Transmaterial: ArchiCAD modelling

Clay renderings

Just some more clay renderings. These are so quick and easy!

Plant room section

 I decided to redo my plant room section for final hand in. This was done in Photoshop after cutting a section through the 3D model.

Kerkythea Clay Model Renderings

I've been looking at some of the tutorials on the blog I shared earlier, http://www.alexhogrefe.com/. Therefore I also decided to check out Kerkythea, a free rendering engine that he uses a lot http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/. I downloaded Kerkythea and attempted a simple clay render of our Waiheke inspired hotel model. Here are my initial results:

This is the actual rendered result.

Here is the rendered result with a bit of editing in photoshop, to further bring out shadows etc.

And here it is in a context done on Photoshop.

Draft Review of 44 Grey

Despite issues with Secondlife that were beyond their control, 44 Grey had a very impressive presentation that demonstrated just how much thought had been put into the details of their design. Their island hotel is intended to be a day spa made up of different microclimates, and had a very well considered interior. Their city hotel plays with the notions of privacy and publicity and considered the façade as a screen made up of many interactive pixels.

Rejuvenation was one of the main points of the island hotel. And internally focused day spa, the island hotel is made up of atriums with differing microclimate. The atriums in the centre of the hotel contain facilities, and none of the atriums contain windows to the outside- this is a very introspective design. Balconies lead between undulating atrium forms and the exterior, filling the voids between the atrium and the façade with useable space. The entrance is hidden: the bottom levels of the island hotel are flooded, and one enters the hotel via boat. This increases the overall privacy of the hotel These were the concepts that 44 Grey showed us, but they certainly hadn't been their only ones. 44 Grey had spent much time discussing their ideas and it showed. They had considered many things, from moving floors and the use of figures as both ornamentation and as structural elements; with figures acting like columns on their interior. The effort put into the idea behind this design was admirable and their outcome was beautifully elegant.

Their city hotel unfortunately didn't really show up on Secondlife due to issues with the server, yet it appeared to be well thought out as well. The city hotel has a massive façade with images covering it like a film strip. These images relate back to the treatment of the figure in Classicism, looking at Romantic paintings and the like. They also helped to portray one of the themes in the building, the thin line between privacy and publicity. When a light is turned on in the building, the image on the façade turns off, like a dying pixel. This means that whoever is in the room is now completely visible to the outside world. The plan of the rooms enhance this notion. Similar to designs by Le Corbusier, 44 Grey had a hallway on every 3rd floor, with rooms above and below this. These rooms have some double-height spaces, and the plan gives the occupant the ability to move on both sides of the building- the public and private sides. 44 Grey did express that they weren't yet entirely happy with the simple, box like shape of the design, but they do seem to have a lot of good concepts to work with. We are very much looking forward to see what they produce in the future.

Transmaterial: Rice Paper

Stop motion practice: The Apple Cult

A few friends of mine and I decided to practice making stop motion video, concentrating on having the motion perfectly in time with the backing track. I think that the result was quite good, although the video is perhaps a bit too long! We particularly like our bit at the end.

Producers:

Seth Delpachitra

Soha Gomaa

Ingrid Anna Schwalm-McEwan

With help from:

Ben McPherson (who spent ages carving out our apple perfectly! :) )

Oh yeah- and the music is Wankelmut's One Day

Screen idea

This was just a quick vector drawing off a screen idea. One of the main issues we had with out lantern was that even a slight breeze would not only make the paraffin very difficult to light, but would also cause the lantern to tilt more at this initial stage, which could cause it to combust. Hence we may want a screen around the lantern depots. This could be a sliding screen, so that the actual screen part could be moved depending on the direction of the wind on a particular day. 

Entrances

For the city inspired hotel, there are two main points of entrance, as defined by the vehicle landing spaces. The first is just on front of the Rush Hour stairs, which is the stopping point of the cable car. This allows people to experience the rush hour stairs and all that that entails. (http://architektia.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/an-escape-from-chaos.html)
The second point of entry is through the plant room at the roof of the hotel, where the lantern lands- this immediately gives the traveller a birds eye view of their surroundings, similar to what one would experience if on a high-rise building, admiring an exciting new area from above.

