spatial fabrication

Maritme Museum/ Hui Te Ananui A Tangaroa

Walking through the art gallery and noticing the trees through the glass windows, there’s something so serene about it and somehow establishes feelings/emotions whilst inside the gallery. Nature is art all in its form and I believe that having those glass panel windows frame them as if they’re a part of the gallery - in doing so it merges interior and exterior qualities too which is quite mesmerizing. The only downside about this is the fact that there are exposed hinges and joinery which distracts and disrupts the experience quite a bit.

I believe that it establishes a more sophisticated ‘tree-like’ forms as it’s very structured. However, in saying this, I do believe it suits the building quite well because it also offers variation.

The Lighthouse by  Michael Parekowhai

The fact that it can only be experienced from the outside adds to the thrill and experience of it. The installation is already intriguing with the neon lights and the gigantic Captain Cook statue in the middle, however, being able to admire it from the outside also adds to the intrigue. Reflecting back on the current rahui happening at the Waitakere Ranges, it somehow reflects that notion of looking/ observing things from afar. In that rahui’s case, it’s like these ongoing environmental issues that we’re facing such as the kauri dieback disease, majority of us don’t know or don’t do anything about it and it seems like we’re overlooking the situation. 

The style and form of the stairs is pretty standard and it fits the general aesthetic of the house overall. However, it would be nice to have a larger decking area in order for more people to move around. The exterior is fairly classic and is painted with colours that best reflect the skies and the ocean which compliments the vibrant interior. 

After researching and thoroughly analyising the site and activities that occur within the site, I started sketching out concepts of possible design and layout for my intervention. 

My initial idea based on out previous collaborative work was to create an interactive play park for all ages - keeping in with the theme of nature and having natural elements within it too. However, the site chosen before was the small picnic area which I personally thought was too small for the intervention that I wanted to do. Therefore, I decided to ultimately change and/or add onto the existing learning centre and picnic area combined. 

I was inspired by multiple projects: 

Waitomo Caves Visitors’ Centre by Christopher Kelly

The Bubble by Kupla Architects

Swoosh Pavilion by the students from Intermediate Unit 2 by tutors, Charles Walker and Martin Self

(all images courtesy of Google images.)

DESIGN IDEAS:

I want my intervention to contain these aspects: movement, simplicity & complexity, indoor & outdoor and environment. I wanted to use certain aspects within the environment to inform the design for the intervention. Therefore, I decided to investigate and use surrounding plants as one of the main subjects. 

I wanted to investigate the shapes and forms of plants around the site I’ve chose and use that as a part of my intervention.

I then started fiddling with formacote cardboard, creating small incisions to create curves. I also tried foam board for test cuts and seeing how certain cuts would curve over and behave. 

This week we decide if we want to stay in groups or work individually. My partner and I decided to work separately because we wanted to further explore different sections of Arataki.

In this half of the semester, I wanted to explore more about integrating indoor and outdoor setting. The site I chose was the learning centre and picnic area - same as before.

(image courtesy of google maps)

Originally what I wanted to do was create an interactive playpark and picnic area for both children and adults; however, I didn’t want to carry on with this idea because the picnic area was too small for the intervention I was designing and because one of the tutors asked me: “what would make people want to drive all the way out here to see your playpark/picnic area?” - which made me realise that I’m not 100% set on the idea and that I can do something bigger and better.

Also, looking through the notes that I took from the site visit during the first half of the semester, Glenn from Arataki mentioned that “people enjoy interactive things; however, these are hard to maintain and they always breakdown.”

 I needed to come up with a concept that integrates indoor and outdoor space(s) all together but at the same time support existing activities that occurs within that learning space.  I also really wanted to do something about the learning centre - upon visiting the site, it was quite enclosed and I wanted to change that. Upon research, I found out that there are different benefits to having open public spaces like encouraging physical activities and improvement of cognitive function which I believe is important especially when designing a learning space. 

I then proceeded to create this mind map, connecting all aspects I want to highlight together - seeing how they interconnect with each other. In saying this, I wanted inter relatedness to be a part of my project as it reflects environmental setting and on how everything is linked and a part of a whole ecosystem. Everything works all together. 

First off, I needed to research what sort of a lot of different things:

a.) Considering site and its current conditions

 There is the start of the Hillary trail and current learning centre. There is also a slight incline on the site itself that needs to be considered. 

b.) The activities held in chosen site - The Learning Centre

Arataki has a lot of programmes for schools such as nursery adventure, nature trail, bush camp (for years 5-8) and biodiversity alert. Because I’m doing the combination of the picnic area and the learning centre, I also considered the picnic space - how it caters to hikers coming to and from the tracks and as well as people who just wanted to chill out and have a picnic. Other activities offered at Arataki are art in the parks, education, picnic, sightseeing, volunteering and walks.

c.) The visitors

- based on the research regarding the activities held on the learning centre, majority of activities held there were for children and also considering hikers, tourists and locals

I then started creating a mood board of things that I found depicted ideas that I wanted to have within my intervention.

