Full Scale Seat Rough Mock Up

Midterm Line Drawings

More Mock-up Progress

Cardboard Full Scale Mock-up Progress

20 Sheets of cardboard and an hour and a half of laser cutting later....

This is a cardboard mock-up of the layers of felt I will be cutting. The cardboard is 1/8" instead of 1/4", so it is not completely accurate to the final aesthetic, but it will give me a good idea of seat dimensions/comfort and form insight.

 

 

Midterm Chair 3d Model

Here is the form I will be pursuing for the Midterm

Test Scale Model

I did a test cut, not reflective of the final design at all, just a test to see how the laser cutter works with felt. This particular felt is Ecospun - Polyester made from recycled post consumer plastic bottles.

Design Objective

My design objective is to design an eco friendly chair either out of recycled or easily recyclable materials following a nature inspired form.

Form Inspiration

Here are some pages I compiled to help guide my form.

Recycle Rechair

The lifestyle I chose for my furniture studio this term is very much based on a respect for the ecosystem, integration, and recycling. Due to these characteristics, it seems very fitting to integrate the style into the Recycle Rechair Competition.

http://www.awrcompetitions.com/

I will be designing in accordance with this competition, pushing the aspect of sustainability and reuse in my furniture design.

Furniture Studio

I'm currently really interested in the idea of layering to possibly reuse/recycle materials. This board has some precedents that intrigue me and follow the direction I'm currently thinking of pursuing.

Furniture Studio Fall 2011 - Private Space

For my design, I chose the "Country" lifestyle, which has emphasis on the natural, promoting wood products and facilitating future recycling. Here my initial mood boards.

Patterns Found in Nature

Diagrammatic Explorations

Possible Applications

It is questionable if the potential water collection techniques at the micro scale could be scaled up and work on a larger scale, but it could be applied in theory. Currently, fog nets are being employed in the Andes for the use of water collection from the fog.

The current project set up nets about 30 meters square along hillsides around Lima. The fog condenses on the nets and the water that drips off is collected in troughs and routed to brick tanks. The fog collectors can yield 600 liters per day, which is a substantial amount. www.bayer.com/en/64-69-Nebelfaenger-en.pdfx

This is an area with a large amount of dense fog, but I believe that this shows potential for a surface texture or material to be applied to building surfaces. The surface or material could potentially control the flow of water and concentrate it to specific areas to enhance the water collection capabilities.

Desert Beetle Water Collection

Desert Beetles utilizes patterns of hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions on their backs to capture water from humid air. The Stenocara beetle, which lives in Africa's Namib desert, uses this mechanism on it's wings to collect water from fog in areas where normal condensation can't take place due to the lightness of the fog. The insect angles its wings forwards and upwards into the wind so that the water droplets in the fog collect on hydrophilic bumps and eventually become heavy enough to roll down the surrounding hydrophobic surface areas of the wing to the beetle's mouth.

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/25204

This system is being put into practice by researchers in the U.S. who developed a way to texture surfaces in the way that that beetle's wings are textured. "Nanoparticles in the coating strongly attract water droplets and force them to form much smaller contact angles with the surface. As a result, the droplets flatten and merge to form a uniform, transparent sheet."

The coating also has potential implications for reflectivity on surfaces, especially glass. It has been shown to reduce reflectivity and allow more light to pass through the glass, which could be crucial for solar cell technology which is very applicable to sustainable building technologies and practices. 

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/August/31080502.asp

A little background... 

Hydrophobic:

hydrophobicity is the physical property of a molecule that is repelled from a mass of water. Therefore hydrophobic surfaces repel the water from the surface.

Hydrophilic:

A hydrophilic molecule or portion of a molecule is one that has a tendency to interact with or be dissolved by, water and other polar substances. These molecules would increase the tendency of water to be attracted to, or collect in, a specific area. 

Spider Webs

The design of naturally occurring spider webs has great potential and opportunity for water collection. Although, some are skeptical of the function of the design and technology at a large scale, it is something to keep as inspiration during water collection development.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/41622
http://www.ideaconnection.com/innovation-in-business/New-Materials-Inspired-by-Water-Catching-Properties-o-00132.html

The water collects on knots of silk connected by smooth and slender stretches of spider silk known as joints. When water reaches the knots, the condense into tightly packed structures. When other moisture in collected on the web, it is drawn toward the nearest condensed knot along the smooth segments of silk, where in accumulates into droplets.

Architectural Terminal Studio 2011/12

My future studio thesis will be focusing on the design potentials of Biomimicry and EcoDistricts. To start an initial inquiry, I will be doing some diagrammatical studies of nature.

3 Major Categories I will focus on are
-Structure
-Filtration
-Water Collection

Possible subjects:
Bees - honeycomb structure and growth
Leaves - Cellular structure and retention of water
Spider webs - Structure and water collection
Coral - structure and growth

Summer 2011 Studio with visiting Architect Jim Cutler - Project Plans

Summer 2011 Studio with visiting Architect Jim Cutler

Final for Baby Stella

Food Cart Site Sketch 2

Food Cart Site Sketch 1

Summer Posts

This summer I have started my last Architecture 484 Studio, so my posts will be shifting slightly from the digital arts realm to my architectural design work. Early on you can expect site sketches and conceptual diagramming, then possibly moving on to Revit renderings.

For the new Baby Moran

BeirStein Doodle

The Little Mermaid

Project 5 Progress

Panel 3 Progress

Panel 2 Progress

I believe this will be the final for my first panel...

Project 5_1

Starting Direction for Project 5

Christopher Alexander

"We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe."