Angela Yeung

Student No.: 639042 Semester 1/ 2013 Group 5

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MODULE TWO

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MODULE ONE OVERVIEWThe analytical drawing depicts movement through spiraling arrow-head shapes. This recipe was chosen for the paper and clay models. The paper model placed emphasis on the arrow-head shapes and the clay model concentrated on the spiraling technique in the recipe.

Recipe:

1_Divide square into 7 sections with lines intersecting in the middle of the square.2_Map out the path of 7 spirals.3_Draw 4 arrow-head shapes on each arm of the spiral. Start-ing from the outside, each consecutive one is decreasing in size.

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DIGITISATION OF OVERALL FORM

After reading the digitisation guide for contouring methods, it was fairly evident that my base shape, the spiral, is much easier to digitise using surface creation and transformation commands. To create the spiral, I used the helix command in Rhino and adjusted the number of turns, height, width and other parameters. The two rail sweep command was later used to turn the helix into a 3D model with a circular cross-section.

I imported photos of the top and side view of my arms, allowing the lantern to be modelled at a one to one scale.

ORTHOGRAPHIC/ PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF BASIC GEOMETRY

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FRONT VIEW

TOP VIEW

RIGHT VIEW

PERSPECTIVE VIEW

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2D PANELLING TRIALSSome 2D panels were tested, although the design will most likely be incorporate and concentrate on 3D custom panels. The favoured panels were the triangular ones because they so what relate to the recipe and also because they produce flat surfaces for fabrication.

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3D PANELLING TRIALSNone of the 3D panels produced the effects that I had in mind. The triangular pyramids are the closest resemblance. The 3D panels were too large and made the lantern look bulky. I wanted to achieve a more clean and crisp look. I could use smaller panels, however, this would result in too many surfaces to unroll once it’s time for fabrication. Another alternative is that I can use mainly 2D panels and 3D panels sparingly.

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CUSTOM 3D PANELLING TRIALSCustom 3D panels was a very useful tool for me as it allowed more variation in the panelling designs. The panels are triangular pyramids with either a face missing or the top exposed. These shapes have been used when forming the emerging form using paper as a medium. Different offset points have been used to experiment with the panels. The panels that were extruded too much made the lantern loose its spiral shape. I wanted to avoid this in my final design.

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Panel 1

Panel 2

Panel 3

Panel 4

DESIGN ALTERNATIVES: EXPLORING LIGHT QUALITIESThe three design alternatives for the lantern experiments with the gaps for light to shine through and how this will affect the lighting and shadows effects they will produce. All three of these design alternatives is essentially the clay model using the paper model as the panel. This is an example of assemblage, a composi-tion method discussed by Dr Alex Selenitsch.

I would like my panels to be black as black connotes darkness, fear and anxiety. As mentioned in module one, I am aiming to achieve a lantern design that evokes fear and vulnerability. The spikes increase in height as they progress from the narrower end of the spiral to the wider end.

The first design allows for the triangulated windows to be placed on all four strips. The windows in strips one and two creates direct light, whilst the windows in strips three and four produce both deffused and direct light due to the pyramid-like 3D panels.

The second design allows for the triangulated windows to be placed on all strips BESIDES strip number two. The reason for this was because there was a concern that the first design allowed too much light to penetrate through and thus, decreasing the propor-tion of shadows. This will ruin the desired spatial effect. Another concern is that since this lantern will wrap around both my arms, the light and the shadows they cast from strips one and two will be greatly affected.

Lastly, the third design only has windows on strips three and four due to the same reason.

Although the customised panel (refer to panel 4 on previous page) only used triangles, when they were placed on the spiral, they were stretched. There was some bending and twisting on all the panels. This was because the customised panel was a NURBS surface. Meshes guarenteed a flat surface, however, they can not be unrolled. I tried to convert my lantern; however the MeshtoN-URBS command did not work. Thus, I triangulated all the faces. This caused all the windows to dissappear, so I had to manually cut all the windows for strips three and four since they were all slightly different sizes. I used offset face boarders for strips one and two.

