fabrication
Procedure:
1) Purchase waffle from bakery across the street (optional)
2) Save paper bag
3) Take sequence of images to describe all sides of object (the paper bag)
4) Load into Autodesk 123D Catch and create 3D mesh file
5) Export and clean up in Rhino
6) 3D Print
7) Welcome cactus to its new home
*3D Printed with an Ultimaker2 Machine
Only missing the dumpster…
Final painted barrier
NYCares Volunteers paint the barrier
Stencils with movable joints
Barrier made of (10) 20′ long modules
Stencils laser cut out of oil board with rotating brass pin joints
200′ of barrier painted in 4 hours
NYCares volunteers painted barrier number 10
Final painted barrier images
My design for “Singing in the Rain” was commissioned by the NYC DOT as part of the Urban Art program to Beautify Barriers throughout the city. The site is located just South of the theater district and Times Square at 36th St and 9th Ave in Manhattan, and references musicals – especially one in particular – as well as motion, animation and street rhythm. The piece will be up for 1 year and made use of a series of movable stencils of figures with articulated joints to allow for variation in the 200′ barrier length. 20 awesome volunteers of all ages participating in the NYC Cares program (many who had never picked up a paintbrush before) were able to arrange the stencils and finish painting the design in 4 hours based off of a series of detailed instruction sheets.
Update – Kickstarter goal reached, Inflato lives to pop up soon!
Read More:
The Atlantic Cities. “New York Could Get a Classroom Inside a Dumpster” Oct 16, 2013
FastCompanyDesign. “Architect Wants To Reclaim Public Space, One Dumpster At A Time” Oct 31, 2013
FastCompanyLabs. “The Future of Pop-Up Hackspaces Is… Dumpsters?” Oct 21, 2013
Architizer. “Can An Inflatable Pop-Up Dumpster Help NYC Residents Transform Their Neighborhoods?” Nov 1, 2013
Treehugger. “Presto, Inflato! Dumpsters to be reclaimed as “pop-up” public spaces in NYC” Nov 5, 2013
DesignBoom. “Inflato Dumpster Gives NYC a Blow-up Mobile Learning Lab.” Oct 18, 2013
Gothamist. “One Day We Will All Live In Dumpsters.” Oct 22, 2013
UntappedCities. ““Inflato Dumpster”: Turning a Dumpster into an Inflatable Classroom in NYC” Oct 16, 2013
I’m really excited to introduce a new project by the Department of Urban Betterment (John Locke and Joaquin Reyes) – The Inflato Dumpster, and the accompanying KICKSTARTER campaign:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/851648659/inflato-dumpster
A pre-emptive, heartfelt thank you! Also, please email me if you’d like to help out in any way, with any ideas for site, or just to say hi.
Project Description:
As public space in New York becomes increasingly privatized and commodified, The Inflato Dumpster seeks to counter that tendency by serving as an open, engaging street-level structure that acts as a mobile learning laboratory.
For five days this fall, the temporary, dome-like structure will confront the tendency of city space to limit public exchange by serving as a large scale urban intervention in which workshops to create and explore the possibilities for smaller, targeted urban interventions will be produced and deployed from within.
We believe that the architecture of the Inflato Dumpster can act as a networked node of neighborhood information – using screens and sensors to produce constantly updating streams of demographic and subjective information regarding the local site – and then in turn produces a smaller constellation of satellite interventions created by locals and visitors alike. We envision the site as a hub for all, to create a gathering space where programs can be curated to the needs of the community.
Visitors can enter, visualize, learn and explore various urban techniques and strategies before leaving the structure armed with the knowledge to redesign their own total environment.
Initially, we see this space as taking the form of a hacker workshop where simple, off the shelf components can be procured and combined to provide local residents with access to technology and a means for hands-on testing of public space concerns.
The structure’s faceted shape, materials and unexpected location will all combine to make for a fun, dynamic addition to the streetscape with the inflated structure evoking the blow-up castles of street festivals and the long history of big inflatable space from AntFarm to Spacebuster. We’ve been seeing a lot of construction dumpsters on the streets in the neighborhood, they symbolize change but also an opportunity for us to create something new.
As residents of various areas in New York City, we aim to take advantage of the mobile, temporary nature of the Inflato Dumpster to pop-up in areas that we love, neighborhoods where we live and around the people and communities that we know. We’ve identified a number of intersections and areas where the workshops and education laboratory programs would have the greatest impact, so stay tuned as we finalize the exact spot.
