Skipping way ahead in the chronological order of this blog, Yuji and I have finished our degree show installation! It will be in Cranbrook Art Museum until May 11th. After that it will probably be permantently reinstalled in Cranbrook's Brookside Elementary school.

Here is a practice version we had done a few weeks earlier:


I'll have more images of the finished piece later, for now here are some photos from Yuji's Flickr site:







A Nest
A collaboration of Yuji Hsiao and Doug Johnston

A Nest invites all visitors to enter inside to find their own comfortable spot. Furthermore, it is an invitation for people to find comfort together; a space of relaxation, contemplation, and conversation that is simultaneously public and private.
A Nest is honest. The shell is transparent and the materials are visible and used candidly. The shell is made of polyethylene tubing, formed into a web structure that invites visitors to explore its lines. It provides a open yet clearly defined space, which curves in response to its situation in the gallery. The materials used are commonly available and the method of construction is relatively simple, yet results in a complex self-supporting surface. The construction method allows shell spaces to be built in many forms and sizes, and in a short time, while the material is suitable for interior or exterior applications and is reusable and recyclable. The shredded paper inside is all post-consumer, gathered from the Art Academy and from SOCRRA, a nearby recycling organization.

Polyethylene Tubing, Zip-ties, fabric sleves, shredded paper

hey!
Its been almost an entire year since i've posted to this school blog. sorry to anyone who has been wanting more info about life at cranbrook. Today, after a few months of snow, ice, grey skies, and below-freezing temps, its 72degrees, slightly breezy, and sunny outside.

I'm working in the library today, as i do for 4 hours every tuesday. Its great because i have a regular time to check out and return books, and working to check in and out books and videos puts me in contact with many books i would have not looked for on my own. Today i am checking out 4 vhs videos: "folds blobs and boxes", Jpana, 3 generations of avant garde architects", "a day with zaha hadid", and "excavations," which is a video documentation of a project done by 3 former architecture students here who cast a van upside down in concrete in the parking lot then removed the van piece by piece after the concrete cured. The project is documented also in the Pamphlet architecture book "gravity", and on the artists' website.
I'm trying to watch all the videos i can before i graduate in may and potentially move away from the great library here.

So a lot has happened in a year.... i'll try to bring this blog up to speed as much as i can without spending too much time.

So there were 2nd semester reviews in march 2006. we have 3 big formal reviews here: 2nd semester, 4th semester, and degree show reviews. During the 2nd and 4th semester reviews about half of the artists in residence and the director of the academy meet with you 1-on-1 and discuss/crit your work. It happens in 1 day, with reviews for the whole academy happening over 5 days (2 dept.s a day). Its a really amazing time, both of these happening during the spring semester, which coincedentally is all the more active and busy semester. The academy really comes to life and its great to walk around each day and see everyone's work.
My 2nd sem. rev. went well i think. I had a lot of great criticism and encouragement, though i only was able to speak with the interim scultpure a.i.r. for about 10 minutes. Almost all of the a.i.r.'s told me to look at AVL (atelier van lieshout) because they felt my work has similar tendencies but lacked a coherent voice for the diverse work, like that found in AVL's work. As a result i sent AVL an email with my CV and a few images of my work and ended up working for them in Rotterdam over the summer. I post more about that later, but for now you can check out my pics on flickr (still haven't uploaded all of them yet).

Other things i made last year:
A haircutting cart. This was made from mostly scrap material, a bike i purchased for $3 at a thrift store, some basic haircutting supplies, and a Robocut haircutting system hooked up to a small shop vac. I replaced the tank on the shopvac with a clear cheese-balls tub.
I rode the cart aronud a few suburbs of detroit, offering free haircuts to people and their pets. During 1 day i directly made offers for free haircuts to about 50 people and 10 pets... but no takers. Thoughi hoped to actually give some free publice haircuts, the point was visibly making the offer public. Haircuts are a somewhat universal need, and are interesting to me because they are somewhat intimate (someone is touching and altering your body) while at the same time being very social (we usually engage in conversation with our barbers/stylists and other people in the shop/salon during the process). Bringing this level of social intimicay to the streets of the detroit suburbs where a street-based public/social life seems to be non-existant.
here are some photos:

haircuts in the forum gallery.


.

