1

DIGITAL DESIGN & FABRICATION SM1, 2016 SLEEPING POD PROJECT

HANYA HOANG758447

JOSHUA BATTERHAM RUSSO - GROUP 4

2 3

4 5

1.0 Ideation - Object 1.1 Measured Drawings 1.2 System Analysis & Assembly 1.3 Digital Model 1.4 Sketch Designs

2.0 Design 2.1 Personal Space Research 2.2 Precedent Research 2.3 Design Proposal 1 2.4 Design Proposal 2 2.5 Prototyping 2.6 Testing Effects

3.0 Fabrication 3.1 Design Development 3.2 Fabrication Development 3.3 Partial Prototypes 3.4 1:1 Prototypes 3.5 Optimization - Pattern 3.6 Optimization: Shape & Blobbyness 3.7 Assembly Diagrams 3.8 Final Digital Model 3.9 Final Prototype 3.10 Fabrication Sequence

4.0 Reflection

5.0 Appendix 5.1 Credit 5.2 Images 5.3 Bibliography

6 7

1.0 INTRODUCTIONin this subject we explored the process and workflow from original ideas to producing physical artefacts while incorporating both material craft and modern technology

our brief was to create a structurally sound sleeping pod for one person, which respond to personal space and creates volume

8 9

1.0 IDEATIONobject - party whistle- material system - skin & bone

lecture 1 introduced us to the idea of perceiving the world as information (Loh, 2016).

we learned that objects can be systemized into three mate-rial systems: panel & fold, section & profile and skin & bone that define it’s rules and logic.the object i investigated was the party whistle with a skin&bone structure which combines tension and lateral forces.

10 11

1.1 MEASURED DRAWINGS 1.2 SYSTEM ANALYSIS & ASSEMBLY DRAWING

figure 1.2 party whistle activated

the measured drawings help understand the object qualities, con-

veys the ‘objective truth of it (Heath, Heath and Jensen, 2000). Hav-

ing to represent the information about the object in this manner

forces you to analyze it and figure out how it functions.

the assembly drawing help understand the moving

object since the object is composed of synthetic

materials such the foil, which makes the

measurements not absolute (Heath, Heath and

Jensen, 2000) .

figure 1.1 measured drawings of the object figure 1.2 assembly drawings of the object

12 13

creating reconfigured object was a way to investigate rolling surfaces of a flat material and how it

can be manipulated with a compression force of the wire.

1.3 DIGITAL MODEL 1.4 SKETCH MODELS

figure 1.3 digital model of the object

translating information into Rhino was the introduction to the relationship between the

physical object and modelling software.

figure 1.4 photos of sketch models

14 15

1.5 SKETCH DESIGNS

figure1.5a sketch design 1 - rolling screen

figure1.5b sketch design 2 - hanging spring

figure1.5c sketch design 3 - flower pod

figure1.5d illustration by S. Skop, http://www.nlib.ee/html/digi/rmt_ill/autorid/skop_s/P7ial_Liisi/b/GEA_6358_001.jpg

1. my first concept was iterating the movement of the tube - how an

object can be strategically rolled out and back again. i liked the sim-

plicity of this concept but at the same time it was quite limiting in rela-

tion to further development of the design

2. second concept explored the idea of the bone structure spring back

to form which was inspired by the wire of the party whistle. i found that

even though this concept explored an interesting aspect of the mate-

rial system it doesn’t respond to personal space or body as much

3. my final concept was inspired by the Thumbelina - rescaling an organic

form of nature to the human size. We investigated the abstract notion of

personal space in the tutorials, how it cannot be measured and varies from

circumstances (Sommer, 1969). This informed my final sketch idea of the abil-

ity to moderate the system towards your personal space, depending on how

much seclusion is being needed.

16 17

2.0 DESIGNTEAM MEMBERS: GINA, RILEY, GEORGINA

for this module we translated the skin of the material system into the fabric that creates specific aesthetic qualities that inform different levels of personal space and the bone of the system into a structural component of the design suggest the locality of the object but can still be moulded to place.

we investigated the malleability of the system to fit one’s needs for personal space and how material effects can support that.

