Materializing Hunches…

First I must thank Card­net­ics for pro­vid­ing the tem­plate file I used on Thin­gi­verse. Here is the link to the file. Sec­ond I would like to ram­ble if I may, on what I am think­ing. The fol­low­ing images and videos should not inform the reader/viewer about the form this will take but it is merely a stab at work­ing with a mech­a­nism and at mak­ing some­thing. The design process for me starts with a hunch. I then think/sketch/draw pos­si­ble ways of giv­ing these hunches a phys­i­cal form. The shape it takes over time will evolve to meet the para­me­ters required by func­tion, cost, and need to full fill the desired intent.

Imag­ine a build­ing that reacts to the move­ment of peo­ple. Imag­ine a build­ing that responds to the ele­ments of weather. Imag­ine you are sit­ting at a restau­rant and you are there with your sig­nif­i­cant other. The lights are dim. The can­dle warmly caresses skins and bright­ens shim­mer­ing eyes upon you. All seems per­fect except for the rowdy group a few tables down. You can hear their laugh­ter, you can hear their ban­ter, and you can’t hear your sig­nif­i­cant other. After a few bites in silence you decide you will leave very soon. How­ever from the cor­ner of your eye you see some­thing hap­pen. You see the space around you shift­ing ever so slightly. The wall pan­els and ceil­ings are adjust­ing and mov­ing! And that awful ban­ter is no longer over pow­er­ing your thoughts. Now, once more, the night is about you and your sig­nif­i­cant other enjoy­ing each other, the food, the place.

I am inter­ested in an archi­tec­ture that is not sta­tic, but is a dynamic “liv­ing sys­tem” that improves upon the lives of peo­ple whether it be through the expe­ri­ence of the space or through its phys­i­cal improve­ment of the place.

I am also fas­ci­nated in explor­ing how tools like grasshop­per, fire­fly and rhino can be used to improve not just the design of archi­tec­tural sys­tems but also the per­for­mance of these as they respond to environmental/user needs. My end goal is to cre­ate an archi­tec­ture that is respon­sive, that can alter its form in response to chang­ing conditions.

The exer­cise below, though not imple­ment­ing the use of the tools men­tioned above, inves­ti­gates sim­ple move­ments and the effects of array­ing these move­ments. My assump­tions to scale up in num­bers fell short as I failed to con­sider the prox­im­ity of the inde­pen­dent units. I tried to work around these by reduc­ing the num­ber of the array but again came upon some addi­tional issues with the choice of mate­ri­als as you can see in the videos and notes down below.

The first attempt was exactly per Card­net­ics tem­plate. I wanted to see for myself how the parts inter­linked together to cre­ate a paper shut­ter or as they call it an iris. I am fas­ci­nated by the way cam­era leaf shut­ters work and would love to see an array of these that con­trol how much light fil­ters into a space much like Jean Nouvel’s L’Institut du Monde Arabe.

Video of Card­net­ics Iris Card

Then I tried to make an array of four. I started by repli­cat­ing the parts of the tem­plate and adjust­ing as needed to cre­ate one uni­form piece with four fully oper­at­ing paper shut­ters. Here are all the parts fresh out of the laser cut­ter and ready to be folded and assembled.

I think it is at this point in the assem­bly process that I real­ized that the array would not work. I needed to pro­vide each paper shut­ter more space in between each.

I decided how­ever to go ahead and fin­ish assem­bling and see if some of it would move any­how… Yes, some­times I can be a lit­tle optimistic.

I cut the array of 4 in half and made 2 arrays of 2.

Video of Card­net­ics Iris Card Mod­i­fi­ca­tion Array of 2 with String

This ver­sion man­ages to move the shut­ters in one direc­tion only. The thread is too weak and malleable.

Video of Card­net­ics Iris Card Mod­i­fi­ca­tion Array of 2 with Music Wire (Metal Rod)

Sadly my ini­tial assump­tion that the rod would allow me to both pull and push the shut­ter open failed to a cer­tain extent. The rod is inflex­i­ble and bends the paper. I think the next ver­sion of this will have to include both a fixed end and an unfixed end that moves/slips along in order to get this to move the way I want it to.

I’m look­ing for­ward to cre­at­ing another ver­sion that addresses the pro­por­tional issue and looks into the attach­ments that con­trol mul­ti­ple shut­ters. Also there are other type of shut­ter mech­a­nism. I’d like to take a stab at one of these.