I also began working on the shelter-in-a-cart competition hosted by Designboom. In the end i became more fascinated with the cart design as an object that could facilitate a wider range of programs... in fact that bacame my focus, pure facilitation. I loved the idea that cart could become a mobile piece of property, mobile land. This idea is not new but its great in that its simultaneously subverts and supports many fundamental principles of occidental culture. My cart design was partially a collaboration with my friend Janolof Nygren, a student in the 2d department here, an avid cyclist, and and amazing graphic designer.
The design was largely influenced by the front-end tricycles i saw and bacame obssessed with in Lima, Peru. In Lima these are an essential part of the formal and informal economies - amazing amounts of goods are transported and exchanged on these carts.I wanted to make one which could function as a trike and as a stand alone cart, so i worked on a hinge detail which allowed almost any standard 10-speed or city bike to be hooked up to the cart. There were a lot of issues to resolve and many were left unresolved in the end. I think mostly my desire to to do the competition was fueled by my desire to make one of these carts, specifically one adapted for nomadic city habitation. In the end i made a steel and OSB prototype, which worked fairly well, but was to heavy and needed much more detail development. I think a real model would consist of an aluminum frame with HDPE or fiberglass-composite panels (maybe fiberglass on both side of carboard sheets, like this).
photos:


The project wasn't submitted to the competition, but looking through the entries there were a few designing using similar schemes. Now the cart is sitting in my garage waiting to be chopped up and recycled. Someday i'll build more functional version... i need to invest in welding equipment first.

ok that's all the time i have for now... this will be continued in pt.2 and 3, then i'll write about my summer in holland, the fall semester, winter break, and everything from this semester.

check out the other blogs by current cranbrook students:
architecture dept

by the way, we all know the current cranbrook website design is terrible and they are apparently working on a new academy website, which was supposed to be online in november... but still no changes.

so the annual chair show is this month:
its called "Chairspray" which was Eric's brilliant idea. Its at the P.F. Gallery at 14 mile, just west of Main in Clawson for those who live in the area. The open show at the Forum gallery was great - lots of really great chairs from most all departments. Obviously Architecture, 3D, and metals probably had the most representation. My chair is pictured below. Its called "CrotchRock" and includes an album of music wirrten by musician/architect/friend Al Pagano. here is the description i wrote for the gallery:

“CrotchRock”� has its origins in our relationship to music and sound as physical phenomena even though their physical qualities are not visible. Music has the power to move us emotionally and has equally meaningful implications in social relationships and identities. The chair draws from several sources: courting rituals using mix-tapes, CD's and playlists, the graphic sexual content of contemporary hip-hop and rock music, the tension of bodily positions and movements normally only seen in private, now seen publicly in work-out equipment and facilities. The 15”� woofers were used to achieve maximum vibration and visual impact. They have a frequency range of 40Hz-4kHz so an album of music was composed by Al Pagano to fit within this range and to provide musical interpretations of the situation created by the chair.

detailed pictures of the entire process of construction and initial design model can be found at my flickr set.
Here are some pics of the finished chair at the opening in the Forum Gallery (click the picture to see the full size image at flickr):






andy
casey
dharmesh
ed
eric
jessica
john
marty
maryam
matt
mike
mikolaj
paul
thomas
veronica
yuji

I mentioned that Shan is taking over the trailer and adapting a design he has to the trailer. Its a huge water tank that will travel across the country. Today i saw him at the 4th semester reviews with a large (i think 1"=1') model of the trailer/tank made from laser-cut 1/4" steel and acrylic. it looked pretty nice.
but really why i am writing is because there is an article about it in the MetroTimes.

Cranbrook Metals
other work by Shan (scroll down to the bottom of the page)

eric found this in one of the thesis books

This is a project i did at the end of last semester which originated in the Charrette we did for the Fanfare fundraising dinner. I basically took my original placemat and rotated copies at 90deg. until i had four interconnected placemats. I modified the model a bit in sketchup and rhino so that it would join together more efficiently, but after assembling it, there was still some manual cutting and shaving that had to be done. the contours command in rhino is a nice way to slice a model, but i always forget to check all my dimensions to make sure everything is based on the same material thickness. anyway, it built it and then i built a small table which fit the exact dimensions of the placemat piece.

The table is about 1 inch lower than the table in our seminar room, which mean that once you put your plate on the 1" thick placemat, the plate will be at the same height as the other table... a detail that i didn't tell anyone about because it was really just for my own satisfaction. The table was rough and i was running low on funds (end of the semester) so i just covered it in the classic red-and-white-checkered tablecoth which seemed to be a nice touch.
The way the placemat works is that each item on the table has a holder/platform which emphasizes some ideas i have been thinking about (architecture/design as facilitator, floor a collector) and directs people's use of the table - bill would say it "choreographs" it.

