srpLAB - Santiago R. Perez

Reblogged from FuturesPlus:

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Today we are coming at you with another fabrication studio that has allowed students and professors to delve into the trending world or architectural fabrication.  Over past couple years using and understanding the dynamics that tools and the modeling programs can bring to the world of architecture is increasingly important.  Digital Fabrication actually in itself has become a craft, as professor Santiago Perez and his students at University of Arkansas, Fay Jones School of Architecture know all too well. 

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Inspiring blog post on srpLAB – Santiago R. Perez by futuresplus.wordpress.com

Luminous Windscape Pavilion

“The Windshape pavilion by nARCHITECTS stretched across the limestone walls of Lacoste, France like a luminous billowing spider’s web. The temporary pavilion was commissioned by the Savannah College of Art and Design for their Provence Campus. The net-like structures were used by students and townspeople alike as a cultural center and meeting space.

Perched at the top of Lacoste on the castle of the Marquis de Sade, the Windshape pavilion was composed of thread-like walls made from a simple assortment of materials – including white plastic pipes, aluminum braces, and threaded string. Woven from gauzy nets, the pavilion was designed to move and morph in the local wind, creating a spectacular art installation for the locals to enjoy. The surfaces of the pavilion would ripple, move, and even make noise, depending on the speed of the winds that blew through it.

Over the course of five weeks, SCAD students worked closely with nARCHITECTS to install Windshape. The netted arcs took shape through bending and tension, and they were held in place by steel structural collars that ensured the structure’s sturdiness. The strings were woven to provide enclosed spaces as well as more open areas to vary the usage of the different parts of the temporary pavilion.

The resulting pavilion was a translucent web embellishing the Medieval architecture of the historic town. Taking advantage of these new meeting points, the town used the space was used to host concerts, exhibitions and ceremonies. At night, Windshape was illuminated and visible to neighboring towns miles away.”

via ArchDaily

 

Aetherius: the rhythm of wind

Aetherius: the rythm of wind

Aetherius: the rythm of wind

Aetherius: interaction with participants

Aetherius top view

Aetherius inside view

Aetherius prefabrication

Aetherius on site construction

Kite wings details

Air flow

Vibrations are the very basis of life. Wherever we look in Nature we see self organising and self regulating systems that are in a state of constant vibration, oscillation, undulation and pulsation. Inspiration and expiration of the lungs, systole and diastole of the heart are only two basic examples.

The concept of Aetherius is to translate vibrations into a self organised and self regulated structure. Aetherius makes the participants experience an ephemeral ultra-light architecture in constant movement.

The artwork moves to the rhythm of the wind and becomes a living structure.
It is a visual experience as well as being an interactive experience. As the artwork moves, the participants react to its unpredictable behaviour. Not only Aetheius moves with the windy climatic conditions, but it can also be animated by the particpants.
In summary it is a delicate ephemeral structure that reflects the subtle nature of a vibrating system.

A Ladder to the Burning Clouds

A ladder to the burning clouds

Hanging on

Climbing through the ladder to the burning cloud

A ladder to the burning clouds

Time lapse

Flight of the tetroon (test)

A burning cloud module

Balloonwrap

In reference to economy of materials, rapid deployment, self sufficiency, interactivity and leave no trace aspects of the ten day Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert I have explored vacuumatically prestressed structures (vacuumatics) to create a temporary structure.

Using minimal materials, a Balloonwrap cloud would encourage maximum participation during the construction and throughout the festival. An ephemeral soft cloud like landscape, where participants delight in modifying the shape as well as being able to interact with the structure by lying down, dancing on, climbing and sitting inside the enclosure.

As documented in the film above, Balloonwrap is a vacuumatic structure made using Polythene sheets at 63 microns, 5m x 3.65m, with balloons as the filling. A large scale model here is made rigid enough to span gaps, flexible enough to bend back on itself and strong enough to act as a seat or even a bed.

