It isn’t every day that I feel like I’m on a reality TV show, but I am now almost certain that I’m being unwittingly filmed. We walked into a room with resources that I didn’t even know the Dude had…a soldering station? It reminded me a lot of the first time the designers on “Project Runway” get taken to Parsons. The instructors then proceeded to explain their philosophies, goals, and pasts to us (I’m not sure which is Michael Korrs, Nina Garcia, or Heidi Klum). Some of their work and ideas are quite fascinating.
During lunch we watched an episode of the show “Prototype This” in which the team tried to make a gecko-inspired superhero suit. The methods they used for prototyping such as laser-cutters and getting 3D models printed were new to me because I am used to having the material be the subject as opposed to the making of an object be a subject in a design. It was nice to see the guys succeed but what was even more interesting were the attempts that failed…I certainly never thought about applying a voltage to Mylar to get myself to stick to a wall.
The video was then followed by a field trip to the Architecture building’s workshops and fab lab. Checking out all the resources that are in that one building was another shock to me and I’m a little jealous of all the hands-on work they get to do. I always thought there would be more hands-on learning in the engineering curriculum…I mean, we have lab courses that get our feet wet, but we don’t ever really prototype and construct in materials science courses.
Once we got back from our tour the parallels to “Project Runway” commenced once more. We were broken up into our teams and given our task and some of our design criteria for our first assignment: using only chip board make a “surface” with at least 9 interlocking parts that is smaller than 3’ by 3’. Wow! Ok, that’s a little open-ended, so then we were told that we would draw 2 more criteria at random (can’t you just see Heidi standing there with her bag full of buttons?). Our team chooses “exposed” and “shapes that cover curved surfaces efficiently (the example given to us was the shapes on a turtle shell).”
The part about the criteria that poses the most interesting problem is the seemingly opposite nature of these last two constraints. How can you make something covered and exposed? Originally the whole group was thinking along the same lines…the surface could expose something at one point in time and then cover it at another. The objects we thought about were the turtle shell, a retractable dome, eyes, etc. We also discussed the shapes and mechanisms of these objects as well as geodesic domes and soccer balls. This is where, I think, our ideas started to become unique and take shape.
When someone tells me to cover a curve efficiently I immediately think polygons and lots of straight lines…you know, get the highest atomic packing factor possible, go with hexagons! But listening to the other members of the group I realize that not only would they not necessarily be the best, but also curved shapes might make a surface more functional and pleasing to the eye instead of the harsh shapes I was thinking of. We discussed different ways of exposing and covering from flipping and rotating to telescoping…this is about when the instructors a.k.a Tim Gunn came over and said something along the lines of “Maybe there don’t have to be two stages in time, maybe it can be covered or exposed at different points in space.” Hmmm. Why didn’t we think of that? Of course this is where they should have added, “Make it work.” but that would have given away the fact that we were actually on a “Project Runway” spin-off show.
This is when the ideas really started to flow, especially after we were told to look up Hoberman’s switch pitch. Of course this is also when we had to start getting ready to leave. We all decided to go home and think about it and to convene Friday and Saturday to discuss and start construction. Honestly though, I felt it was much easier to think together than I have been able to do since we left Design Lab 1. It is really difficult for me to come up with actual design concepts by myself, but I have thought of some possible inspirations such as the World Cup 2010 Jabulani and a mobius strip.
About the Jabulani’s design:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/science-behind-jubulani-adidass-2010-world-cup-soccer-ball
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