The Architectural Promenade

Since his time drawing in Athens, Le Corbusier had an idea of the architectural promenade- having to walk around a building first, admiring it, before being able to stand before it and understand it as a whole. (We learnt this in history! :))
We were intrigued with this idea, especially in relation to the cable car vehicle- the cable car vehicle is all about pushing the limits. Escaping with this vehicle is not meant to be an easy thing- you have to really want it. Therefore, if we don't allow it to stop at the front of the building it means the travellers would have to go just a little bit further before finally having escaped.
It also enhances the journey of the lantern- the lantern travels at a slow rate, forcing the traveler to experience everything; to really see what they are escaping from, and maybe considering whether this scenery is really dystopian at all. Having the lantern not land right at the entrance enhances this, since it means that upon disembarking, the travellers have another slow journey to go, a journey in which they also must experience everything; experiencing what it is like to finally arrive at their destination and allowing them to consider whether their destination is actually much better than what they left behind.
Hence we want both our cable car and lantern to stop at the back of our Waiheke inspired hotel.

McIntosh Timber Laminates Ltd

This Wednesday we our group (group C) went on a field trip to McIntosh Timber Laminates.

McIntosh Timber Laminates produce all sorts of structural elements; columns and beams etc. which they mostly import to building sites overseas.

We were all equipped with hi-viz vests, hard hats and wellington boots. By the time I got to the wellies, they didn't have many sizes left, so I ended up waddling around in one size 6

 The sort of cool stuff McIntosh Timber Laminates Ltd can construct. I can't get over how much they can bend the wood!

 This is where the magic happens!

 Some joints being created in the wood. These pieces will be shipped down to Christchurch for the earthquake recovery rebuild of the city.

Curved wood!

Possible vehicles routes

Scale 1:250,000

We won't touch those murky waters.
Here are some possible routes for our vehicles to take. The cable car, being a manually operated and physically demanding vehicle, should have several stops. Here a possible path is depicted with the white line, going from Auckland to Devonport, to Browns Island, to Rangitoto Island, to Motuihe Island, and finally to our site in Waiheke.
The lantern could take several paths, probably depending on wind directions on different days, but it would have a more direct route, which is what I have tried to illustrate here with the black line.
We will escape from it all, up, up and away.
Since both vehicles will take a path that is elevated off the ground, this will give make the travellers see the world around them- a last glimpse of the world they are trying to escape, and their destination floating into their perspectives.

"For the first time, as he steered the glider across the bridge, Halloway could see the cars, hundreds of the dusty vehicles lining the quaysides, parked in the empty side-streets on flattened tyres. Immense roads ran everywhere, causeways of steel and concrete that moved like some kind of serpentine sculpture through complex interchanges." -Extract from J.B. Ballard's Ultimate City, describing Halloway's experience of travelling from above.

Draft Review of ArchiBJZ

Trial and error, Ju An Teo, of ArchiBJZ told us, was the key to their work, 2 Vehicles.
ArchiBJZ went through a rather long process in order to produce their final outcomes: two vehicles; one rather elegant looking decorated lantern and a very effective bottle rocket. They also put great effort into their process, something which we learnt a lot from.

They experimented with using natural materials to renovate the cheap flying lantern, by cutting patterns out of seaweed, which were intended to reflect upon a utopian society, and sticking them onto the top of their lantern. This, they informed us with a rather beautiful description, would not only bring environmental ideas into their design, but also transformed the interior experience of the space. The travellers would be high up in the air enjoying life, tilting softly as they travel slowly between the sites. Light would shine onto their lantern as it transported their travellers, and the seaweed on its exterior would create shadows within, enhancing the interior space. This lantern would take off from a landing platform which had been equally considered; A screen around the space was designed to prevent wind from affecting the lighting of the paraffin, and they mimicked the city scape using a section of a hairbrush modelled in 123D Catch.

