This Is What Makes It All Worth It

Inhabit

Lights

Gloves

Push and Pull

From above

We are The ORDER of CHAOS - V-max, Nat, Coxy.

THE EVENT

 After only four hours sleep and we are ready to rock and roll. This. Is. It. The Big Moment. The culmination of 3 months of blood, sweat and tears.

Three cars. Three trailers. Three team members. 5000 hinges.

V-Max and Powerade - Waiting to get in to the site.

And up she goes!

Up, up and up!

Men's work.

We had one hour to put this baby up after being let in an hour and a half later then our set time (unfortunately!). Our awesome volunteers/slaves worked so tirelessly for us. Big ups to you guys!
By the time it was pieced together there was at least 200 people queued outside to come into the event. Stress!!

Final Countdown

Out of our team of three, we had two birthdays in the week before the event. These were celebrated with a couple of awesome 'Hinging Parties,' loads of chocolate, a little bit of vodka and a few very sleep deprived nights.We were racing against the clock - testing, trialling, tweaking and still laser-cutting - to get it all done!

Scaffolding guys and our first test

4.5 metres. Whoa!

The response from our health and safety plan resulted in us deciding to drop the height of the scaffolding down to 3.5 metres. This would bring the total height of the tower down to around 5 metres, after the addition of the top section on top.

Boxes, boxes, boxes. These will stack to form the top section of our tower. They are formed from the inverted cut-out of the plated sections.

One sleep to go, waaaay too many hinges to still do and with magnets yet to attach we ran a second testing.

A couple of helpers - Coxy's Dad and Vinnie's bro.

Note: the cool light patterns.

Order? No. Chaos? YES!

We are now eight sleeps away from the final exhinition and production is in full swing. Talk about epic! The laser cutter was out of action for a week so we are frantically trying to reclaim back that time. We have called on anyone who is keen to help to lend us a hand with hinging the whole skin together. So if anyone would like to join us for a 'Hinging Partu' over the next week you are more then welcome! Here are some images of production so far.

Laser Cutting

Cut sheets



Putting it all together

The Finished Product!

Construction of Tower

We are getting closer and closer to the event - it is the FINAL COUNTDOWN. We have been nutting out the final construction details of how the skin is going to be constructed. We are joing our segments of card with hinges. These hinges will be attached using cable ties  so as to be able to completely break the skin back down into its original components after use. So with approximately 120 square metres of skin needed, thats around 4000 hinges and 8000 cable ties!

We have also been developing the arrangement of magnets in the glove. There will be eight 10mm diameter magnets arranged in each glove. One in each finger tip and three across the palm. These are the key sensory areas in a persons hand and this arrangment will also allow children with small hands, right up to adults with large hands to use the glove.

The top section of our tower is going to be constrcuted from the off-cuts of the plates we are cutting from our skin. It is effectively the net-cut of our pattern. These are going to be shaped into boxes which will be stacked to reach the required height of 8m.

Invite to Attend the Event

Light Study

As part of the exhibition event on October 16th we will be lighting our tower. We have kindly been supplied with state-of-the-art LED spotlight by a generous sponsor for the evening. These coloured lights will morph and shift over time. The idea is that they are attached to the internal framework so shine outwards, lighting the pattern of the skin.

Magnet-y Goodness

Friday Evening, 6.24pm, FOUR WEEKS TO GO

It has been a while since our last blog. Over the last few weeks we have been busy sourcing materials, framing, magnets and hinges. Thank you very much to our amazing sponsors so far: CamelSpace scaffolding for our scaffolding, Magnets NZ for all our magnets and Mr Humber at ACG Strathallan College for being generous and patient enough to provide us with free laser cutting.

The project is coming along nicely. We have been working to develop the entire form of the tower through hand sketches and Rhino in conjunction with Grasshopper. The tower consists of a more solid plated flexible skin on the lower section, gradually dispersing into the inverse, a series of bar-like patterns forming a chaotic nest like structure on the top section. Following Fibonacci proportioning, the plated skin will extend to approximately 5 metres up the structure and the top 3m will be made from the more batten-like "nest." To the right is a sketch done by Michael demondtrating the concept.