There were quite a few challenges over the duration of this project; whether it’s regarding the challenges that surfaced whilst working alongside my partner or just the tasks in general. Now that the project is finished, I genuinely appreciate communication now especially when working in groups/pairs. This is because often times I found myself lost and confused as to where the project was leading to. The overall communication between us was not the best especially when it came to the project itself which made the tasks harder. We also have very different work ethics. It was interesting and difficult working alongside someone to start the year. Personally, I got accustomed to doing things on my own without someone else’s input; however, this experience gave me a glimpse of what it would be like to work alongside others. It is important to create a strong sense of cooperation while still in university. We have to be collaborative and learn how to compromise. Through this group/pair project, you always have to speak your mind because it helps discuss, improve and/or resolve issues. Also, when working with someone, you should have mutual agreement and understanding because it helps the project flow better all together. 

Our collaboration was not 100% successful because of a few reasons: 1) communication, 2) the way work was ‘distributed’ wasn’t a collaboration; I found myself making small models, sketching concepts, writing down ideas and barely getting any input from my partner, 3) similarly, there wasn’t equal effort put into the project. I found myself contributing more than my partner did. Yes, majority of the ideas were agreed but where the ideas come from and execution of experiments were mainly coming from me. 

From the project itself, I found it challenging on how the brief was open - it was harder to come up with initial ideas as there wasn’t a lot to work with; however, it taught me that sometimes I have to think outside the box.

This project made me aware of my own strengths and weaknesses. I realised that I had so much to learn especially when using digital programs. For this project I contributed rapid visualisation sketches of concepts and developments (as seen throughout my blog), small quickfire models made out of paper to explore forms and shapes for our waharoa, I also made the final model out of formacote cardboard and pins; I also put together one of the two A1 sheets - for this, I asked and consulted my partner whether everything was good and that if she wanted to add or change anything there, she could but alas, she didn’t. 

Overall, the project we produced was sufficient - I can’t say whether it’s good or bad; all I know is that that this is only the beginning and there’s always room for improvement. Hopefully, we’ll both be able to use the things we’ve learnt in this project in the future. 

Week 5 - Thickness of Thresholds

This week we were asked to make a waharoa (an opening and/or pathway)

These are quick models made out of scratch paper - each model explores the notion of a walkway and also light and dark. The models also interrelate back to our initial idea of movement. However, we want the developed models to have a different approach, maybe even incorporating several aspects of these models together. 

What we want to explore for the developments and final model is the notion of ‘no entry’. Usually, waharoas are entryways and openings but relating this back to arataki and the current rahui, we definitely want to play with the idea of a closing gap. We still want to create interesting visuals for future visitors, welcoming them to the area but also prohibiting them to go through the tracks as protection for the kauris and letting them heal. 

The next thing we would have to do is be able to find a way to combine such opposing aspects, welcoming and prohibition, and be able to make it effective. We also have to keep the ‘barrier’ space interesting. Things that we need to consider:

- are we going to direct visitors towards the track and then come to an abrupt stop? or are we going to create a space in between?

- the positioning of said waharoa. Where is it going to be? Have we considered topography, the existing visitors centre? is everything still accessible for everyone? 

- scale - how big will it be? will it affect surrounding buildings and foliage? 

- are we going to make it so that it blends with the current visitors centre? or will we create a contrasting structure? 

- what materials are we going to use? 

We incorporated aspects from the first iteration of our structure to make the overall structure of our proposed waharoa

This week we were asked to make a map that correlates with ideas that we’re currently exploring. 

For our map, we decided to take a classic string map approach. We wanted to highlight the movement of people in relation to the kauri dieback disease. 

We decided to colour code significant elements (people, foliage, direction of movement) to show their direct relationship. We used the site map as a rough guide as to where to put the pins. We also decided to have variations of pins - thicker pins means the venue and place and the thinner pins indicates the density of people and greenery. We also colour coded the strings: green is for existing live forest, brown is for they dying percentage of kauris and pink is for human traffic.

This week we wanted to explore the idea of ‘cycles’ specifically the cycle of life and on how it is depicted as light and dark. Light being life and dark being death. We wanted to show this through the materials we use (plexiglass and black card) I chose materials that would best reflect light and dark but as well as show heavy contrast between organic and inorganic material. 

We gathered ideas on how to incorporate these new materials to our existing structure. Upon research and consultation among the tutors, we decided to keep the movement aspect of it especially because we started with that idea first. 

