Arch design

So I"m taking a design fundamentals class in which we had to take a man made material and a natural material and find a way to fit them together so they make a buildable structure that has rhythm, space in three directions, weight, using techniques like curling, weaving, piercing, etc to demonstrate tension, unity, and other things. It had to be a repeatable structure, so that we could test how much we could add on to the piece and in what ways before the structure would fall apart. Mine was repeatable, and I got it to stand (hooray!). I took two isosceles triangles and put three wedges/squares on each side. I then put one triangle perpendicular to another so that they were firmly together (like they were weaved together at right angles), and then put a toothpick in place so that the triangle was connected by three things at one point (so it was sturdy). I used (for my materials) bamboo toothpicks and some weird kind of packing material with nice texture I found lying around randomly. My supervisor was actually really nice; he got some for me and I came in one day and there were eight sheets for me :) When I was making a 'chain', the material chain began to bend, so I ended up wrapping one end (of the chain; basically where I started) to the other (you'll see part of the loop at the top). So it was actually on its side (more east to west) when I first built it, and then turned it in a perpendicular manner by adding more structure to the base. We also looked at a possible cantilever design. We then determined where were the weakest and strongest points of the model, and the limits of the materials used. This is a 50 piece (as in, two triangles and a toothpick counted as one unit) model and stands about two feet high. What was liked is that there is randomness and a structure to the image; it's not just a regular grid/box and it has density. Also, there is use of space in multiple directions, and the material permits light as it is sort of porous(and possibly sound) to travel through if it were a structure. It also is very fractal by its nature. Next week we are taking this to another level, but in the meanwhile, here are some shots of the model and closeups to emphasize texture and show the structure and the way things fit together, shot at the studio. I really liked this assignment :)