The Inflato Dumpster will be built from readily available lightweight materials and combined into a structure that can be inflated and occupied. Consisting of gold and silver mylar, it will reflect the light filtering down from the trees and create a shimmering, inviting structure on the street.The logic behind the materials is as follows: up to a datum level of approximately six and a half feet, the structure will be made of clear polyethylene. This is an inexpensive, common and biodegradable plastic material that will allow views both from the street into the space, and from within back out to the street. The street side will be primarily comprised of gold and silver mylar material with small clear holes throughout to allow light to filter in, evoking the feeling of being under a shaded tree. The highest point on the dome will be approximately 28’ and the space will comprise nearly 2000 cubic feet of overall volume. The sidewalk side will be built from faceted white tyvek building wrap, used both for its lightweight capabilities and also to provide a surface for projections of film and data. The final and most important material is of course the dumpster, a 30 yard refuse container that is 23’ long by 8’ wide and will form the solid base of the intervention.
Looking forward to seeing you in the dumpster!
A link for high resolution images:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x1wpc1m3wo6nfx/INFLATO_DUMPSTER_IMG.zip
While my natural tendency can lead toward convolution, in the interest of concision here is my attempt to sum up the course objectives in one sentence: “to self-initiate and identify a problem statement relating to the urban environment, and then manifest a possible solution through a public, physical object, while confronting the myriad issues associated with that decision.” Problems addressed included the notion that strangers occupying proximate space are too disconnected – how can you encourage interaction? As well as the problem of physical space inducing a heightened sense of agitation during a stressful time (finals on a college campus) – how can a space be created that produces an alternately playful, soothing affect for passersby? So with that, here’s a sampling of self-initiated work from the third iteration of HTUE.
See previous work and extensive course descriptions here:
Hacking the Urban Environment II – Student Work
Hacking the Urban Environment I – Student Work
All images and work by students Amir Afifi, Hanxiao Yang, Marielle Simone Vargas, Wilbur Lee and Will Chen
Assignment 01 – PARASITES
Assignment 02 – LIGHT PROJECTION
Assignment 03 – FINAL
To generate interest and excitement for our BLOQ PARTY proposal, we wanted to start a conversation by showing how the program elements we produced could potentially activate the competition site. Competitions, design proposals and urban space planning oftentimes fall under the radar of the actual users of the site who are both unaware that a competition is taking place and then have no voice in the process or outcome. The plastic signs are intended to link the digital proposal to an actual physical space – less obscure websites and more public posters. It also helped to see how our space division laid out on the actual site, we had treated the eastern, narrower plaza area as space for movement and dynamic interaction – biking, running, skating. The western, more generous plaza was designed for slower, more spontaneous meeting areas. We hope the signs can begin to create a diaglogue for the best use of the space including potentially new and different program ideas that can eventually bring the space to life in a vibrant manner for all.
I spent a second semester with a great group of young architects, urban designers and planners teaching a course at Columbia. The class was titled “Hacking the Urban Experience” and was about a number of things I’m interested in, specifically how to fabricate, repurpose and interact with urban space. It was a very good short semester and I was super proud of all of the student’s work. I thought the ideas went deeper and successfully built off the earlier semester. All lectures and process work are archived on the class tumblr: http://hackingtheurbanexperience.tumblr.com. Classes typically took the form of lectures on precedents and concepts, a discussion of student work and tutorials on materials or software techniques as required. Topics during the semester included overviews of unsolicited architectural proposals, building-scale light projections, inflatable materials, urban siting opportunities and community/crowd sourced funding.
Course Description
The course goals haven’t changed dramatically since the last semester, the course still seeks to assert the relevance of the fabrication tools at our disposal as potentialities for social and environmental relevance. Through the re-appropriation and re-imagining of existing urban conditions, the student will design and fabricate a working prototype that embraces the messy reality of our city and promotes community involvement. The student will begin by identifying a quality of the urban condition that includes the latent capability for improvement and work toward fabricating an adaptive, responsive and environmentally viable solution. Specific emphasis will be placed on testing and exploring through hands on research the possibilities of detailing and fabricating connections using unorthodox materials. At the conclusion of the course the student will produce a full scale urban intervention and observe and document their relevant successes or failures.
