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Burning Man Art Grants 2012 Submission: Black Rock Market by Luka Kreze

Above is my submission for 2012 Burning Man Art Grants.

Black Rock Market is an inflatable structure made entirely out of thick polyethylene membrane which is dug into the sand. After it is inflated from underneath it emerges from the ground creating a spectacular event to watch. It uses sand as an anchor, hence no additional support is required. Sand is used for shading as well (membrane is covered with a sticky material in areas where shading is required and so sand sticks to the membrane, creating very beautiful natural shading)

Market provides fresh vegetables to the visitors (grown in the greenhouse area) and other refrigerated food (refrigerated in sand refrigerators which use evaporative cooling and are hung from the ceiling). All this in exchange for goods which the visitors bring. These are stored in a storage area in order to be sold next year to buy seeds and to cover the expenses of running a market.

There is also a communal area in the central courtyard and a hanging net above it for relaxation.

I hope you enjoy the project!

Pinch me am I dreaming? Burning Man Art Grant Images

The title of my proposal for the Burning Man festival, ‘pinch me, am I dreaming?’ is a play on words. The festival is know for its ‘trippy’ nature, self induced or brought on by the heat and lack of water in Desert conditions. The use of the proposal is a chill out zone, a resting space or dream tent. The structure is made of a system of pinch points, hence ‘pinch me’. It also refers to the system, which almost unbelievably seems to effortlessly float across the Nevada, held by the tension system.

Stick and Fabric Evolution through Physical testing

Below is a pictorial timeline of how my Burning Man project has progressed and developed through physical modelling. It began with a regular grid which has developed to be able to control the parameters (such as column length and fabric tension) to create an arched structure. The form proposed for the Burning Man Festival is a double Arched system, which works with the axis of the Playa. (see portfolio for further explanation)

Building Fashion.

Design in all disciplines is becoming more and more centered around digital tools. Previously very specific manual skills were prioritised, however increasingly digital tools are being learnt, skills that can be applied across disciplines, such as Architecture, Fashion and Industrial design.

With this in mind and having always had a interest for the body, textiles, and dealing in 1:1 scale, I recently joined the a AA Paris visiting school, ‘BUILDING FASHION’, which, used various Architectural techniques and 3D Modelling software to develop garments.

We began by material testing, both physically and digitally, taking the opportunity to utilise and develop my Grasshopper and Kangaroo skills on the surface of the body. I looked at the idea of tenacity and opacity and translating it into a simple material system. I developed a simple strip system, which when manipulated increased the complexity of the elements, creating interesting geometric shapes and performative functions.

Colourscape Festival by Cwmni Colourscape and Eye Music Trust

Below is an amazing reference for anyone looking either at inflatable structures, light, colours, acoustics, performing arts etc. The Project  is entitled “Colourscape” and is organised several times a year by Eye Music Trust while actual spaces are designed and built by the renowned artistic partnership of Peter Jones and Lynne Dickens (see video below).

By linking music, colour, light, space and movement the festival aims to give new dimensions to public perception and new understanding of contemporary music and performing arts. Even though exterior of the building (especially from aerial view) is not particularly aesthetically pleasing, the effect of sunlight and colours is unbelievable while you are inside. Also, pay attention to how cleverly they solved the issue of entering an inflatable building.

Another quite recent similar example (on a larger scale though) is Anish Kapoor’s “Leviathan” in Grand Palais, Paris (see pictures below).

Above: ”COLOURSCAPE” by Cwmni Colourscape

 

 Above: ”LEVIATHAN” by Anish Kapoor

 

Olympiapark München

These are photos from my trip to Munich Olympic Stadium, designed by Günter Behnisch and Frei Otto for the 1972 Olympic Games.

The trip included a walk up over the top of the lightweight cable-net roof structure of the main stadium.

The main drivers for the design of the event spaces were the desire to have a ‘green’ games, a compact games, and use the notion of transparency and light. The green element of the games is manifested in the fact that the stadium and other events spaces were set in a large expanse of newly created parkland [the site was previously an airfield related to the adjacent BMW factory]. The compact element came through in that the athletes were able to walk from their accommodation to all events except sailing.

The idea of transparency and light was born primarily out of two factors:

- A desire to have a set of venues that contrasted absolutely with the heavy monumental Nazi architecture of the 1936 Olympics

-The fact that the 1972 Olympics were the first to be broadcast using colour TV cameras, which took 8 seconds to adjust from shooting in sunlight to shooting in shade. The transparent roof of the stadium minimised the contrast between shaded and non-shaded areas, allowing continuous filming as the cameras panned around.

The structure itself is based on a cable net pulled into shape by cables attached to large hollow steel columns. These columns take so much compressive force that they have to rest on 35m deep concrete foundations. Protection from rain is the primary function of the roof over the stadium, and for this purpose it is covered in 4mm plexi-glass sheets.

As shown in the photos below, these are attached directly to the cable net grid by flexible neoprene connectors about 100mm long. The sheets are clamped along their edges to neoprene strips which create 100mm wide flexible movement joints connecting them to each other. The  plexi-glass sheets currently in use were put in during a refurbishment in 1994-99, and were taken up to the roof as 3m x 3m sheets which were then cut to size in-situ.

The thinness of the plexi-glass combined with the flexible movement joints allow the cladding to move as the structure moves with wind, snow and thermal expansion loading. The steel columns rest on rubber lined ball and socket joints, allowing them to move freely in every direction. The tops of the columns can move by up to around 1m with large snow loading. A demonstration of the flexible tensile nature of the roof came when we were told to jump up and down on the walkway running over it – the whole roof behaved like a trampoline, deflecting about 200-300mm vertically as we jumped.

The swimming pool is the only enclosed building that I photographed the interior of. Also on the site is the indoor arena. The interior space is defined by a tensile membrane that hangs about 1m below the cable net. The walls are made from curtain walling supported by exterior space-frames. The connection between the membrane roof and the curtain walling needs to be flexible enough to take up the movement of the cable net, and is provided by an ETFE cushion.

 

Membrane Bunching

Here is an animation of membrane bunching I have been working on with help from Arthur. The membrane is suspended from 4 outer hanging points and 1 central. Triangulating springs are added to the mesh to force it to retain its shape and bunch like a real fabric. In order to achieve the complex folding that occurs in fabrics, the vertical unary force is not applied universally to all points, but is rather applied to only the paths within the fabric along which the majority of the load passes. This was calculated through earlier research. When the fabric first drops at the beginning of the video these force paths are visible.

2010 AA Biodynamic Structures Workshop

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These are some pictures from the 2010 AA Biodynamic Structures Workshop.

The project concept developed by our team was an interactive acoustic wall that reacts to different sound frequencies. The higher the frequency sensed the more the balloons inflate and the brighter the LEDs enclosed in the balloons become. The balloons inflation is controlled by valves that open and close through the use of servos.
We had one night and half a day to build the whole prototype and in the end unfortunately it was not fully functional.