On Wednesday and Thursday this week we test inflated the DOUBLE TORUS and TOWER in the courtyard of TCAUP. Below are some images of the results. We still have some tweaking to do on inflation pressures and need to finish the anchoring – but in general it was a success! Thanks to the crew for all your hard work over this past month. Principals: Glenn Wilcox and Anca Trandafirescu; Assembly Crew: Secil Taskoparan, Joshua Kehl, Erika Lindsay, Jeremy Luebker, Rebecca Braun, Le Nguyen, Jake Newsum.

(Photos: Jeremy Luebker)

(Photo: Joshua Kehl)





(Photos: Jeremy Luebker)







(Photos: Secil Taskoparan)

Drawings and models for the LUMANOTUS project are on display at the Swift Wade Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC, from November 2 – 17. The full scale inflatable constructions and lighting project will be installed in Winston Square Park in Winston-Salem from November 13 – 17. The project will be lit and open to the public from 7pm – 10pm. The project is made possible with generous public support, funding from UNCSA and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.

We continue to develop the script and form for the concrete casting project ‘Cutwork.’ And now have an actual site and program – a garden pavilion on a rural site in south-eastern Michigan. There are now many more variables involved – the depth and thickness of the parts change from bottom to top, also the vertical dimension of each row diminishes exponentially, along with the width of each vertical row from the entry to the back of the pavilion – so it subtly ‘opens up’ as one enters. Our plan over the next several months is to build a full scale vertical row to do some structural testing – and feed that data back into the computer model refining the final form – then produce all the parts over the winter for installation in the spring of 2013. A few working images below. Stay tuned.

Two study models that are 1/8th of the scale of the final constructions. That puts the tower figure at about 30′. We are working on a system in which we imbed the anchoring lines (required of inflatables this size) into the seams of the construction.

In mid-September we traveled to Winston-Salem, NC to conduct a workshop with the Director of Lighting Design Prof. Norman Coates’s lighting design class at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in constructing inflatable structures. We are collaborating with this group on the project LUMANOTUS – this years Winston-Salem Lightning Project. The project will be comprised of large scale, inhabitable, inflatable structures installed for 6 days in a public park in downtown Winston-Salem. The students, under Prof Coates’s direction, will design lighting and image projection schemes that will animate the structures through choreographed performances. The event will be open and free to the public – however we are accepting donations for the project through this site. There will also be a public lecture on our work and exhibition of the design material for the project during the mounting of the pieces in mid-November. Below are a few images of a small test inflatable that we built while in NC – shown both in the lighting studio and the site.

A current research project that we plan to build as full scale pavilion in the spring/summer of 2013. Glenn will be presenting this project in October @ the ACADIA conference in San Fransisco. Here is the complete description:

This project is part of ongoing research that investigates the utilization of a 7-axis robot for hotwire cutting casting molds from EPS foam stock for the purposes of casting variable concrete units. The projects conceptual basis is the rethinking of the masonry block as a variable unit. Rhinoceros with Python computer scripting is explored as a methodology for producing the variable units – which are aggregated to form continuous structural surface forms. Surfaces from the design models are imported to Master Cam to produce tool-pathing and G-code to run a robot controlled hotwire. Multiple molds are cut from 4’ x 8’ sheets of fully recyclable EPS foam – with average cutting time of each part being under 3 minutes. Through exploring the full span of the design and production process from coding to casting to assembly the project aims are to investigate both the efficiency of the system and its formal/structure/ornamental potentials. The aesthetic desire being to produce a form and unit design which is intricate – more like lace – possessing the texture and tactility of concrete – but having a lightness of form and linament which is perceptually other.

Our entry for the inflatable pfff competition. The form was scripted using python and rhinoscript – based on an earlier script for our 2010 tetra | n project.

Images of the finished Falling Sky Brewery project just before it opened. The finished tables used fir that was reclaimed from an old garage on site. The frames were powder coated grey. Let it Pour!

The final version of the lights lost the ‘hair’ but involved a much more sophisticated system of parametric manipulation and scripting for tabing production. A PDF explaining the specifics of the system and more images of the lights installed can be viewed here. On these final versions the tabing is still both structural and ornamental – but used subtly – as a shadow.

We fabricated the prototype for the table design in our own shop. This gave us the opportunity to make some critical design changes. A key detail shown in the images is the angled cutting of the structural tube – were they meet the side supports. This cut essentially hides the tube from the side – making it seem as if this thin piece of wood is spanning the full distance on its own – keeping the feel of the piece minimal. We actually had to find a second fabricator in Oregon because the first didn’t think the detail would work – and ideologically disagreed with the sense that the wood was spanning when it wasn’t. But we knew better!