We have been producing 1:1 prototypes of this interactive skin. We are using a 1mm baseboard, cut into the generated pattern and attached using a hinging system. On a larger scale the beautiful intricacies and crossovers of the pattern are revealed.

We have chosen to use a system of magnetised gloves through which inhabitatnts on the evening will experience the "field" of the tower. The flexible skin is repelled and attracted by these magnets through magnets attached to its rear side - these motions reacting and rippling through the structure.

As we are exploring the field of sustainability it is key that we consider the cradle-to-cradle aspect of our project. As our framing is scaffolding this is definitely re-usable and takes car of itself. It has been proposed that the stronger magnets for the gloves are returned to Magnets NZ after use and the smaller, cheaper magnets pulled off and reused. The hinges will be attached by ties to the plates so can be seperated when the project is completed and re-used. Our chosen material , card, is also recyclable. 

Development

Since our jury presentation two weeks ago we have been working to develop our model. We have been exploring patterns generated by the Fibonacci Sequence to use for the skin pattern of the tower. These images are of a pattern which we have generated ourselves:

From there we began exploring flexible hinging systems and potential materials for the production of the "skin" surface.

Shellac resin

Laser Cut Pattern

Inverted plates on Fabric

We also had a visit down to the exhibition space on the Auckland Waterfront in one of the Team New Zealand Sheds. A very tall space for some very tall sky-rises. Imagine this space on the exhibition night filled with 8-10m structures!

Photoshop Renders of Concept SkyRise

Exterior View

Interior View of Tower

Another Reeeeeally Interesting Website Looking into Parametric Architecture

http://matsysdesign.com/tag/parametric/

Tuesday Jury

We made it through our Jury Presentation on Tuesday - a 3minute sales pitch to jury of 3 members. We presented a short movie, scale prototype of a mouldable magnetic skin and small laser cut model of our design. Received some great feedback and are looking forward to getting on with it!

The video provided an introductory background to the origination of our concept and was supported by an explanation.

Interesting Site on Algorythmic Style Architecture

http://blog.ponoko.com/

Magnets NZ

We went for a little trip out to Magnets NZ to explore the different possibilities of incorporating magnets into a skin-like system for our design. They were very helpful and friendly, so if you are interested here is a link to their website.
http://www.magnets.co.nz/?gclid=COPEgKuXqaMCFRplgwodLUro4Q

Early Physical Models

Generative architecture is hard to define but is a design only made possible by the computer power and technology of today. This technology allows for discrete units to be arranged by parameters which are created and crafted by the designer to create complex structures. This technology allows the designer to create structures that the human intellect by itself could not create. Here are some early physical models we made to explore the generative potential of some naturally inspired forms:

The bird's nest was the inspiration for this model and you can see the seemingly chaotic model is actually made up of specific units arranged in a constant way, connected to a certain point and set at a certain angle to its connector.

These models explore the nature of the Honeycomb structure which has been a popular inspiration in parametric design. The paper materiality allows us to play around the models form by stretching, compressing and generally distorting it.

Another exploration branched from the honeycomb structure. It's geometric structure seems to support itself.

Week Three

So...
We are into Week Three of our semester with a jury presentation next week. We have been exploring the awesome-ness of mathematical order in the apparent chaos of nature - specifically looking into the Fibonacci Sequence. This has kind of all rolled into trialling parametric and generative architecture through the beast of a computer programme known as Grasshopper on Rhino 3D. Throw in a few magnets,a dash of a layering system and some kind of architectural responsive element to the design and in 11weeks time from now we should have some epic sky-rise. Wish us luck!!

Brief: SLOW RISE for a Fast Forward World

SLOW RISE is a design topic in which students in groups of three will explore ideas of biomimicry and sustainable design through the SKYRISE brief and produce an architectural proposition that is an abstraction of nature for a man-made urban context.
Inspiration is to be found in the incredible engineering of animals, plants, and microbes and an alternative solution to the traditional way of approaching architecture of significant scale is to be explored.
When it comes to building the final architectural construction, the students will have a focus on the event itself, its scale and programme and the surrounding ‘city’ context will be considered.
The architectural propositions should create a sense of wonder for the viewer and have an interactive element to draw the viewer in.
This project will require iterative making and collaboration from its inception.

Maths in Nature

YouTube video documenting numbers in nature.