Haven’t really had a whole lot of time to keep this updated. I’ll try to be better. I know I say this about every three months. So if this is the last post for another couple months, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
For studio I’ve been building large (17″ x 31″) backlit LED panels for a studio project. I used PCBs and parts from an 8×8 kit from ModernDevice.com and sort of exploded it to turn it from a smallish 3.2″x3.2″ square to something a bit more human-scale. I built a total of four of these assemblies and they’re all controlled by a newer model Arduino which controls all the boards. Each board has embedded into it pressure sensors that register when and where the board is pressed. The sensor mechanism is a little clunky right now, but I’m working to really finesse the detailing so it works better in the future.
starting off the semester with a script that produces a tessellated surface using (in this case) a semi-random array of vectors (vectors in maya = points for everyone else). I’m hoping that this algorithmic investigation will yield some useful tools…or at least some shiny renderings..
Four to go. I find that having finals after winter break really seems to kill my ability to ever completely relax because no matter what I know I should be studying or writing or something other than sleep and eat.
In any case, this is what I made in the span of about 24 hours.
Architects love diagrams. Projects live and die by them here in architecture school.
This is an interactive diagram I made to show the “Centroid” of the Harvard undergrad housing (sans frosh). I won’t explain too much except to explain that “weighted” means that the calculations take into account the number of residents, so a more populated house will affect the centroid more than a sparsely populated house. Unweighted is then just the average by location only. Also see if you can figure out how to turn on and off houses and edit their populations (note: the population numbers are accurate for most of the houses as of this year).
p.s. See if you can find the bug in the programming. I could probably fix it…if I wanted to.
This monday was the final review for our fifth and last project of the first year. In order to build the final models I estimate that I spent around twelve hours on the laser cutter cutting over three-hundred precise individual pieces out of chipboard. I remember making fun of those pale kids hunched over the computers in the basement cutting out sheet after sheet of whatever for a model. I thought I would never be one of them. But after spending hours myself hunched over the slow computers with blackened fingers inhaling chipboard smoke and toxic plexi fumes I am no longer above anyone. I also spent quite a bit of time getting cozy with the CNC router in a semi-failed materials experiment. Now I have a few days to catch up on sleep and try to figure out my summer before the last round of finals hit next week.
This is how I’m dealing with curver’s remorse…at least in 3D.
I’m slowly but surely pumping out my final production models for my second semester core class. The GSD has a lot of resources (CNC routers, multiple robot arms that no one knows how to use, plotters everywhere, 3D printers, and frickin’ laser cutters), but when it comes to crunch time, everything is always taken. So you have to be crafty and slip in and get things done in the cracks and be ready to jump off of whatever it is you’re doing and run down to get pieces of your model laser cut. It’s insane and not conducive to sleep. But if all goes well we should all have very nice projects. Still being alive at the end would be a huge bonus too.
I made this board out of 1″ x 2″ maple strips and I’m planning on routing out a site plan in 1″=64′ scale on the cnc cutter. Crossing my fingers that I get a CNC time slot, and that the file works, and that the board doesn’t split, and that it’s worth my time. It’s deceptively heavy.
