Flex Bench - 2x4 Final Presentation

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Make a finished piece of furniture and a presentation that sums up a half-semester project, all in 6 days: no problem. I was so exhausted after this project that I'm only now posting it four months later. I think first semester sophomore year at UArts is like ID boot camp. They kick your ass early to make sure that you can handle it.

The bench turned to be pretty cool; it's still flexing and is in one piece. If you want to see it, I have it in my living room. See a recap of the project and the final product in the pdf.

Three Applications of Flexible 2x4s

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Cool stuff this week! The grueling material studies were successful in providing good materials and processes to make three products. The Sine Lounge (seen above) starts as a chaise lounge and rolls up into a compact package. As if that wasn't enough, there's also Two by Floor, a flexible flooring system, and Flex Bench.

Thanks to Thanksgiving, we had an extra few days to make all the stuff for this presentation. I still think that ten days is not very much time to make two pieces of furniture and a flooring system plus a presentation, but its all done now and I think I came out with three decent models.

Material Exploration (2x4s)

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Nine material study models were made this week from three categories: Bent, Flexible composites, and Woven. Lots of fun stuff... assuming you like pine lumber. This weeks presentation is a bit light on text, so if you have any questions please leave a comment.

Something that seems apparent, but is sometimes forgotten while getting caught up making so many models in a week: Do strength testing after taking photos. See if you can spot the broken stuff (the linked mat is not broken).

Rama, the I.D. department chair, spoke to students briefly about protecting our work: so new to the Design Journal this week is watermarking. From now on in all the oh so informational PDFs that you have been downloading will be stamped with the oh so annoying watermark "Jesse Gerard / jhgdesign.blogspot.com." What this will do to prevent would be pilferers remains to be seen. But until I can come up with something better, learn to love the watermark.

2x4s - 10 Explorations

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The latest project studio assignment is a materials exploration project. The choice of materials is between industrial cardboard tubes, and 2x4s. Choosing to use 2x4s, I did some experimentation and simple models that illustrate what I think are some of the defining properties of a 2x4: such as tall... or wood.... I find it really hard to take these assignments seriously when I'm not actually given an assignment. This was another one of those brainstorming assignment where instructor just says "Okay, go ahead class. Make 10 of anything as long as it's not a useful product." The good news is that I received positive feedback on my goofy presentation, and next week I get to narrow it from ten, down to three different ways to wreck a 2x4.

Instant Village Final Presentation

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Cool Shelter Huh? It was a lot of hard work to put together something functional of this scale. As the first studio project of the year, Instant Village was a great survey of what it's like to take a product all the way from nothing to a finished functional prototype. Have a look at the pdf to get a look at the project start to finish.

Due to some supply problems, the tent looks like it was sponsored by McDonald's, but don't let that detract from the experience.

To see the team scramble to put it up while I take photos and boss them around, click on the video below (there is no sound: do not adjust your computer). Actual setup time was under 3 minutes.

Instant Village Presentation 2

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This week as a team, we made a lot of progress in our design and presentation. We narrowed it down to one design (shown above), and added a number of features to last weeks design to make it collapse more... since that really is the only criterion.

The presentation is much more uniform than before, with a nice clean look. My contributions this week include drawing all the diagrams and sketches, drafting all the 3D models, taking all the photos, and the layout for several pages.

Instant Village Presentation 1

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The end product of the Instant Village project will be a physical shelter that will actually be built and used. This has become a team project, and class has been divided into groups of four. Each group has been assigned a topic that the professors chose from all the thumbnails we've been doing. My team's topic is "Expand and Collapse." Other groups received topics like "Rescue," and "Found Objects." We've started coming up with ideas for a shelter that is expandable and collapsible, and putting together a presentation. In addition to being involved in the design process, my contributions to the presentation include taking all the photos, building the model shown above, and making the materials page. If you want to see the names of all the team members and the rest of the presentation, download the pdf.

The presentation was very well received in projects studio class by the professors and students. The next day in 2-dimensional design techniques class the instructor, Tony Guido, reviewed our presentation not for content but for presentation design. I've never taken a beating in a critique like that. Tony's relentless examination of our presentation had me visibly sweating in my seat. The main problem was that each group member did their own couple of pages, and they were all slapped together a few minutes before we presented. Fortunately the after result of the critique was that I dusted myself off with a new resolve to do much bettter next week.

Shelter Concepts 2

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Building on the concepts from the previous week, the assignment was to choose three categories and draw five concept sketches for each. I chose modular, backpack, and energy producing. If you look at the pdf, you may notice that I am missing one. If you've seen my desk it's probably surprising i was able to find 14 of 15 in the paper maelstrom that is my file system. It was a sketch of a backpack that has a telescoping pole in it that lifts you up in the air so you can see where you are, or avoid cougars trying to eat you or something.

I had a hard time coming up with a total of 35 original and different concepts, and I felt like the content was a little lacking. My plan to compensate was to airbrush some color in with Photoshop. The assignmet was to do plain black line drawings, but I have this theory that there is no cheating in design. After I pinned up my drawing before class, I noticed a small crowd around them inspecting the color; there was some oohing and aahing... my plan worked perfectly.

Shelter Concepts 1

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This assignment is the beginning of the emergency shelter project called "Instant Village."

The goal was to come up with 20 thumbnail sketches for emergency shelters. The ideas I came up with are a bit more out-there than my classmates; everyone else pretty much pinned up twenty drawings of tents for the crit. There are about 35 ID students in my class, so after 680 sketches of tarps thrown over tree branches, my weird concepts seemed to be a relief.