Commonwealth on the Cover of New York Times Style Magazine

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It’s great to see my friends and sometimes collaborators Zoe and David on the cover of the New York Times Style Magazine. See the article here.

Truncheon

Truncheon, a new lamp by my friends at Commonwealth, is now available at Matter.

Espeis Outside

Zoe Coombes and David Boira, my friends and collaborators at Espeis and Commonwealth, have a million things going on and one of them is the recently opened Espeis Outside.

Candelabra

Candelabra is a design research project I done in collaboration with David Boira and Zoe Coombes, based on the work with minimal surfaces and genetic organization I did in Bill Macdonald’s studio at Columbia. The intention was to produce a chandelier that relies on its architecture rather than its technology for its performance. The curvature of the components was optimized to refract light as well as to connect seamlessly at its edges either in plane or offset.  This logic allows for multiple configurations that were in the end sampled from the refractive behavior of digital flocking patterns (very Bill Macdonald).  Best of all, its black.

The pieces themselves are made from vaccum formed plastic and fiberglass, covered in tons of bondo, sanded, and finished with primer and auto body paint.  They and are attached at the edges by laser cut petg plates.  They were made in a very intense 4 day spell in the  MOMA PS-1 workshop under the premise that we were building prototypes for their summer jam series.

Photography courtesy of Isa Wipfli.

Component 1

This is the first finished component of the chandelier I am designing with David Boira and Zoe Coombes.  Only 31 more to make...

Prototype Fabrication

SCI-Arc’s 3-axis mill carving a mold out of laminated particle board

David Boira removing the first vacuum forming test at the Warner Brothers set building shop in L.A.

Two unfinished components with the a test connector plate

72 component halves made from vacuum formed PETG plastic

Zoe Coombes finishing the fiberglass connection between the two halves of a component at PS-1

My brother Miles preparing a component for another round of autobody paint

Recon X in Space

David Boira helped me put together this short animation that re-imagines our Recon X furniture piece in outer space. There really isn’t much of a point to it other than the fact that I wanted to learn After Effects.

Recon X Space Tracers

David Boira and I are using After Effects and Illustrator to make graphic tracers in this animation for Jose Sanchez's Advanced Digital Design seminar .

Action

Here is a ghosted perspective of the reconfigurable interior surfaces David Boira and I presented during our final review. 

Reconfigurable Housing

David Boira and I have worked out these prototypes for reconfigurable housing modules.  Following a flexible grid, these units can plug into a larger housing block and still retain their individuality by taking on different spatial and environmental configurations.  On the interior, this performance is enhanced by floors and walls which can similarly be customized or rearranged for different uses.

Figuring It Out

We're still figuring this thing out. So are these guys. 

reCon-X Expanded Color Test

We are testing out the motion of reCon-X and trying out some color schemes while we are at it.

reCon-X

David Boira and I are partners this semester in a housing research design studio. In a somewhat related spin off, we are making this highly articulated yet completely de-calibrated furniture object. It is a piece that comes with no agenda other than encouraging the user to figure out their own potential uses by reconfiguring it into different spatial and performative organizations.  It will be made from water-jet cut aluminum panels, cnc milled hinge plates, and automotive linear actuators.