Workshops were conducted to introduce the students to the possibilities inherent in new material technologies, through production and detailing techniques, and the proper use of fabrication techniques. Material workshops encouraged students to explore with everything from dynamic, variable surfaces using latex and silicone to parametric agglomerations using quotidian materials.
The first investigation was the creation of the connection detail. It was encouraged that this be a parametric joint that breaches the gap between the existing streetscape and the student’s intervention. Flexibility, safety, durability, adaptability will all be tested while exploring different possibilities for a potential synthesis with existing urban forms, examples of which can include: will the student’s intervention clamp on to a lamppost, hang from a phone booth, project from an existing building or rest in a parking lot?
By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the student was challenged to anticipate possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately the student should have come out of the course with a healthy respect for two core concepts: Firstly, an increased skill in the use and applicability of the fabrication machines we have at our disposal for solving design issues using unorthodox materials in unconventional settings; and two, that there is an opportunity for architects to regain lost relevance by inserting themselves through unsolicited proposals into the public consciousness as steward’s of urban well being.
Assignment 01 – PARASITES
Part of the Atlas of Urban Connections project (TBD), the first assignment involved designing and fabricating a joint to connect something, anything, to a vertical street extrusion (such as a tree, street sign, light pole, etc…). The members of the Public Works Department in NYC are masters of improvisation, you can see it walking down any street here, and there is a lot to learn from their successful and not-so successful techniques for attaching to existing sidewalk infrastructure. This assignment was prepared to introduce the student to the capacity to breaching the gap between the pedestrian and existing streetscape objects, with the goal to test flexibility, safety, durability, adaptablility while exploring different possibilities for potential synthesis with existing urban forms.
Tom, Aaron, Max, Kevin
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Assignment 02 – INFLATABLES
Hurricane Sandy played hell with our first few weeks, and necessitated that the initial assignments were bundled together. However, we still had a chance to look at inflatables and the material qualities inherent in cheap polyethylene of different mil thickness. Using an iron, tape and plastic, quick inflatable bladders were constructed and tested. The students were tasked with creating an inflatable, mobile “seating” system that was either self-supporting or used a site’s natural currents to inflate.
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Ni, Mengna, Darian, Juan, Ying
Assignment 03 – LIGHT PROJECTION
Using Graffiti Research Lab’s projection bombing tutorial at Instructables, the class set up a mobile power station using a 75V marine battery, and set off around the neighborhood near Columbia to experiment and throw up some interactive light projections.
The last year has seen some truly inspiring displays of the potential light can have as an interventionist tool, and the class studied this problem using three main strategies: 1) messaging independent of site, i.e. you only need a blank wall, 2) site dependent projections, like those following the curving, horizontal bands on the Guggenheim, and 3) flexible projections that can adapt and interact to a number of different sites, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of each. Care was given to create projects that both actively and passively engage those passing by the site. Each group’s projects was able to successfully confront one of these strategies.
Ni, Mengna, Darian, Juan, Ying
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Tom, Aaron, Max, Kevin
Kaz, Greg, Ella
Assignment 04 (FINAL)
Building off the previous assignments, the final assignment sought to synthesize the work and concepts of the class into a larger installation that could still be completed in our very tight time frame, but started to explore the core ideas of the course, in effect becoming a proof-of-concept, working model. By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the students were challenged to anticipate a range of possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately, A successful project would accomplish three things: 1) display ingenuity in fabrication technique and material 2) re-imagine or re-design a specific urban site/condition to take advantage of its hitherto hidden potential, and 3) have a performative component, in that the intervention has a temporal quality that while engaged promotes public interaction.
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Kaz, Ella, Greg
Tom, Aaron, Max, Kevin
Ni, Mengna, Darian, Juan, Ying
3D model of the Caryatids at the Temple of Erechtheion, constructed from flickr images and Autodesk’s 123D Catch. A little buggy, but close enough.
Sited at the corner of India and West St. in Greenpoint, the project situates itself as a gateway, a ceremonial entrance to Pier 11 and the East River Ferry. The four Caryatid models are milled out of standard Dow rigid foam insulation.