18 19

precedent that helped us understand the material system most

related to our designs was the Burnham Pavilion by Zaha Hadid

Architects. The most important thing we took from this were that

the bone structure is the main definition of the form and func-

tionality of the final object even though it is covered behind the

skin.

defining personal space limits depending on the loca-

tion was a big part of our design. We figured out the

specific spaces that we were potentially going to use

and that influenced a lot how we researched atmo-

spheric qualities of our future design. Testing how e per-

son feels when sleeping surrounded with students and

the difference between the level of comfort of a stand-

ing person versus a sitting person.

another aspect of the pavilion was aesthetic qualities of the

fabric that can be projected onto it to change the perception

of the whole pavilion. The use of fabric in itself is a way of creat-

ing forms that follow the forces applied to it (Hadid, 2009). This

precedent taught us the importance of chosing the material

and going with a tensile fabric we are able to come up with

non-arbituary interesting forms.

we investigated the environment qualities that are com-

fortable to a person trying to fall asleep - this decision

informed out locality and the way that we approached

blocking out things such as noise or distracting views

2.2 PRECEDENT RESEARCH2.1 PERSONAL SPACE RESEARCH

figure 2.1a personal space mind map

figure 2.1b sleeping mind map

figure 2.2a precedent photograph of wire structure, http://www.archdaily.com/33110/burnham-pavilion-zaha-hadid

figure 2.1c precedent photograph at night, http://www.archdaily.com/33110/burnham-pavilion-zaha-hadid

20 21

2.3 DESIGN PROPOSAL 1

sketch design 1 sketch design 2

final sketch design - combined 1 & 2our first approach investigated the mouldability of the skin to a person and adaptable foldability of the

whole structure.

we decided that our first idea didn’t explore personal

space as much, so we wanted to incorporate different

material effects into the design by having distinct panels. finally, we combined our previous designs to come up with a new

one. this was a good technique to bring in all the desirable aspects

and consolidate them into one cohesive design

digitizing ideas helped figuring out how

panels could potentially move

figure 2. 3a pod against the wall (drawing credit: Riley Sherman) figure 2. 3b pod frint view (drawing credit: Riley Sherman) figure 2. 3c pod on body (drawing credit: Riley Sherman)

figure 2. 3d digitized blob figure 2. 3e blob on body (drawing credit: Riley

22 23

2.4 TESTING EFFECTS

figure 2.4a woven paper - plays on light and creates interesting pattern when manipulated figure 2.4b a stiffer material - this didn’t tear outside the edges compared to the woven paper figure 2.4c transparent paper - creates a screen by blurring the view, results in a calming effect figure 2.4d reveals the form of the object behind it when put against it really close

exploring how different materials can create different effects. we learned that materiality reveals itself more through photography and good lighting while making them black and white helps to highlight the form and feel of the material (Heath, Heath and Jenson, 2000)

we didn’t end up using any of these materials, since we moved forward with using a uniform material for the object, but these prototypes helped us define specific material effects that we wanted to achieve with our sleeping pod.

24 25

2.5 PROTOTYPING

producing a prototype was an essential part of our design process since it al-

lowed us to test the physical object, twisting and moulding it in various ways

that would not have been revealed in drawing or digital modelling.

fluidity

adaptability

malleability

figure 2.5a wrapping blob prototype

figure 2.5b blob prototypes in different forms/uses

2.6 DESIGN PROPOSAL 2

digital development in Rhino - applying body mesh, of our previous sketch designs increasing the scale to a whole body, to see how it could enclose the whole body

figure 2.6 digital model of the blob on body mesh figure 2.5c scale prototype of the blob

26 27

3.0 FABRICATIONTEAM MEMBERS: GINA, RILEY, GEORGINA

in this module we were introduced to the process of moving from chosing successful prototypes into design fabrication. our process was heavily dependant on physical testing, nonetheless we discovered that design process worked best when we incorporated digital prototypes into the process itself and not just using it to represent the final design decisions.

for our development, we investigated finding a rule system for producing a pattern and found out that systemizing the object produces a much more cohesive and logical design.

28 29

deciding to use voronoi - a specific rule set for perforation - was a decision that resolved our problem of not having a systemized de-sign.it also allowed us to use diigital prototypes to develop voronoi patterns, which was a much faster way of working

3.1 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT - BLOBBYNESS

figure 3.1a testing different wing blob shapes

3.1 COLOUR + DENSITY

figure 3.1b blob intensity diagrams

figure 3.1c colour combinations - we discovered later that diagrammatically doing the colour is not as

accurate since the fabrication will heavily depend on materials available and the way it turns out is very

different in a physical prototype

3.2 FABRICATION DEVELOPMENT

figure 3.2a fabric dye samples figure 3.2b fabric after being laser cut

figure 3.2laser cut fabric after being washed

testing the fabric dye was our choice since we didn’t find find any available colours of the material used - flannelette - that we particularly liked. testing the dye was instrumen-tal in learning and getting comfortable with the technique, especially later on with our design to achieve a specific tone of the colour. we experimented with red and blue dyes - blue created a really nice calming shade that we used for the inside whereas red, even though we quite liked the dark red for the outside, was discontinued so we had to find a substitution for it. the dying techniques we tested turned out really well but we discovered that it is hard to carry that through in a much bigger scale.

