April 2012
March 2012
stupid
stupid stupid me
gah
its already almost been a week since i’ve been on break!
time flies when you are doing nothing and i feel like i should have done more
i guess i should explain in more detail what the heck design village is and what i built for finals
in the beginning of the quarter, our studio teacher, patrick, had us create intensity fields by drawing cubic splines. taking the best of three, we made a copy that we began to fold along the splines to create a no-sided object with an interior, exterior and an in/exterior space (not unlike a doorway). when we had folded, scored and cut this 18x22” sheet of paper to fit inside a 9x9x9” volume, we placed red pins along the new splines that had emerged. taking three elevation pictures, we drew these new elevations by hand, and then drew an axonometric view of this shape. taking 24 lines from our intensity field, we added an inch to the lowest point and cut out strips to make a waffle model, 18 strips wide and 24 strips deep. using skewers, we created a nesting model with triangle joints to sweep across our waffle model. that was our midterm.
after midterms, patrick announces that all of 2nd year studio is participating in a competition to get into calpoly’s design village. the top three out of second year would gain entry paid for by the school. each studio section (there are 5) had different design criteria because each teacher has a different design process, that still fit within the larger umbrella of calpoly’s guidelines.
our class used the same process of splines to create our structure. we were divided into groups, and my group consisted of autumn, sam and fabio—jokingly referred to as girl power, powerpuff girls and charlie’s angels as there was only one guy in the group. we took our individual tendencies that had emerged out of our intensity fields and spline model and combined them into one new model. we each made our own spline model by just folding paper taking into account things we liked best from our midterm models. throwing them all on the floor, we noticed we liked the cluster of 4 of our little models, and taped them together as a final model. we created a 3d model on rhino. taking this huge curvy model, we simplified and simplified until the degrees of the curves were 1 and an inhabitable structure emerged. the model was subdivided into strips that were exported into another program that specified how to fold and score this strip to make a curved element (kinda like oragami). we made a scale model out of museum board and then ordered 4x8’ sheets of cardboard for our full scale prototype model. we laser cut these sheets into strips.
our 2nd year studio had rented out a large space for our show at an old bread factory in barrio logan or logan heights in san diego that was currently owned by public architecture, and the space was going to eventually be turned into studio spaces for artists and a musuem space. so we were the first to use the space and it was going to be a gallery presentation.
we began assembling the broken down stips into huge strips that were anywhere from 8 to 12 feet long. we had to refer constantly to our paper model, and computer model to score the sheets for curves. we built from the ground up, but another day was needed to complete in time for the show—we were still one or two rows away from being completely finished when the show started at 5 on friday, the 23rd.
anyways, everyone else in 2nd year was done, just our section was still working. but as alcohol was served, a drunk teacher loved our design and sponsored us a 1000 dollars to get in as an alternate into design village. three other teams won and another alternate group was chosen as well. so five teams are going to calpoly and all these teams are made up of the largest group of friends in 2nd year. its going to be so much fun. april 12-15 i will be in slo building the most craziest structure ever.