Activating the fluorescent lights allows wattage to bleed through where the foam material is thinnest, illuminating the ghostly forms of four of the maidens. The four foam panels match the rhythm of the warehouse windows above and reveal themselves as non-loadbearing elements, while still taking the expected position of structural elements – placed under the building’s overhang. Here light takes on volumetric properties, giving life to the caryatids and briefly rendering them in an effervescent glow that contrasts with their current Hellenistic confinement, hewn from Grecian stone and forever supporting the Porch’s entablature above.
Projected budget: $415
Located on the NW Corner of 87th and Amsterdam Ave Google Map link
With some slight modifications from the previous iteration, a new version popped up on 87th over the weekend. The only significant changes were the addition of some slight suggestive text: “take a book,” “leave a book,” and removing additional shelf material to expose the sides of the actual phone mechanism. I had been tipped off by a telephone repair technician that the likely cause of the prior shelf disappearances could be attributed to the tech’s inability to access the locking mechanisms on either side of the phone, requiring him to remove and probably toss the shelves. Further observation will be required to see if this version can outlast the former’s 5 weeks of operation.
The intersection here is part of a pretty interesting area with a diverse mix of pedestrian traffic. 86th street acts as a strong east-west thoroughfare that effectively splits the northern portion of the neighborhood from the rest of the upper west side, and predictably there is also a visible, distinct change in scale when looking south versus north. The site is a mixing chamber of sorts with four quadrants that come together here: the chain retail stores to the south and west along Broadway; the Innovative Diploma Plus High School and P.S. 334 to the southeast; an eclectic mix of housing scales to the northeast and a growing dining and leisure strip taking off to the north. The goal here is to try play to all those users, and create a community focal point of nearby residents, commuters on their way to and from the train, diners, and spillover from the large retail stores.
It was great to spend a few hours observing how people interacted with the shelves. Even at 9am on a Sunday morning, it quickly became a point of attraction on the sidewalk, at one time hosting a queue of six random strangers waiting to get a closer look. The addition of subtle instructions seemed to help, as this time there were two separate occasion when people left holding a book. It still remains to be seen whether anyone begins leaving their own and adding to the collection, but it will be certainly be interesting to find out.
After further observation of this iteration, I’ll post the cut files if anyone wants to make their own. Let me know if interested.
Made possible with generous support from the following:
Materials and Fabrication:
SFDS Fabrication and Design Shop, Brooklyn, NY
Book Donation:
Mrs. and Mrs. Moon
Housingworks Bookstore
Kay Gardiner
Residents of 951 Amsterdam Ave.
Photography:
Jackie Caradonio
I had the pleasure to teach a course this semester with a great group of young architects and urban designers, titled “Hacking the Urban Experience” at Columbia. I couldn’t be more proud of all the hard work and the high level of engagement with which the students approached the class. All lectures and process work are archived on the class tumblr: http://hackingtheurbanexperience.tumblr.com. Classes typically took the form of lectures on precedents and concepts, a discussion of student work and tutorials on materials or software techniques. Topics during the semester included overviews of unsolicited architectural proposals, building-scale light projections, inflatable materials, urban siting opportunities and community/crowd sourced funding.
The course sought to assert the relevance of the fabrication skills at our disposal as potentialities for social and environmental relevance. Through the re-appropriation and re-imagining of existing urban conditions, the students designed and fabricated working prototypes that embraced the messy reality of our city and promoted community involvement. The students began by identifying a quality of the urban condition that included the latent capability for improvement and worked toward fabricating an adaptive, responsive and environmentally viable solution. Specific emphasis was placed on testing and exploring through hands on research the possibilities of detailing and fabricating connections using unorthodox materials. At the conclusion of the course the students produced a full scale urban intervention and observed and documented their relevant successes or failures.
Material workshops were held to encourage the students to explore constructions from inflatables to parametric agglomerations using quotidian materials. Ultimately, the goal was for the students to come out of the course with a healthy respect for two core concepts: firstly, an increased skill in the use and applicability of the fabrication skills we have developed for solving design issues using unorthodox materials in unconventional settings; and secondly, that there is an opportunity for architects to regain lost relevance by inserting themselves through unsolicited proposals into the public consciousness as steward’s of urban well being.
