Our Kickstarter campaign is now live

WeWantToLearn.net has a live Kickstarter Campaign. Please help us bring to life three beautiful students projects for this year’s Burning Man festival and receive some exciting rewards such as the T-Shirts shown below with the three digital designs: http://kck.st/1ESCVFb

kickstarter-badge-back-300x300

Kickstarter

Left: Infinity Clothing, Middle: Reflection Clothing, Right: Bismuth Clothing
Left: Infinity Clothing, Middle: Reflection Clothing, Right: Bismuth Clothing

The Petal Hypothesis

The petal has long been a surround for the reproductive parts of the flower, its varied forms and designs attract numerous species of animals and insects, enabling its existence to grow and spread. As a result, the petal will not only encounter pollen of its own species, but also that of many differing plants.

Taking people as the pollen. This caravanserai will attract people both day and night, providing a space for play and discussion, encouraging communication, observation and interaction.1.1 model an aerial planThe Petal Hypothesis sits expressively within its setting. Exposing the raw structure of the plywood ‘petals by day and revealing the elaborate display of the EL wires by night.

Configured in a circular array, each ‘petal’ is construct from just two ‘pods’ which in themself only take 1 sheet of plywood to construct. Connected together to generate one ‘2d’ curve, the end points then bend around to complete the monocoque structure.

These pods are then mirrored to generate the ‘petal’ form and anchored to the ground. The act of fixing the extreme widths and mirroring the pods minimises the natural flex within the ‘pod’ and enables it to be a strong physical structure.

In place of the EL wires, a cloth stress skin has been incorporated to the top tier of petals. This not only provides shading during the day but also absorbs the light from the EL wires and distributes it across the whole surface.sequential diagrams

The Petal Hypothesis 1:20 ModelInteractivity:

Observe – Sit around and within the ‘petals’ to observe the activities at its centre.

Inhabit – Climb the structure and occupy one of the many vantage points within the ‘petals’

Connect – Share memories and congregate either on mass at its centre or privately within the petals

Night Render

Interim Portfolio Review

We just finished the interim portfolio review, students submitted their work so far in the form of a beautiful portfolio. We asked for 25 digital pages, Two beautiful A2+ prints, a working portfolio and an abstract. Here are some of the most complete portfolios we’ve seen:

Mark Simpson's portfolio
Mark Simpson’s portfolio, a diamond in the desert
George Guest's portfolio
George Guest’s portfolio, The Orbit
Ieva Ciocyte's portfolio
Ieva Ciocyte’s portfolio, The Flame Tower
William Garforth-Bless's portfolio
William Garforth-Bless’s portfolio, The Lotus Flower
Sarah Shuttleworth's portfolio
Sarah Shuttleworth’s portfolio, The Islamic Folding
Josh Haywood's portfolio
Josh Haywood’s portfolio, The Sun Temple
Llorna Jackson's portfolio
Lorna Jackson’s portfolio, The Anchored Fabric Cloud

Black Light

Black Light from Michael Clarke on Vimeo.

This is a walkthrough of my proposal for an art pavilion at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. The pavilion is a network of tubes filled with water and a fluorescent dye that slowly travels from a central tank around the woven structure. UV lights housed on steel supporting elements set off the fluorescence. This model was an earlier design and as such has since been refined – a better video of the final proposal will follow.

Please excuse the jerky camera and the very dodgy shadows (I didn’t set a target for the sun direction): this was my first attempt at an animation using Maya. These issues will all be improved on the final proposal animation including the addition of sound and people.

The model was constructed in Grasshopper for Rhino and then imported to Autodesk’s Maya to animate. It was composed in Adobe After Effects.