**photos to follow**

For the design, we decided to go with a much simpler pattern because we needed to draft it on rhino. Because none of use knew how to do complex designs on rhino, it was a bit of a struggle to put together. We settled on a ‘3-propeller’ design and decided to just invert the other one so when they intercept, it’ll slightly alter the light passing through. 

Originally, I was thinking of laser cutting a larger sheet of plexiglass and cardboard so when we attach it to the structure, it’ll have a better outcome. However, the materials we’ve chosen were on the expensive side so we had to work with what we’ve got and decided to just keep it small. 

It was pleasing to see how the materials behave - the plexiglass looked almost invisible. What was interesting was that when the ‘arms’ from the existing structure moved, it almost triggers the plexigalss and cardboard to move too. 

After the first exercise we then had to make a drawing tool out of the structures we’ve already made in week 1. 

(drawing and notes on how to alter the structure, 05/03/18)

Because our structure already moved, it was fairly easy to come up with different ideas on how we could change it or make it into a drawing tool; however, the hard part was making it happen and to see whether it would actually work or not. 

Our possible options were:

- we could attach paintbrushes to the end of each arm on either side of the stucture

- we could put a drawing tool of some sort to the joinery itself and as it spun, we should be able to get half moon marks

- we could also alter the positioning of the arms and attach some form of media to it for mark making

- we could also use momentum to create abstract patterns

- we could mask parts of the paper itself and then add media to the arms to create specific patterns

- we could also remove the arms itself so we can spin the middle part vigorously but we need to have a lot of paper so it catches all the splatter 

- we could drill a hole next to the joints and stick a drawing tool in it so it is extra secure

Possible outcomes were:

- mainly circular patterns produced

- if we used the momentum method, it could help create a lot of splatter

Trial 1: we tried adding the paintbrush to the arm

Outcome: it didn’t work as well as we thought it would. Once the paintbrush touch the paper, the momentum would immediately die down. We did have some splatters but it wasn’t as large as we thought it would.

Trial 2: removing the smaller ‘arms’ on either side and attaching the pencil to the longer component

Outcome: it made ‘half moon’ marks - we would’ve liked it better if the curves were more pronounced; however, that can only be achieved if we had a larger piece of paper covering the entire structure’s motion.

Trial 3: using the same method as trial 2 but using a paintbrush

Outcome: similar shapes as the last trial but because we were using a paintbrush, it gave more character and movement rather than just stagnant marks. We loaded the brush with extra mixture of acrylic paint and ink so that when it comes in contact with  the paper, it would drip and add more movement to the drawing.

OUTCOME

We decided to combine trial 2 and 3 method to create our final drawing. We wanted to emphasize the idea of movement especially because it was such a huge component of our structure. The finished drawing had a lot of ‘half moon’ marks that reflected the contraflexure  diagram (shown in previous blog post). We also want to accentuate the transition from openness to closeness in relation with static and movement. 

For this week we were asked to create a structure from a single piece of timber.

So I started it off by researching different wood structures, upright models, towers such as the Eiffel tower. We were thinking of suspending it on the ceiling so it floats; however, we needed to make sure that it was light enough to be hung.

Me and my partner (Denise) then started sketching whatever design came to mind in hopes that we would be able to find a suitable design for the task. From this, I’ve discovered some questionable design concepts and had to keep developing and combining different parts.

As seen on the photos below, I had few ideas in mind that thought would work; however, I also needed to make sure that I was relating it back to the main idea of opening and close, light and dark. 

I imagined some of these ideas to be effective but another problem occurred: do we have enough timber for some of these designs?

Once again, I had to alter the designs in order for it to be “enough” - being able to use all the material, for it to be able to support itself and also to be able to convey opening/closing and light/dark.

We then closely observed the structure of the Eiffel tower. We thought it was relatively easy because it supported itself and all we had to do was mimic the design. What we didn’t account was the materials the architects used; they used metal. 

We came up with sketches that were similar to the shape of the Eiffel. Nooroa suggested we use tension wires but neither of us ever used that before and after researching the cost, it would be too much and we also had to use up the timber which is the main material. 

In order to mimic the design of the Eiffel, we had to bend the timber which was way too risky and difficult as we would have to bend four pieces of timber and there was a huge risk of us cutting it all the way through and wasting the timber.

Another option would’ve been steam bending but for that we had to have the right tools and had to varnish the wood in order for it to keep its bend - this would take a longer time especially because we have to do it multiple times and we also don’t have the proper tools. We most definitely don’t have the confidence to steam bend timber. 

We couldn’t think of any other ways to make this happen especially because we were so fixated in the idea of bending the timber. This was until Denise looked back to the course brief and looked at the 'contraflexure diagram’ (pictured below)

From this exact diagram, it helped us brainstorm possible design for our structure. 

With the help of one of our tutors, we were able to come up with a kinetic design that reflects what we wanted to do.