Et Dukkehjem (update)

More work on the 'Et Dukkehjem' project. The first picture above shows 'Nora' and 'Torvald' with 'Krogstad' (or at least a prototype version of the table that will become 'Krogstad'). Roger J. Berent and Kyle Hulewat - otherwise known as Metropolitan Architecture Practice are designing and making 'Krogstad'. We recently saw Roger and Kyle's FIT Furniture on a visit to their office and thought it would be perfect. So we invited them to collaborate by designing a custom table for the exhibition. We have also invited Karl Daubmann and PLY Architecture to collaborate with us by designing 'Mrs. Linde' - a lamp. We have still to resolve the details of 'Dr. Rank' other than he will be a rug. We are beginning the process of prototyping the electronics that will connect the furniture to the audience, each other and the Internet.

Designed Objects v5.

At about 11.00 pm last night I was asked a question about setting up a blog. By 5.30 am Designed Objects had been completely made over (I've got to realize when I am educating people against their will). If you are looking for the stuff that is usually in the sidebar it is now in the footer.

Timesink...

Yesterday, I spent way too much time playing with the Spore Creature Creator. It's fun, it's clever, EA and Will Wright are going to make shedloads of cash... you can read about all that on the rest of the Internet. But more than that a whole bunch of people that wouldn't otherwise have contemplated it are going to have fun while remixing parametric 3D models. I think the implications of this for design are enormous. FluidForms is just the start. As these tools become more pervasive and accessible the ability to remix and remake our surroundings will only increase. Will that make things better? Of course not, like most of the creatures in Spore most of it is bound for an unplayed-with, dusty corner of the digital toy box or maybe the design equivalent of a Darwin Award. But just maybe it also means that some things will see the light of day that otherwise wouldn't get a look in.

The growth in ownership of relatively powerful, cheap, personal computers and the parallel upsurge in use of and access to the Internet (at least in the industrialised world) has transformed the means by which we communicate, carry out work and entertain ourselves. This has also brought about greatly enhanced functionality for traditional design techniques, helping practitioners from many areas to bring their ideas to fruition with increased speed and productivity.

Over the past decade we have witnessed an unprecedented development and increased accessibility of CAD/CAM technologies. With the adoption of 3D modelling software, CNC machines and rapid prototyping and manufacturing technologies makers have unprecedented opportunities to design objects that circumvent traditional haptic, craft-based skill sets. These technologies have brought about the opportunity for practitioners with no background in engineering to make use of these them. Not everyone welcomes this.

The pragmatic aspect of increased speed and productivity in the use of these technologies is important to all users. However, the conceptual realisations and the possibility of making innovative types of object for new forms of audience or market are of equal importance but are perhaps less immediately apparent. With the availability of these computer-based technologies, practitioners are confronted with decreased concerns of 'how' to physically make something and a greater opportunity to engage with 'what' that object is.

The ability to generate construction information directly from design information has fundamentally changed the relationship between conception and production for many practitioners. CAD was initially an assistive technology that enhanced the existing practices of design – an electronic replacement for pencil and paper. This has rapidly evolved beyond what you can do (easily) with pencil and paper (e.g. computer-based visualization processes such as animation and photorealistic rendering). What we see happening currently goes beyond merely designing things to designing the systems that allow things to come into being. Practitioners I have mentioned here recently (and many others) are doing this: Automake, FutureFactories and THEVERYMANY.

Anyway, my point is maybe I wasn't actually goofing off yesterday when I was playing with the Spore Creature Creator. Maybe I just have to redefine what 'work' can be?

Rhinoceros just simply rocks!