Anyway, each person has a 1/8" minijack input and brings with them some musical input device - mp3 player, cd player, cassette, microphone -whatever, and plugs into the unit. All 4 channels are mixed equally so that each speaker outputs all four inputs(actually in the one i presented in my crit it didn't work this way because the speakers i ordered hadn't arrived yet so i had to wired the speakers in pairs).


The participants are free to change the volume of their input on their device and no instructions are given as to how to manage the airtime each person gets.
My interests where in several things: how music can act as communication, especially for things which might not normally be comminucated at the dinner table; how music can often be adopted as a major part of one's identity, but might not be revealed until well into a relationship; how mp3 players allow us to carry around, in a sense, our identities; and how people would manage this additional form of communication in a somewhat formal situation with equality of output. There are a few other minor aspects that were being explored, but those are the major concerns.
I have a video of two groups of people using it, but buzznet will not accept the codec i used to compress it. maybe youtube will work...

Anyway, i had two groups of people use it and the first was very excited and outgoing and had a lot of fun with it, which made me very happy. They found it to be a fun addition to the meal and they said it helped them to learn more about each other - things which normally wouldn't have been communicated. The second group overall seemed to find it as a distraction. They seemed to find it a bit awkward but eventually warmed up to it, though never as much as group 1. They had some similar comments about the experience, but overall they seemed not to enjoy it as much. I should probably do about 3 more groups to see what other kinds of responses it gets.

(some of these images look kind of strange because i changed the size a bit from the sizes provided by flickr - click on the images to see them properly at flickr)






andy
casey
dharmesh
ed
eric
jessica
john
marty
maryam
matt
mike
mikolaj
paul
thomas
veronica
yuji

So buzznet now hosts video (awesome) so i thought i would try this out.

This is a video of an 8'x8' section of 3/16" treadplate that we ripped off the deck of the trailer.

This is my new studio space, shared with john. My space is on the right.



the walls are folded out all the way now - this is how the rest of the studio looks.



this huge space is shared by yuji, mike, and casey. lots of room for them to build things, and for bill to store his materials.

Its really incredibly great to have so much space to work with. All the projects i want to do this semester will need lots of space, so this is perfect.

So i'll talk about the trailer project now...
The trailer is currently sitting in the corner of the parking lot by the art museum. Shan from the Metals department, who did an elective in architecture last semester and was crucial to the development and work done on the trailer, will be continuing the project as his own. The last plans i saw were to put a large somewhat sculptural water tank on top of it. I think john is going to help him with that too.

At the end of the semester, with about 3 weeks left to go, we were all trying to figure out what the hell to do with the thing.




There had been several proposals for the trailer that were individual projects, which is what the orginal idea was - to have the trailer be a collective site for the architecture students' work. I'll talk about my proposal's a little later.
After we made the bend in the trailer, which really only took about 5 days of work, we were all wondering what was going to happen next. At this point only about 3 or 4 people had individual project ideas to contribute so we decided it would be awkward to have a trailer worked on by 10+ people, but only 3 or 4 projects really happening on the thing. It was clear that we should all decide on a single unified concept/design which we could complete in 3 weeks. We had about 3 charrettes to produce designs and Matt, after breaking his hand trying to drill holes in the trailer, decided to take on the role of project manager, which everyone agreed was a good idea. After a few crits on trailer design proposals, which really got us nowhere, matt appointed people to specific tasks. Yuji and i were put in charge of coming up with a design that everyone would love and that we could build in 2 weeks.
At the presentation of that design, Shan, John, and i think someone else showed up with some designs also. Everyone agreed that none of them were very compelling. The problem was that there was really no unified or solid idea behind anything - it was mostly just sculptural form-making, with some visual or spatial effects as bonus features. That night we had a little 'pep rally' kind of thing with cheers and everything (no lie). We were all totally pumped to just finish this thing even if was not really going to be a very interesting project.
Over the next few days, pretty much everyone except john and shan changed their minds. We all helped grinding a bit more, but really john and shan did the rest of the work. Everyone else with the project decided it would be a better use of time to spend the remaining two weeks developing some individual work to talk about at the end-of-the-semester critiques.

At the and of the first day of the critiques we talked about the trailer. There was basically silence from the first years and several of the second years didn't even bother coming (which i thought was kind of lame). The critics seemed to want us to defend our work, but we didn't really think it was worthwhile. So then Ken Kaplan tried to get another pep rally going so we'll get it finished... not happening. Bill explained that the project was dead, its not going anywhere, and we all understood what a tremendous opportunity it was, but in reality it just wasn't going to happen, ever. We tried to talk about the nature of Cranbrook and group projects, the different design schemes, the work we did, the places it would have gone, but all of it was kind of like a eulogy for the dead trailer (which had even been painted black the day before). It was rough and somewhat embarassing hour, but we all learned a lot from prject in some way or another.

