- Course: Arch 484/584, Instructor: Nancy Cheng
Jerzy Wojtowicz & Tom Staniszkis, Univ. or British Columbia
SCREEN TO SCREEN
Screen - Light movable covered frame or series of frames hinged together serving as a partition to separate, conceal, shelter or protect. - Webster, 1993
Paravent - Meuble compose de paneaux verticoux articules, servants a isoler, a protege des courants d'air. - Le Petit Larousse, 1995.
PROBLEM
To design a folding screen which can be used as a mobile room divider, draught
shield, privacy screen or sunshade.
OBJECTIVE
To understand the possibilities and constraints of computer
models vs. physical models, and to explore design collaboration over the
networks.
Students at both UO and UBC will begin by modeling a conceptual design of a
simple object. The results will be shared over the Internet for asynchronous
collaborative design exploration. For comparison with virtual construction,
wood samples will be created with CAD/CAM laser cutting for physical assembly.
PROCEDURE
Stage 1: Digital Model Making
Using computational tools, design a modular (16" x 5'4") screen panel. With software of your choice create the shapes either by taking a slice of a solid model created from Boolean operations (union, intersection, subtraction, addition) or by using two dimensional transformation (such as displacement, rotation, scaling, clipping, skewing). Render a digital model of your assembled panel and create a DXF file of the cutting pattern for the wood strip. The pattern should be composed of continuous closed shapes (polygons or polylines).HAND-IN: As MIME e-mail attachments, send a copy of your rendering in GIF format and a 2 dimensional DXF file of the cutting template to "nyc@aaa.uoregon.edu" by Monday, Oct. 7 at 1:00 p.m.
Stage 2: Screen Making
The feasibility of laser cutting is currently being investigated, but the cuts with this technology should not be less than 1/16 inch apart. Design your panel so that a model of it can be cut from a 4" x 16" x 1/16" basswood strip. A model of the panel at the scale 3" x 1'-0" is to be produced in the second stage of the project either by laser cutter or with x-acto blade after plotting the scaled model on bristol board. The latter approximates CAD/CAM and involves the cognitive process of moving back and forth between the digital and analog boundary.Each student will be randomly assigned a partner for collaborative design. each partner will receive the physical and digital model of his or her partner's components. The task is to work together over the network and create a folding screen using the other student's components. You can also elaborate the screen by adding other elements from the Web based library. Experiment with how the elements might be combined in space to create a stable free-standing screen.
To communicate possibilities about the design, you can work digitally and send 3D files or work with the wood pieces and send still video images. This asynchronous and synchronous collaboration involving informal sharing of work-in-progress is essential to a successful design studio.
HAND-IN: To be announced (end of November)
Review via hypermail linked to each designer or group of designers' Web page,
with some use of desktop video-conference environments such as CU_SeeMe.