Triangulated windows for lightStrip 2

Strip 1Strip 3

Strip 4

PROTOTYPE TESTING: STRUCTURE

Although I have already decided to use the black 200gsm cardboard, I still made prototypes using white ivory to test the lighting effects. The four prototypes are of designs one and three (refer to previous page). Assembling the panels was very difficult and tedious because the strips kept opening up and the spikes would not stay glued. I realised that this was because there was too much stress being placed on each of the strips. Instead of glueing long strips together, I could perhaps work with shorter strips to reduce stress or I could unfold the panels vertically instead of horizontally. However, this would create a large amount of pieces. I also found that the tabs were too short. Lastly, there was a problem with the spikes. When Rhino unrolls each spike, there is no way of telling if it is facing up or down. So sometimes the panels have to be folded inside out in order for them to fit in the windows. For the final fabrica-tion, will use dashed cut lines for all my score lines as this allows me to fold both ways.

Prototype 1: design 1 | ivory Prototype 2: design 3 | black

Prototype 3: design 1: black Prototype 4: design 3 | ivory

PROTOTYPE TESTING: LIGHTING

Initially, I thought that design 3 had too many windows and thus, there was an imbalance between light and shadow. Through a series of pro-totype lighting tests, I favoured the outcome of design 3 in black. The ivory card was too transparent and allowed light to shine through it. This greatly reduced the effects of the shadow and the pattern produced was very blurry. Also, the tabs can be seen from the outside. This was very distracting for my design concept as I want my lantern to appear rigid and opaque.

PRECEDENT EXAMPLE: NEWMAN ROMAN CATHOLIC COLLEGEPart of the Newman Roman Catholic College comprises of geo-grid roof. It is a vast expanse of triangular panels of glass and coloured panels which allows for interesting and dynamic spatial effects throughout the day as the sun changes position. The tri-angular panels is reminiscent of my 2D panels for the lantern. The detail of the coloured panels inspired me to use both white and black cardboard when making my lantern. I want to scatter white panels randomly with the overall lantern being black. This just adds more variety to the design so the lantern will be different when viewed from different angles.

Source: http://www.balfourbeattynewmanrc.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

Source: http://www.balfourbeattynewmanrc.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

FINAL DESIGN

Alterations:

1_Larger tabs The larger tabs will make assemblying the panels together much easier. The tabs should also be less tapered to the centre as this makes it harder to fold.

2_Black and white panelsContrast in panels to add diversity.

3_Use dashed cut lines instead of score linesThis allows each panel to be folded both ways.

4_Unroll panels in shorter strips The shorter the strips, the less stress is placed on the tabs because the panel strips are moving in x,y and z directions.

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LECTURE AND READINGS RESPONSE

During week four’s lecture, Dr Alex Selenitsch identified five types of composition methods: single gesture, assemblage, interference patterns, the pun and resolution. The most relevant composition stragegies in regards to designing my lantern are the single gesture and assemblage approach. The single gesture strategy aims to just have one outcome. Similarly, the process of designing the lantern may have many different formations; however, there will only be one final design. Another composition strategy that is implemented in my design is the assemblage strategy. It is the collaboration of a whole lot of disparate parts with mixed scale and medium. From the analytical drawings, paper model and clay model, an extraction of all the ideas and forms must be made in order to produce the final lantern design.

Thomas Heatherwick is an architect and he gave a speech on his designs on TED talk. The Seed Cathedral is a particularly good example of how Heatherwick uses design to create a spa-tial effect. The building was made up of “optical hairs”, which enabled the whole building to move with the wind.

In Lost in Parameter Space by Scheurer and Stehling, abstraction and reduction were explored. Abstraction is the development of a model with as little information as possible while still being about the describe the properties of an object without ambiguity. On the other hand, reduction is finding another way of representing data to achieve optimal use of resources such as memory and disk space. The key difference between the two is that abstraction permanently removes redundancies, while reduction temporarily removes redundancies. The Rhino model produced in module 1 is an example of abstraction and reduction. When first drawing the 3D model, abstraction takes place, and to refine the model, reduction must occur. One can say that Kandisky’s 3 stages of analytical drawings is the analogue version and abstraction and reduction in 3D modelling.