Students:
Jared Dignanci, Farzin Lofti-Jam, Ehsaan Mesghali, Katerina Petrou, Paul Tran, Wassim Shaaban, Maryam Zamani
Assignment 01
Part of the Atlas of Urban Connections project (TBD), the first assignment involved designing and fabricating a joint to connect something, anything, to a vertical street extrusion (such as a tree, street sign, light pole, etc…). The members of the Public Works Department in NYC are masters of improvisation, you can see it walking down any street here, and there is a lot to learn from their successful and not-so successful techniques for attaching to existing sidewalk infrastructure. This assignment was prepared to introduce the student to the capacity to breaching the gap between the pedestrian and existing streetscape objects, with the goal to test flexibility, safety, durability, adaptablility while exploring different possibilities for potential synthesis with existing urban forms.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Jared, Farzin, Ehsaan, Maryam
Assignment 02
Using Graffiti Research Lab’s projection bombing tutorial at Instructables, the class set up a mobile power station using a 75V marine battery, and set off around the neighborhood near Columbia to experiment and throw up some interactive light projections.
The last year has seen some truly inspiring displays of the potential light can have as an interventionist tool, and the class studied this problem using three main strategies: 1) messaging independent of site, i.e. you only need a blank wall, 2) site dependent projections, like those following the curving, horizontal bands on the Guggenheim, and 3) flexible projections that can adapt and interact to a number of different sites, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of each. Care was given to create projects that both actively and passively engage those passing by the site.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Ehsaan, Maryam
Jared, Farzin
Assignment 03 (FINAL)
Building off the first two assignments, the final assignment sought to synthesize the work and concepts of the class into a larger installation that could still be completed in our very tight time frame, but started to explore the core ideas of the course, in effect becoming a proof-of-concept, working model. By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the students were challenged to anticipate a range of possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately, A successful project would accomplish three things: 1) display ingenuity in fabrication technique and material 2) re-imagine or re-design a specific urban site/condition to take advantage of its hitherto hidden potential, and 3) have a performative component, in that the intervention has a temporal quality that while engaged promotes public interaction.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Maryam, Jared, Farzin, Ehsaan
A rare spotting in the wild. Assignment 01, build a parasitic attachment to a vertical streetscape extrusion.
When I first saw this image of my block from the 40s, I knew it was something I wanted to share. Sure, part of it was a sense of pride, that our seemingly nondescript, uptown block once held a moment in time that was deemed important enough for someone to capture. And further, that that historical memory was saved, and became indicative of the history of the subway and the city. Properly fitting amongst a slideshow of once momentous occasions such as crowds cheering with Fiorello at the opening of the 34th St station and documentary photos of the surprisingly frequent automobile on train accidents. But it was also the content of the image.
The included caption was such:
1940: In a view north from 106th Street, only the supports of the old Ninth Avenue elevated line remained as the push to go underground continued.
As the subway ceded elevation in favor of the earth, the Amsterdam avenue elevated train disappeared. I can only imagine the revelation as light and some semblance of uninterrupted silence returned to the street. This image captured a frozen moment of transition, where the elevated train could be either in the act of disassemblage or erection, and with it the hope of revitalization. The newness and flux of urban change was just as relevant then as now, and should serve as a reminder that the present isn’t static and transitions are as true in the New York of 2011 as in 1941. However, that truism seems to have become forgotten in a city where there are now over 25,000 buildings and 100 neighborhoods classified as historic and under the jurisdiction of the NY Landmarks Commission, complete with all the associated zoning regulations and limitations on new building.
The QR code was translated into a laser cut ready file via F.A.T. lab’s QR_STENCILER utility. Using marking chalk, the stencil was painted on the street near to where the original photographer stood in 1941. All in all, this rudimentary, proto-augmented reality was created on the cheap in under four hours.
The removal of the overhead train tracks and the introduction of smart phones in the neighborhood are both changes to be resisted or encouraged. The means of accessibility to this installation are still beyond the means of many people in the area, and as ubiquitous as they may be among some, phones that can read a qr code are still not available to all. In that way, the moment in the original photo and this street marking can define a line through two points, the past and present, collapsed into one and defined by and within the smartphone. The direction and ultimate meaning of that vector is dependent on your own personal point of view. My initial inclination was to create a fantastical image to represent the street in 2081, but that would be devoid of meaning and furthered severed from people’s daily reality. By referring to a historic, shared reality, ultimately then, the means of this technological view of the past is as much of a harbinger of potential futures of the neighborhood as any fantasy image could ever hope to be.
