New Direction

So, I've been asked to explore this idea of brolga and the feather, further where to louvered canopy exists, to look at the design of the louver and what happens behind it at a smaller scale, possibly to diffuse the light further. So in examining this i stumbled onto a few brilliant photographs on flickr by a user named earball*. The images really portray texture and an architectural and structural quality which i believe could be incorporated into the design

Avian Lines

 

Feather Architecture

So how does this translate to materiality?

I guess the intriguing thing about the feather is its operation at different scales, the deeper you look, the more interesting and complex it becomes. Avian lines immediately reminds me of Hadid’s BMW Plant in Leipzig, Germany which i had the opportunity to visit several years ago. It utilised what looks like giant laserlight to diffuse light whilst offering good thermal properties.

But i guess the macro feather detail also suggests woven form

Just something to think about…

Boards from the crit

Quick update

More updates to come, submission is Monday, so I’m under the pump. Seem to have caught another flu, let this be a lesson to everyone out there, putting your kid in kindy a few hours a week, does not make your life easier.

Ok… Now I'll leave it for today

I've got to get started on this GC otherwise I'll fall way behind, i just keep getting side tracked.

Still going, the feathers

The issue I'm facing is i want to angle these at 35 degrees which is lower than the winter altitude as i don't want direct light and glare rather diffuse light from reflection and daylight to create an illuminated ceiling.  They are oriented true north but getting this angle right is proving difficult.

 

I can get the size and angles correct in Max however my splines are not converting into a surface, they just disappear, and its getting really frustrating

Done! Outstanding! Blocks out direct light, whilst maintaining a visual link to the sky and allowing daylight. I’d like to say I'd use a reflective material for this one, but that may prove troublesome for approaching aircraft. A flat white will do it though, same colour as the Brolga feathers.

I think this offers a lot in terms of fabrication. Keeping the louvers flat will allow for laser cutting also.

But I've got to leave this project for now to work on my GC sun shading device. I may post some pics up once i have some better direction, and made some progress.

One more, But i have my final idea sorted

I’m not all that happy with this one it does what I'd like it to, but its not the one. Whilst the crayfish tangent got me a little sidetracked in terms of structure, i think it weakened my concept of the Brolga. I’m staying up tonight to develop a new and final approach to this, the idea will be one of feathers, like the feathers open on the upstroke to allow wind to pass through, i hope mine open to allow light penetration. We’ll see what happens

Been working all day on some framing variations for the glass portion of the canopy

The idea is to examine the interior spatial qualities of each variation, my renders aren't really working for me though as presently they are coming out far to dark, which seams to be becoming a theme throughout my designs.

So this here is starting to get close to the Lobster Cuticle Structure idea in terms of form but it still has a ways to go yet. My renders are still coming out a little dark which I’ll address before presentation time however if it turns out i need to allow more natural light in i have a strategy to allow this also.

I’m really starting to like the openness here, the lightness, exposure and form. I may try a few very different approaches

The canopy working

Perhaps the beginnings of a moire

My ideal framework for the station cover based on the the curves of wing movement during flight of the Brolga.

Populating this using GC is going to prove challenging especially considering the accuracy required and the huge number of files different files within differing softwares I'm working in.

The hope is that the end result will be a structure weaved like the nests of the birds on site.

Quick snapshot of some more development

Sooo… worst week ever, ended up in hospital, great… but i wont go into details because this is a design blog, so… I’ve finally made some breakthroughs after banging my head against the wall for a few weeks. I’ve known what i wanted to do for weeks now, but getting the image out of my head and turning that into a physical or cad form has been difficult to say the least. My canopy is developing but my main hold ups are ensuring enough natural light penetration exists for the subterranean spaces whilst being true to the form i want to produce. I wont be going into my tutorial today as i don't want to loose any momentum on this, but I'm hoping a flood of posts will keep everyone updated on my progress.

Revising Ideas of fabric and shelter

After examining the variations below I'm reconsidering my building fabric. the idea is to bring more light and a sense of openness to the spaces, allowing nature to penetrate, whilst maintaining the industrious nature of the building through the form.

The aim is a fairly simplistic form fabricated through tessellation whilst utilising contours to manipulate light penetration.

Exploration, Structure, Canopy, Variations

Metro tunnel cover

Here's an exercise done in GC. It started to give me ideas about how this may begin to work as an underground tunnel for my metro.

I have this idea about maintaining some sort of visibility to the underground rail links from the surface. By making the tunnel responsive to both path and surface height, i have this idea of platforms extending out like partially exposed worm holes which allow light from the surface to penetrate the tunnel and allow users to see and understand the network.