Their second vehicle, a bottle rocket, created a contrasting experience. With the aim of creating something that didn't need to be held, ArchiBJZ developed this rocket, which works with pressure, shooting away after being pressurised with water. The speed of the rocket contrasts with the relaxing experience of the lantern, hurtling the travellers to their destination in a parabolic manner. The path their rocket takes was shown on an extremely carefully drawn map, handdrawn on an A2 page with lots of intricate contour lines. The seaweed they had floating in their rocket not only linked this vehicle with the aesthetics of the lantern, but also created a lava lamp like effect. ArchiBJZ also got to make use of one of their transmaterials, moulded silicon, to create a cork for this rocket.

We learnt a lot from ArchiBJZ, who put a lot of effort into their process, which really showed how much trial and error had been a significant factor for them.

XXX

http://www.stairporn.org/ 
I wish I'd known about this when we were in the stairs workshop for design! Stairs, stairs and more stairs! This would have been great for inspiration!
Oh and just before the URL puts you off, this isn't porn that is related to stairs, it is actually just stairs... :P

Plant Room Walls

Well I finally found a solution to create the plant room walls in ArchiCAD! You can do it without any add-ons, you just need to create your object in 2D then make it an object. This can then be rotated. Here are the instructions I found for saving a selection in ArchiCAD as an object:
http://www.cadalyst.com/aec/archicad-insights-creating-custom-3d-library-parts-without-using-gdl-3387
Here's an image of our finished plant room on ArchiCAD. Andy did the roof and floor, check out his page http://studiolimarchitecture-andy.blogspot.co.nz :)

Hotel Section

I took a section off the ArchiCAD file of the Waiheke inspired hotel constructed by myself and Andy (http://studiolimarchitecture-andy.blogspot.co.nz) and then put it into photoshop. Originally I was very silly and put it on Waiheke! This hotel is inspired by Waiheke but sited in Auckland. Silly me!

Anyway, after that I got things right and put it in its correct location... and gave Andy this background just in case he wants to use it for the city inspired hotel section. Here is the final piece:

The backgrounds of both images are both from photos I took, by the way. The Waiheke image was from the ferry on the way to Waiheke, and the Auckland image is the view from my common room at my hall of residence! Pretty nice view, right? :D Once more, I can't believe how much I've improved with Photoshop this year! Anyway, it's 7pm... time to go eat some dinner I think...

SketchUp add-on for ArchiCAD

I have been having trouble constructing the walls of our plant room on ArchiCAD (due to my lack of skill and not to the limitations of the programme, I am sure) and since we really need to have this done by tomorrow I thought I would try construct it in Google SketchUp. Fortunately, I found a handy add-on which will not only allow me to import SketchUp models into ArchiCAD, but which will also allow me to access Google's 3D Warehouse from ArchiCAD and display the finished model anywhere using google earth! I have yet to try it (I will after finishing this post!) but it sounds incredibly useful, and it can be found here... http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/addons/google_earth/index.html

Update: oh nooooo. I can't download it because I have ArchiCAD 15 not 16! I could update to ArchiCAD 16 for free, but then it would no longer be compatible with the ArchiCAD we have on our school computers... what a shame. Lesson learnt: when I first install a programme, download ALL the add-ons before they update!
It's too bad, this sounded so good... I guess I'll have to think of another way to solve my problem!

Update again: Oh no wait, I seem to have found an archive... let's see if this works! http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/addons/google_earth/Archivege_earth_connections_download.html

Waiheke Hotel Interior

I've continued working on these hexagonal columns, placing furniture and lifts to reach the different levels. I'm having trouble with the elevators, as I can't figure out how they move, or even if they can. My research today has got me no closer to an answer, and I can't find any other elevators to download... ah well, we shall see what will happen...
I still need to take my camera out for a spin so I can photograph some real life textures, edit and apply them.

3DS Max

We've started using 3DS Max in order to construct a 3D model which we will have printed by the 3D printer in our digital fabrication workshop. It's a wee bit annoying since I can't run this program on my mac and hence work on this at home as well as at studio, but I'm looking into setting up bootcamp soon, I just need to obtain a copy of windows...
Anyway, there are a series of tutorials I have been looking at (this I can do from home! :P) starting from here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwRkkGzA98k&feature=relmfu
Check them out, and remember it's best to start learning early!