It was not a complete waste of time. I think what we did was nice. In the scale of the studio space it was kind of a nice little pavillion we turned it into, with its own strange beauty. But its definitely not something we felt was material for a nation-wide tour to universities and museums. In fact, Casey and I noticed that as it sits out there in the parking lot (taking up 3 parking spaces), it actually looks kind of sad - like a large dead animal carcass swept over to the edge or the road.

Some pics from the big bend:





















The bend was put in the trailer for a few reasons. We were frustrated and bored with it being a large elevated flat surface which things either to go on or under and we were all very interested in what was happening with the structure, which couldn't be seen unless you got on top of or underneath. We felt that it this point the trailer (as it stood without any project attached yet) would be an intrusion into a space that was simply something to look at. We, at the very least, wanted people to engage it in a very simple architectural way - as a space or shelter to inhabit.
We worked with several laser-cut cardboard models to choose angles we wanted to use for the bend. We chose one the allowed several people to walk under/into the trailer and at the same time emphsized the long bone structure of its mid-section. One of the main ideas was that the space created underneath would be perfect opportunity for several of the individual proposals that were being worked on at the time. The bend divided the trailer into 3 sections that could be encountered/expereinced in 3 different ways. Lastly, the bend also got of rid of the "wall effect" -the hassle of having walk all the way around the thing just to see the other side. Now viewers can weave their way around and through it in a very nice way.

Grinding is dirty work:

me

john

here are few pictures of the trailer as it appeared in the critique, taken by John. These can be seen larger at John's Flickr set.












Mainly, i think eveyone is happy that its out of the studio and we can now focus on our own work again.

Originally the trailer was going to be something like this:


A sort of Miesian pre-fab site for the work which Bill said he was going to fabricate, and for which he had ordered two very large SIP's.

After some deliberation and worrying about saftey by Bill, the containter space was pushed down to a milky acrylic surface covering the trailer which would be laser cut, lit, and manipulated in several ways. Later we cut off the sides as you have seen, and the we decided to but in the bend, and in the end we scrapped the acrylic idea altogether.



Here are some of the proposals I produced for my indivual work with the trailer:

I was interested in the travelling of the trailer as a social networking tool. I saw it as an opportunity to have people intereact on many levels - with one another in person, across state lines, and perhaps online as well. Eric also was interested in how the trailer could work in person and online and so he began developing a gps tracking photo-booth that would upload geographic-data-encoded photos to a website which would track the trailer along its journey. He has much more experience and interest in that than i so I decided to work more on the other forms of possible interaction.

First i was intersted in sparking conversation and one of my ideas was to have a stereo and speaker system on the trailer that would blast a 9-second clip from Journey's "anyway you want it" when someone would push a random button on the vending machine (which was going to be at the rear of the trailer). I dont really have pictures of that, but it developed into another project that I am currently working on, which will be submitted for the annual cranbrook chair show. I'll show some pics of that soon.

Next i was intersted in the audience, which would be almost entirely architecture students and architects. I wanted to expand the space of the trailer with something that deployed out of its side and created a place for people to gather for some kind of communal activity. I designed a 6-person pencil (of which i made a 4-person sketch version) which was a direct way of bringing in multiple forms of communication. I then somewhat obsessively designed a unit which would ride underneath the trailer and would be deployed by six people who wanted to use it in the auduence. The unit was a box which unfolded in a floor, out of which unfolded two benches, a table, and a scroll of paper.








I was only half-way excited about this idea,and it didn't do so well in the critique. So i decided to scrap it all together (though i think i am kind of excited about it again) and came up with another idea: haircuts. I was trying to think about other semi-universal aspects of humans that, when somehow addressed on the trailer could begin to break down the borders between people in a very simple way. I thought, "everyone needs a haircut sometime." So i ordered a RoboCut vacuum-haircutting system from Ebay. I tried it out on yuji a bit to get the hang of it. He ended up giving himself the haircut altogether because i wasn't very good at it.



But there are many amazing things about it including A)you can give yourself a hircut with no mess! and B)it is shaped like the guns in Logan's Run - which is reason enough to buy one. And how can you resist these images?





So i worked on a tray system that would hold the robocut system and be tucked away inside the trailer during travel. At each stop the trays would deploy out along with some seats and then the whole system would be plugged into a power source and its ready to begin "chopping" (that was the theme for the semester) some hair. Furthermore, i wanted to redirect the flow of the cut hair so that the trays also double as the tanks for the cut hair. They would be made of clear acrylic so that the people using and viewing them could see the hair that was chopped from previous locations around the country. Perhaps I would ask that people make a tape line or mark indicating which strata of collected hair belonged to their location.



