Intentions

Today, our group will meet to reassess our progress and direction. Part of this will consist of reviewing each others personal goals and intentions with the final project. Here are mine:

Regardless of the subject manner, I would like to participate in a group project that displays a successful interdisciplinary approach. While this may seem obvious, I simply would like the see the skills, knowledge, and interests of each discipline incorporated in to one seamless final product. In terms of applying my skills and interests in industrial design, I would like to do the following:

-Produce a project in which the selection and utilization of materials is appropriate for the given constraints. These materials will ideally be sustainable in terms of their production, use, and potential reuse...

-Produce a project that has examined and optimized the proper manufacturing processes for the given product...

-Produce a project that has considered the formal qualities of the end product and to align them with the intentions and constraints of the project. ...To consider and analyze the semantics of the design...

to be continued....

New Smartsurface

Researchers at MIT are developing a new smart surface. They have figured out a way to fabricate a surface that can be both hydrophobic and hydrophilic. By simply reversing a weak electric field that is applied to the surface they can alter the surfaces reaction to water.

Check it out

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/smartsurface.html

Hobermans Sphere

Chuck Hoberman filed a patent for his transformable geometrical designs in 1990. Soon after, kids everywhere where playing with his expanding and contracting colorful spheres. They are radial truss structures that are stable in two different positions. They are basically all around awesome.

My current team had the idea to adopt his radial truss structures to aid us in acheiving our goals of utilizing sunlight with a binary, aperature-like surface, in which one aperature receives light, while the other blocks it. To be able to utulize his gemotry, we took mesaurements and reverse engeneered it into Digital Project, then laser-cut the components. In the process of observing and recreating, we disposed of one of the parts in his sphere, and created a geomterical system that works the same way, by using only one repeated part (plus an axle). The result is pretty neat, and really fun to play with...