Here is a quick pass at an idea I had for a parametric, actuator controlled light fixture that would recess or protrude based on dynamic inputs.
Interactive Atmospherics
VW Interactive
For my first project at Asymptote, I’m designing an interactive environment for Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. This is the first thing we’ve come up with, Its a 3d navigator that is fully touch responsive. It orbits around in a dormant state on a touch screen monitor until you touch it, and then it positions itself and presents a series of options. It is meant to exist in a sort of gravity free space so that it moves naturally in response to every little touch. The image above shows the navigator moving through a series of rotations that can be referenced by Flash to simulate different responses. Note the not so subtle VW iconography on the navigator.
PROJECT / IMAGE CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture
B Side o2
The project that Noah Olmstead and I are doing for the DJ Spooky + Chuck D collaboration, is a disaster. Our first attempt was painfully complicated, so we came up with a new strategy that is somehow even more of a nightmare. We are mostly doing experiments in video production, but if I ever hear the song again my brain will fall out.
This image is the jumping off point for our new technique which promises to be infinitely complicated, as the entire five minute video will be animated frame by frame with vector graphics.
Hemostology Coagulated Architecture
Hernan Diaz Alonso, my former teacher, has asked me to teach with him this semester at Columbia. We’ll be expanding on a body of research done over the past few years into problems of affect.
Hemostology Coagulated Architecture
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio V
Fall 2005
Hernan Diaz Alonso and Alexander Pincus
Liberated from the obligation to communicate meaning whether historical, philosophical, or theoretical, architecture is today once again free to give full expression to its creative potential. Exploring the possibilities of the interiority of the architecture, as a new dynamic field that can be occupied as a network of parts, creating a new continuity trough space. The relation between virtual and physical usually has been defined as a kind of duality, between two different kind of worlds, the studio, will try to explore new boundaries of possibilities of re-definition between these two conditions. Critical to the discussion of interiority is the conditional understanding of the irreducible ‘unit’ that composes architecture. Investigating the nature of the unit and what is irreducible to architecture will allow for us to explore the topic of coagulation and liquidity.
Planet Hollywood Pills
I'm doing some freelance concept / advertising work for Planet Hollywood with my friends at Street Virus. There is no way they are going to go for this...
The South
Proximity
Lately I've been experimenting with proximity functions in Flash.
Exo-Skeleton Detail
Infinite Loop
This animation shows an infinite loop we designed at XV as a potential environment for our Chuck D / DJ Spooky video.
B Side Wins Again
Noah Olmsted and I were asked to make an animated music video for the DJ Spooky and Chuck D collaboration B Side Wins Again. We’re basing it on our own idea of the apocalypse, so it will be mostly furry meat controlled robots in a modified Kubrick donut spaceship prison and sunsets. This is our first stab at designing the robotic exo-skeleton. The cradle is where the furry meat will reside. This is our first project out of school and the complexity is growing exponentially in relation to our ambitions.
Candelabra
Photo by Isa Wipfli
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.
Assembly
These proofsheets show various configurations of our chandelier during assembly.
Mark Collins
Mark Collins produced this beautiful operational drawing for his final project in this semesters studio with Hernan Diaz Alonso.
Cloud Forest
A truly bizarre world of potentially affective refractions and bulbous forms.
Final, Final Review
Here is the opening slide for my final, final review. Only 14 more to go...
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...
The Underbelly
This is where I imagine some of the seedier folks of London hanging around. It's kind of a cliche of how bridges are used, but seediness is one of the elements I was interested in preserving when re-conceiving the bridge.
Atmospheric Landscapes
The organization of this atmospheric landscape is based on dynamic simulations of flocking behavior that is injected with attractors to particular ideological flows. Essentially there is a desire in the flock to find certain organizations and to move in certain directions as influenced by a set of variables that consider ideas of site, agenda, space, and programmatic performance.
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