Black Narcissus highlights the importance of encompassing all methods of fabrication; digital and analog in terms of technology, management efficiency and time towards the production the project. The piece is constituted of 1,000 pieces including the 644 pieces of CNC routed syntra, 50 large flowers with jewel like crowns and 100 small flowers. The idea was to produce a structure that combines a parametrically designed large form ornamented and gardened with nonparametric flowers. Through this gardening process of aggregation, the flowers produce a sensation of excess in a garden of delight. Read the rest of this entry »
Black Narcissus is Parametric Designed Installation Based on Contemporary Fashion
Shadow Pavilion Informed by Biomimicry / Ply Architecture
The cellular Shadow Pavilion is the result of simple materials lightly manipulated and connected to dramatic effect. More than one hundred aluminum sheets, laser cut and rolled into cones of various sizes are attached in pre-assembled clusters from offsite. The lowest row buried in the soil of Matthaei Botanical Gardens, Ann Arbor, Michigan anchors the project. PLY Architecture developed the self supporting structure using software modeling to determine shadow patterns, material efficiencies, geometric tethering and assembly. Read the rest of this entry »
Drawing and Design – Italian patents and creativity
From now until January 29, 2012 the Rotonda di via Besana in Milan will host the exhibition “Drawing and Design – Italian patents and creativity” produced by Fondazione Valore Italia and the Ministry of Economic Development and promoted by the Department for Culture, Expo, Fashion and Design of the Municipality of Milan. Read the rest of this entry »
Luminescent Limacon integrates equation-based geometry with 17th century fashion
The award winning lighting design is based on the effects of the Dutch ruff, a decorative linen collar considered fashionable in the 1600’s. The collars required several yards worth of linen, and had to be starched and ironed into pleats, or even supported on wires, in order to achieve their voluminous appearance. Inspired by the way Flemish baroque painter Cornelis de Vos illuminated these items, Andrew Saunders created the similarly shaped Luminescent Limacon. The design integrates historical referencing to the contemporary fabrication techniques, transforming the traditional piece of garment into a vehicle for manipulating light. Read the rest of this entry »
Pin-plant Installation Created with 5000 Colored Buttons / Design With Company
Pin-plant is an installation designed by Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer from Design With Company like a series of experiments – an examination and interpretation of humanity through anthropomorphism and color. Finding the fantastic in the systematic. What do our desires to personify computer parts express about us? It all began with an old computer motherboard. At first it was a city scape, then a vast mechanical microcosm, with circuits leading this way and that- a garden of forking paths if you may- immediately immense and endless. Aggregating in intense exchanges of information- where color became landmark and organization revealed a scale of part to whole most basic in its arrangement, yet complex in possibility. It’s efficiency a testament to its time. Technology of foreign pieces. But what did we want to do with it? We wanted to give it life to understand it. Aestheticize it until it could be more than a commentary on the mechanics of things. Through sculpture, the conventional exformative connections are disconnected. Read the rest of this entry »
Expandable Surface Pavilion
The project was created for the recent SPOGA furniture design exhibition in Cologne, Germany and is part of an ongoing research into Expandable Surface Systems, which began in collaboration with the Emergent Technologies and Design Programme at the Architectural Association. The project was designed, fabricated and mounted by the designers.
The design manifested into an exhibition and meeting room pavilion that explores complex geometries generated by simple cut patterning in sheets.
To realize the built structure, the team underwent extensive structural and geometric digital analysis to understand and anticipate the reaction between the material and pattern. A system of mathematical relationships were derived to control found material properties digitally. This iterative process was then scrutinized and revised by findings resulted from structural analysis. The ability to understand material properties from the standpoint of geometry lead to the success of the project. It was a great lesson for the designers to learn from the material – this feedback was the guiding factor in the design process. Read the rest of this entry »
Yucca Crater: Synthetic Earthwork / Ball-Nogues Studios
Using the desert near Joshua Tree as a backdrop Ball-Nogues Studios have installed what they call a synthetic earthwork which hides a swimming pool inside. The project is part of High Desert Test Sites, an art project which “generates physical and conceptual spaces for art exploring the intersections between contemporary art and life at large.” The parametric bowl Yucca Crater is 30 feet tall and egressed by ladder. Visitors transverse the swimming hole, which bottoms out 10 feet below grade, by a series of rock climbing hand holds.
The wooden frame was re-claimed from a previous art project’s form work which was originally intended to be supplies for this piece, something the artists termed as “cross-designed”. The plywood is stacked and cut in sections, slotted into the ribs to create a bowl. Plywood strips skin the interior, like a ship hull in reverse. Read the rest of this entry »
VoltaDom Installation / Skylar Tibbits + SJET
VoltaDom is an installation created for MIT’s 150th Anniversary Celebration and FAST Arts Festival. It populates the passageway between Buildings 56 and 66 on MIT’s campus. Designed by a multidisciplinary research based practice SJET, founded by Skylar Tibbits in 2007, the project is one of the firm’s recent experiments in computational design. The project revisits a historically paramount structural element-the vault, attempting to find its contemporary equivalent through various assembly and fabrication techniques. This reference allows one to appreciate the installation both as a sculpture and a research in materiality and digital fabrication. Read the rest of this entry »
Sci-Fi Housing for Beijing / Yaohua Wang Architecture
During the modernization of Beijing, except for some historical houses, independent housing typology was almost eliminated. Afterwards, the new model became huge, stacking commercial residential buildings.
Thus, with the support of the client, project Beijing House II is trying to seek new methods of bringing the independent housing typology back to Beijing’s contemporary city life. This design scheme adds a new house onto the exterior of an obsolete factory building. Inside the house there are bedrooms, a studio and a green room. By doing this, the design uses the empty city space in the air and rediscovers the typology of independent housing in Beijing city.
Meanwhile, this scheme also brings about new challenges because Beijing has frequent earthquakes and this design scheme suggests a big cantilever house, which is attached onto the exiting building. Therefore, to keep this in mind, a mechanical system is introduced to counteract a potential earthquake. Read the rest of this entry »
Arnaud Lapierre’s Ring Installation deconstructs Place Vendôme in Paris
By playing with reflections and their impact on the experience of a space, Arnaud Lapierre’s installation changes the rhythm and urban flow of Place Vendôme in Paris. Created for the FIAC 2011 Conference, sponsored by Audi, a reflective cylinder composed of mirrored blocks stacked in a variegated fashion is placed on a public surface, surrounded by classical buildings. Read the rest of this entry »