For Eric's photobooth project he also needed a seat that could deploy out of the side of the trailer while being completely hidden during travel, so we designed and fabricated a semi-functional prototype out of steel and automotive shocks. The final version would have used two shocks and had a mechanical push-button deployment system and it was going to work beautifully. I was really excited about that and i hope to use the same system in some project in the future. The most awesome part of making this prototype was learning how to bend/forge steel. We bent 1/2"x2" bars and some 1/4" plates to make the clips that atached everything to the trailer. I really enjoyed making it and Eric is great to work with.





So after it was decided that there would be no individual projects Andy and I collaborated on a few designs for the trailer, all of which were pretty bad. I'll only show one because it involved my very half-assed learning of Rhino's 'loft' tool, which is nice. So the idea is that it would be made of a small-diameter perforated metal on a supporting water-jet cut steel structure. The front part on top would have been a public gathering area for open discussion or even public addresses. As it moves over the bend it turns into an inclosed space with seating for more private meetings or sheltered lounging. pretty basic, and pretty bad... but it was my first attempt at modelling in Rhino. I kind of cringe when i see it now.





I have become very used to modelling in Sketchup was is a great but very limited program. I made a sketchup model of the bent trailer for everyone in studio to use for developing their designs.



A few more cardboard models and critiques later, Yuji and I produced this design, which i am more fond of, but still not really excited about. It could have been fun to build though. Its a wood deck in a 1/4" steel frame supported by a series of 1/4" steel ribs. It didn't do very well in the crit, obviously.


t




Finally, here's a pic of the trailer being towed to its current resting place, the parking lot.



So, there you have it.

I'll post any pictures I get of Shan's continued work on it.

This is a ridiculously long post.

andy
casey
Dharmesh
ed
eric
jessica
john
maryam
matt
mike
mikolaj
paul
thomas
veronica
yuji

today was the first day of class at CAA, although 3 of my housemates are still not back yet. Each department does things a little differently around here. Architecture tends to be the play by the book/traditional department when it comes to scheduling.

I got back on in town on wednesday after visiting family and friends in Tulsa and Dallas and as i drove by the studio i was thinking, "that damn trailer better be out of the studio!" I then saw that it was actually being towed out of the studio as i was driving by. nice.

Though, its not going anywhere for now except the corner of the parking lot by the art museum. In my next post i'll talk about how the trailer project ended- it might bring a little insight into the nature of cranbrook.
I'll also speak about the final crits, my work, etc., and show some images.

Today we moved the walls back into their perpendicular postions and we moved into our huge spaces. its sooooo nice to have so much space to work with. I think i have about 5 times as much studio space as i did in undergrad. I'll post a few pics of that soon.

its good to be back in studio

as always, check out my classmates' blogs:
andy
casey
ed
eric
jessica
john
maryam
matt
mike
mikolaj
paul
thomas
veronica
yuji

so besides the trailer project (see previous posts), and fanfare, I've done a few other things this semester which i'm excited about.
I made a 4-person pencil, which was a sketch model for a 6-person pencil that i want to make next semester.

I learned how to use the vacuum forming machine in the 3D-design department early in the semester and made a wall-mounted ipod holder for my desk, in which i still need to cut ahole for the scrool wheel:

also there was that anual raft regatta in which every department makes a raft in 24 hours based on rules written by the previous year's winning department. We made a steel tube raft that used 4 tires from the trailer as the floatation devices. it was really heavy and slow (i was one of the 3 people rowing on the raft). plus that race was at night and it was ridiculously cold outside to be in a lake.

casey even made these paddles in the shop:

I also made a placemat for the fanfare charrette which places a speaker over/next to your meal and a holder for an ipod so that you can listen to music whilst you dine. Since i have stopped working on the trailer, a variation of this for 4 people has become my first real project at cranbrook. I'll post pics of that soon, for now here are images of the original for 1-person. It was also my first project to use the laser cutter.





Other than these, my time was spent devising/designing schemes for the trailer, which perhaps i'll post next, with some shots of the trailer as it has been finished.
Its snowing nearly everyday here, and its cold, very cold. i am getting used to it and i like it qite a bit actually. The studio has been very active lately as everyone prepares for final reviews. Our guest critics are supposed to be Ted Krueger and his ex-partner Ken Kaplan, who once published a pamphlet architecture book of their work. Should be good...


check out the work:
andy
casey
ed
eric
jessica
john
maryam
matt
mike
mikolaj
paul
thomas
veronica
yuji