When I set up my files recently to CNC rout the plywood profiles for my latest project I made the newbie error of drawing the outside diameter of the holes I needed drilled rather than the center points (it makes sense after the fact but was counter-intuitive for someone more used to RP than CNC). Anyway, after manually drawing all the center points I asked the good folks at McNeel if there was a simpler way to bulk insert these points. Pascal Golay just sent me this Rhinoscript:

'*****************************
'*****************************

Option Explicit
Call Main()
Sub Main()
Dim aCircles
aCircles = Rhino.GetObjects("Select circles",4,True,True)
If Not isArray(aCircles) Then Exit Sub
Dim sCircle,aPt
Rhino.EnableRedraw(False)
For Each sCircle In aCircles
If Rhino.IsCircle(sCircle) Then
aPt = Rhino.CircleCenterPoint(sCircle)Rhino.AddPoint aPt
End If
Next
Rhino.EnableRedraw(True)
End Sub

'*****************************
'*****************************

It works a charm. Since I've recently been working with Processing and Arduino - I actually sort of understand it, too. I was inspired to put in the effort to get over the inevitable learning curve with Rhinoscripting when I saw THEVERYMANY - this just makes it all the more so. For all those (like me) that are intimidated by code, I think this is a significant move:

Grasshopper™ - a graphical algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. Unlike RhinoScript, Grasshopper requires no knowledge of programming or scripting, but still allows designers to build form generators — from the simple to the awe-inspiring.

It had to happen...

"Philippe Starck is on the hunt for young designers to appear in a future reality TV series. Starck is to front a forthcoming BBC series in which emerging designers compete for a six-month placement with the superstar product designer. The show’s format is likely to be a cross between The Apprentice and Big Brother..."

LINK

Ok, I'll bite...

A couple of videos that I watched recently that give a taste of what might be coming down the pipe.

Et Dukkehjem

I have been working on a new rootoftwo piece ‘Et Dukkehjem’ (after Henrik Ibsen). Pictured here are designs for a rocking stool (Nora) and an armchair (Torvald). We have re-read Ibsen's play from the point of view of the user-object relations between the main characters and domestic objects. The image(s) above are my first (and second) test renders using the beta of Brazil r/s for Rhino.





[Update] - Cutting out Nora and Torvald. The material is half inch thick European Birch plywood (9 ply). The profiles were made in Rhino, nested with the Mosaix plug-in, and sent to Mastercam as IGES files. The parts were CNC routed (thanks Josh Bard) almost the entire way through the material and then manually separated from the sheet using a trim router and a laminate cutting bit - this was to prevent the smaller parts flying off and screwing anything up. The last image above is a dry fit after a light sanding.

Automatic Miniature Plastic Factory

Recently, I visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It is a fantastic place with loads to see and do (including Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House). However, I found myself constantly being drawn back to the 'Mold-A-Rama' vending machines throughout the museum. Basically, these are coin-operated injection presses that for $2.00 will pop out a little plastic car, train or historical figure (e.g. a bust of Abraham Lincoln). They certainly got me thinking...

Ira Greenberg

At the the CPATH workshop I also met Ira Greenberg - a practitioner with a background as eclectic as my own. Ira gave a fascinating presentation. He talked about a moment that happened after he had been using computers for a while when he became bothered by not knowing what was going on 'under the hood' - this resonated strongly with me. Ira also made a distinction between 'digital immigrants' and 'digital immersives' (aka Digitial Natives, Gen Y, Millenials, Next Generation of Workers). This is something that is becoming all too apparent to me. In a breakout session at the workshop I brought up the fact that it seems that the education industry is in the same position as the music, news and broadcasting industries - in that they are in the process of being remediated and generation-gapped (and for the most part don't seem to know it yet). The discussion was swiftly shepherded back to the quandary facing Computer Science (that I would argue is just a subset of my overarching point). Another interesting point made by Ira was that in art and design education the only failure is a lack of engagement.

Check out Ira's book: 'Processing:Creative Coding and Computational Art'.

THEVERYMANY

It was great to meet Marc Fornes and Skylar Tibbits at the CPATH workshop. They gave a great presentation. An interesting point that was made was the use of constraints not only in the physical setting for built structures but also in the code used to generate them. It was amusing to hear that one of the constraints for some projects was fitting the structure into a few suitcases.

After the workshop I visited Philadelphia University to see Tesselion : Adaptive Quadrilateral Flat Panelization - "... a project by Skylar Tibbits which proposes a system of flat panel tessellation derived from complex surfaces to enable ease in constructability and a directly evolved spatial environment through lighting, programmatic adaptation and structural simplicity. Each panel’s uniqueness is afforded by the efficiency of digital fabrication while coded parametric relationships allow an emergent structural efficiency, from a single panel to the complete adaptability of the surface as a whole."