Off to Texas

My week has been cut short because of an impending trip to Texas. We will be visiting Kahn's Kimball Art Museum, among other things in the Dallas/ Fort Worth Region. I will be getting on a plane in about six hours and will be returning Saturday night. I will have plenty to post when I return, but until then, off to Texas.

Needing to find my thesis......

A couple weeks have gone by now, and my Thesis definition has become a bit muddled. I need to focus my Thesis research, site, and program into a clear, concise statement. So, rather than spend today on one of my weekly schedules schedule, I will be spending my time focusing my Thesis. I am traveling to Texas for a field trip on Friday, so next week a new schedule will appear with hopefully a stronger direction of study.

Hoberman's Expandable Structures

I mentioned in my past post that I was going to study some of Charles Hoberman's works, which deal with transformative architecture. Below are a few images of the types of structures I am interested in.






Pretty complex stuff, but I made my first crack at it today by fabricating an oval shaped geodesic dome with the lasercutter. It does not expand, but it does represent the structure at one end of its transformation.




The next iteration will involve some joints and movement hopefully. Tomorrow is site reconnaissance day, so I will be trekking DC for most of the day. Hopefully I will decide on a final site.

New Week

Here is the outlook for week 2:



I will be focusing mostly on documenting responsive building systems. I found a great precedent in Charles Hoberman, an architect with similiar tastes to mine.




I will be documenting some of these systems, as well as trying to re-create them in model form.

Joint Sketches

I have been sketching different robotic joints. I hope this will help me understand them better so I can utilize them in my design of adaptive systems.







Next week I will be sketching and studying of actual adaptive building systems.

Site Diagram

I chose a couple of exact site locations in the area along the Potomac that I enjoy. I made a diagram of my sites using a Grasshopper attractor script. It pixelates the map and dissolves out where I am thinking about a thesis site.





I will be visiting these locations on Thursday.

DesignBuild Site

I have briefly mentioned my Design Build project in this blog. We have had a variety of smaller projects in the class earlier in the semester, but now I can finally focus on the main project. Our goal is to make a partition between the spiral staircase/ library and the adjacent studio space. My group will be focusing on different digital fabrication processes as a design tool. We took some measurements and photos on Wednesday.







Design updates to follow.