Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: Ensuring the Future of Food



a story. to change lifestyle. and save the world...........hm

i saw this video during studio presentations at the beginning of the year by one of the UG3 faculty. pretty neat. the original intention was to show a way of graphic representation, but it works efficiently overall as a presentation. short and sweet mini points

presentation

presentation style: so we've been told in architecture to present the final model first, and then go back to refer to the process of getting there.

here's a rough run through of points i think we should hit:

  • intro: a solution to urban gardening is having a mini garden outside your window
    • cost efficient - growing vegetables cost less than going to the grocery store
      • cost of growing and transporting produce from other countries is expensive. by growing food outside your window, this will reduce air pollution and gasoline cost.
      • less traffic on weekends when everybody is going to the grocery shopping to stock up
      • effective use of space - form is designed to the human scale (mention dimensions...)
    • fresh vegetables taste better than commercially mass produced items
    • self sufficient -
      • hydroponic & water collection system
      • managing temperature & humidity
      • ventilation 
    • NOT obtrusive. If it is close to a neighboring window, then the object provides passive lighting--due to the angle of the sun, it provides shade during the high summer suns while allowing low winter sun rays inside to the neighbor below! as a result, the sun's rays will heat the room less in the summer and more in the winter by comparison.
    • takes time to garden BUT the times used will be much more effective and rewarding than other household hobbies (watching tv, internet, driving around to grocery store waiting in traffic, etc.)
  • how our solution fulfills requirements:
    • shapes cover curved surfaces
    • exposes
  •  DESIGN 1: pentagonal hexecontahedron
    • designed to enclose something
    • pentagons to make curved surface
  •  DESIGN 2: pentagonal tesselations & folding panel system
    • these techniques become the basis for ventilation and sunlight system
    • more polygons for curved surface
  • DESIGN 3: modification of form with working water system
    • shapes form curve at selected points to reduce potential material waste, and reduce unusable space
  • DESIGN 4: final design
    • improved aesthetics of design 3

post comments on missing points/arguments

Sunday, September 26, 2010

restructuring

email threads are fun. amuck. not sure if team roles were ever really discussed in our group, and maybe that's what we need. we're not working in specialized fields but everyone on everything so far it seems like.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

weeks of images [photojournal]






 


the beginning half was from assignment 1. the latter half was brainstorming (row 1), and three prototypes. the first was from jason, mimicking a plant whose name i don't remember. second, i made a surface which wasn't functioning but if it did, the folding motion would be similar to chris' surface. the string would pull on those polygonal shapes and the rest of the wall surface would crinkle along the folds due to the tension between material. lastly, chris, same mechanism but different form.

an issue. our models are still 2D, we're just been using the given thickness of the chipboard. i was thinking of laser cutting all of my pieces instead of just scoring the folds but the idea wouldn't have been made in time.

why is this an elective studio when karl clearly knows us arch students have a main (more important, time consuming, one man team) one? just killing me. softly

notes

instead of leaving notes in my sketchbook, a list of ideas from the 10:30a meeting. RECAP:

urban farming is the function.

greater than creating a piece of technology to improve the condition of our lives

http://freshome.com/2009/05/08/planter-wall-tiles-by-maruja-fuentes/
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://design-milk.com/images/2010/07/insitu-wall-planter-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://design-milk.com/insitu-wall-planters/&usg=__pc1AVgzuTRWRKdZ0ehZpUnazko8=&h=343&w=500&sz=37&hl=en&start=80&zoom=1&tbnid=CkufOgdfYv_x0M:&tbnh=147&tbnw=196&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dplanter%2Bwall%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1392%26bih%3D793%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C1925&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=132&vpy=389&dur=839&hovh=186&hovw=271&tx=128&ty=99&ei=NoaXTPvvI8KC8gb47_3QBw&oei=HYaXTMOcC4L-4Aady-zqAw&esq=4&page=4&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:80&biw=1392&bih=793
Insitu Wall Planters is an Australian company who has designed a vertical container wall planter that comes in five different sizes and black or white powder-coated steel. Pots not included.


http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/gardening/modern-diy-outdoor-planter-093540



patrick blanc

Friday, September 10, 2010

Shapes Exposed

I've never blogged before. This is a test.
But these thoughts are real.

Working with other disciplines can be funny, all of us have different routes around brainstorming. As a student from the architecture field, it was interesting to see how words were defined in a concrete or abstract manner. I've heard that architects or just people in the architectural field have trouble communicating their ideas to the public because our knowledge doesn't have a strong base in general education (or simply because the jargon is obscure, and assimilating into the study as first years UG1 was hard enough). It makes me wonder if one year is enough to make a poor soul speak gibberish.

The project was given 3 constraints. I don't remember them, but it's vaguely: 1. Surface, 2. Exposed, 3. Shapes which together form a curved surface.

Since Surface wasn't written on a piece of paper, that clue was ignored. Basically, surface. It's useful.

Exposed. Exposed was the revealing of something, presumably an object. It could also be the revealing of another side of the same object. But it could also be that the object has multiple sides/facades each revealed in a different manner, something like the analogy of peeling away the layers of an onion--each layer reveals the next layer, and there is more to come. In that sense, exposing is no longer an immediate surprise in those certain dreams where suddenly you have no clothes on, but a gradual change (I don't think an example is necessary here). Is being exposed necessarily a threat? The connotations of exposed makes the action seem dangerous, but exposed can be a good thing as well. Openess, flowers expose themselves when the sun is out so that other life may survive. And other things...

Shapes...are geometrical. Polygons. What kind of polygons? Hexagon, pentagon, four-sided figures. Shapes can also be in 3D, infinite possibilities. A model needs x, y, and z.