The material could therefore be used as the floor, wall, roof and seating elements in a continuous loop for any installation with the added benefit that it would have good thermal insulation as well as solar reflective potential (using silver/white reflective balloons/opaque film).

The main advantages of Balloonwrap are form flexibility and adaptability. An important factor that determines its adaptability is the flexibility control. Without any negative pressure (0% vacuum) the balloons inside the polythene enclosure possess hardly any consistency and are able to flow freely inside this skin. By increasing the amount of vacuum pressure the consistency of the balloons gradually increases, resulting in a more or less plastic behaviour of the structure. This enables the structure to be shaped while keeping its newly given form. Finally, in fully deflated state (100% vacuum) the Balloonwrap becomes rigid, with balloons used as a filling in my experiments, it is possible to climb the rigid load-bearing structure and sit comfortably! The reversibility of this rigidifying process enables the Balloonwrap to be re-shaped all over again.

Tremor Vitae Animation

This is the animation that I developed for my Digirep Module at the University. The story is about an old robot that is brought to life with vibrations. The initial set is of course the Burning man Festival.
Mostly everything is done in Cinema 4D and after effects.

Buena Vista!

Tremor Vitae animation by Maria Valente

Centrifugal Pavilion by Clavel Arquitectos

How much does your building weigh?, asked Buckminster Fuller. Now again the curator of the Biennale Terence Riley asks the same question to all six international teams invited to the project “Ultra Lightweight Village” for the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong biennale of urbanism\architecture.

Clavel Arcquitectos’ installation is composed by three circles of waterproof light fabric of 7.8, 6.4 and 5.4 meter of diameter spin around their axis at only 1.5 turns per second. In the biggest one we can reach to cantilever of nearly 4 meters with an only 2 mm roof thickness. It is interesting to check how similar is the movement with the animal aquatic one. Thanks to the rotation the gravity apparently disappears and only aerodynamical forces shape the fabric. The soft waves produced on the surface create a smooth breeze that improves the thermical conditions behind during the hot and sunny days.

The pavilion creates a specific place for children that can experiment with the centrifugal forces, generate electricity to open the structures and activate the lighting. The faster the children chairs rotate the brighter the structure will be.

Above: Centrifugal Pavilion by Clavel Arquitectos

Click on the following link for the full video:

http://www.dezeenscreen.com/2011/12/21/pabellon-ultraligero-centrifugo-by-clavel-arquitectos-filmed-by-cristobal-palma/

Theo Jansen, Strandbeest

Theo Jansen’s animated works are a fusion of art and engineering. He has been creating wind-walking examples of artificial life since 1990. His . The basic design of the so called Strandbeest uses multiple pairs of legs set on a central crankshaft, which produces a galloping-herd effect.

Jansen cares about the environment and produces his living structures with recycled items. The ‘stomach’ of the sculpture is made with retired plastic bottles that capture the air pumped by the wind. To harness the wind, Jansen employs bicycle pumps, plastic tubing and rubber rings. Large flapping wings gather the most wind, allowing for its storage.

One of the most impressive features of the kinetic artwork is the locomotion. The strandbeest walk with legs rather than roll on wheels, as would be expected of an inanimate object, in order to more effectively cross large areas of sand. The ‘hips’ of the strandbeest remain level, while the legs kick forth, without lurching forward.

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Reuben Margolin waves

Reuben Margolin is an American-born artist and sculptor known for his mechanically-driven kinetic sculptures of wave-forms. He creates large-scale kinetic sculptures that use pulleys and motors to recreate the complex movements and structures we see in nature. Using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects, Reubens artwork is diverse, with sculptures ranging from tiny to looming, motorized to hand-cranked.

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Marco Cochrane’s Bliss Dance

Below is an interview of Marco Cochrane, the sculptor who designed Bliss Dance, the 40 feet (12meters) high dancing woman at the Burning Man Festival 2011. People used his I-phone app to control the lighting inside the art piece.

Above: The Bliss Dance Sculpture at Burning Man with Light controlled by I-Phone App.