive system.
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Still keeping a part of perception from Module 2, we tried to develop the design of second skin in another way, somehow attempt to create the wholeness instead of dividing it into 3 elements. We recognized the tail is the most flexible part to modulate. Since the wing is gotten rid of, the cape and the tail must link together smoothly.
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Since any living creature has a particular way to respond to external attacks, we had an idea of exploring how human act physically and use their bodies to protect themselves. And the result is quite interesting that arms are the visible weapons that we unintentionally use to parry dangerous things coming too closed. Arms rotate around shoulders and create a sphere-like volume. And that volume is illustrated by the cape in our design.
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Come back to the idea of the tail in Module 2, we used tights to cover over the scales, which enables the spiky edges create interesting shapes overall.
The scale pieces have shapes of spiky stars and suns. The reason for that is symbolizing a solid space locating around the arm, somehow like a weapon. Spiky thorns hurt the others if they exceed the allowed distance, which warns them to stay away from that person when he/ she needs privacy. We encounter some problems when we put those scales on the arms. Even though it does look good, but, I still think it is more an attachment, not a second skin attributor since we have to put piece by piece on every time we “wear� it. That does not create a proper system. Also, we failed to make the scales stand up and lie down with strings. We should have worked more on mechanical operation.
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After all of the effort fixing our design, we admit Fabrication does a lot of effect on our second skin project. Imagination and reality are two distinctive things. I learnt that designs must be doable, otherwise, they are just thoughts. We had “crazy� ideas on making the whole thing move, however, we failed to work out the joints, which leaves the cape simply made out of timber pieces. There are several things we change during fabrication process. Initially, rib pieces were not made by 2 pieces glue on each other. Later on, we figure out they are not strong enough to be held horizontally.
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hierarchy of colors
Black and red are pure natural colors and have a deep meaning of danger : blood and darkness.
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black and red
We could not find tights in red, hence, there was a difference between the cape and the arm scales. In order to make similarity, we used paint to draw some red pattern on it. The pattern is spirals and small dots. Spirals are found on the bodies of a kind of dangerous frog. That symbol, in our opinion, will bring a meaning of warning to anyone who intends to invade the personal space.
Virtual Environment
Our failure
We initially, used red fabric to tie the scale pieces together. This results in the loss of aestheticism. It becomes ungraceful in look, tangled and unsystematic, which is an ultimate failure of design.
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fablab submission template
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The back spine is so stable. The glue gun works well, which forms the spine that can hold the whole rib nearly 5kg. Since everything is “handmade� and all of elements are connected manually with glue and thread, the appearance of the final model is not the same as what we imagined and planned to do. The glue left irremovable traces on the fabric. The back spine even though becomes rigid and tough, however, pieces of dried glue make it look nasty and dirty somehow.
mechnical operation of the spine : holding the rib against gravity alsom allow them to rotate over the pole
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the fabric we purchased was stretchy enough to illustrate the volume of the rib. The fabric covers over the frame enhancing skin and bone structure strongly. The most satisfactory part of the cage is it can rotate. We had achieved the aim of “design a human shell� that well cooperate with the bodies to create personal space.
using arm to control the movement of the cape
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Final Design -Second skin- Skin and bone
human defensive system
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We love how the arm scales with unsymmetrical shape gives shadows when gets shone on. It was an unexpected effect that we did not plan.
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closed
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defensive
welcome
Virtual Environment
REFLECTION
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overall
cape - the shell to hide behind, symbol of protection
spiky arm- dangerous warning for strangers
spiky ankle- equalize top and bottom parts of the design.
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Drawing inspiration from the reading and your own learning from the last 10 weeks, describe how digital technology has changed your view on design, making and the context of the built environment? Digital technology is a totally new approach for me in Virtual Environments. From what I have done before in other subject about designing, I only see designing in pieces of paper, hand drawing, ideation and brainstorming. However, it is not all for a designer. In modern industrial world, imagination must connect to reality, which means ideas need to be visualized and realized and useable. Virtual environments makes me understand that via Rhino. It is like a tool enabling me to see what my ideas would look like in real world. We encounter a lot of problems on utilizing digital model. Initially, we ignored that and kept drawing by hand without considering. That leads to consequences of misunderstanding and faults which terribly affect the outcomes. For example, our 123D Catch model does not look correct, however, we ignored that and still keep working with it. The mistake gets bigger when Rhino model of the design does not fit 123D catch model, and we totally do the rhino model on its own without testing it to see how the size goes with human body. Thus, fabrication gets influenced terribly since the “cape� is too small compared to the body and we cannot put in on properly. From what we have learnt in this subject via designing second skin, we appreciate the mistakes we made and keep it in mind. Virtual Environments teaches me what design means in real industrial world.
Imagination must be realistic, otherwise, it is forever a thought.
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Evaluate your process of designing and making the second skin against the notion of Craft outlined in the reading.
We want performance. We want to know what we are getting, structurally, aesthetically, financially, even emotionally.
“Craft” in my understanding is the relationship between designing and fabrication, between ideas and building. Our process of designing is disconnected with making process. We designed something crazy that can move in 3D, however, we failed in making it since it is out of our possibility.
Anyway, we are all happy with what we have done. At least, we learnt new things and achieved new skills such as Rhino model making , making model in full size and analyzing designing processes. Personally, I enjoy this subject . The theme of “second skin” brought me closer to types of material systems, especially skin and bone.
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REFERENCE
http://imgur.com/ny9Xafl Heath, A., Heath, D., & Jensen, A. (2000). 300 years of industrial design : function, form, technique, 1700-2000 / Adrian Heath, Ditte Heath, Aage Lund Jensen. New York : Watson-Guptill, 2000. Sommer, R. (1969). Personal space : the behavioral basis of design / Robert Sommer. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, c1969. Architecture in the Digital Age - Design and Manufacturing /Branko Kolarevic. Spon Press, London, c2003 Digital fabrications: architectural and material techniques / Lisa Iwamoto. New York : Princeton Architectural Press, c2009. The third Industrial Revolution / Jeremy Rifkin. Palgrave Macmillan, C2011.pp107-126 Building the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture/ Philip Bernstein, Peggy Deamer. Princeton Architectural Press. c2008. pp 38-42
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