testing out the fabrication sequence was an essential way of revealing potential problems we could run into.making sure that the material we chose was safe to laser cut, we decided at first to dye it after laser cutting, however we found out that the material is very fragile and washing it completely tears the voronoi pattern; therefore we optimized our process and decided to dye the fabric after having it laser cut - luckily the day didn’t affect the material quality

at this stage of design we have learned that articulation of ideas needs to be very clear and that’s why we pushed further our ‘blobby’ form and tested iterations of it.

digramming was a good way of consolidating concepts into a form. through sketches we we able to connect our two ideas - colour and blob density

30 31

3.3 PARTIAL PROTOTYPES

lecture 7 emphasized the importance of craftsmanship to produce beauti-ful results (Loh, 2016). we used small prototypes to develop a technique to assembling our final model that would be both clean and strong enough

we decided to test different stuffing to respond to specific bodily needs, ensuring comfort of the sleeping pod.

figuring out the technique for join-ing parts of the sleeping pod was achieved mainly in producing pro-totypes and figuring out which ones would work best - doing different joinery saved us a lot of time since ex-ternally stitching pillows together would have been a much harder and precise process

3.4 1:1 PROTOTYPES

producing partial prototypes was a way to test functionality and structure in a way that is not possible with smaller pro-totypes. after our first attempt at produc-ing a wing we realized that the spacing and thickness of the lines was too small - this is when working digitally has helped moderate and optimize the design easily

figure 3.5a first version of outline in rhino

figure 3.5d 3d rhino of optimized density

(modelling credit: Georgina Cai)

3.5 OPTIMIZATION - PATTERN

figure 3.3b stuffing materials (bean bag and softfill)

figure 3.3c pillow joinery

figure 3.3a pillow assembly (photo credit: Gina Engelhardt)

figure 3.4a laser cut wing over body

figure 3.4b wire frame against the wall

producing a wire structure prototype has helped us figure out how it would be able to be moulded and moved.

testing connections to ensure the joint strength and figuring out the number of wire lines needed to make sure the struc-ture is functioning as a surface was only figured out through this prototype

32 33

3.5 DIGITAL OPTIMIZATION3.5 OPTIMIZATION - SHAPE & BLOBBYNESS

putting the prototype in production in location helped us reveal that the size of the wings didn’t cover full body and resulted in the pod being too 2-dimensional and not creating a secluded volume as intended and theprototype is sliding down the wall as there is no support at the back

we found that the head piece added on to achieve a better seclusion wasn’t holding up as well, so to resolve that we added wires running along the whole body to tense the piece upwards

to resolve the sliding of the prototype, a fin at the back was added on to fit in the corner. we found beanbag stuffing especially useful for this purpose

to resolve shortness of the wings we produced exten-sions and stitched the extra fabric with the old one as well as adjusting the wire

adding another layer of stuffing to soften the wire

while producing the prototype, we tested it’s structural integrity and based on that we optimized our digital models, which functioned as a scale reference

3d digital models were produced to fig-ure out the heights of the blob and see how they would respond to the body

figure 3.5e prototype in production put into location to test it’s structure 9photo credit: Riley Sherman)

figure 3.5f wing joinery stithing (photo credit: Gina Engelhardt)

figure 3.5g tension wires running across body (photo credit: Gina Engelhardt)

figure 3.5i padding over wire (photo credit: Gina Engelhardt)

figure 3.5ih support fin (photo credit: Gina Engelhardt)

figure 3.5j final outline figure 3.5k 3d rhino plan view of final blobs

34 35

blue external fabric

grey external fabricbeanbag filling

softfill stuffing

wireinternal fabric

3.7 ASSEMBLY DIAGRAMS

LAYERS:translating information into this digital diagram emphasized the fabrication tech-nique of our sleeping pod. our material system informed us of having distinctive parts of design working together as one and through fabrication we resolved a generative (additive) fab-rication technique, introduced in lecture 6, as a base for our structure (Loh, 2016)

MATERIALS:this diagram was a way to figure out which material was going to be used in which part and consequently influenced the order in which we were going to fabricate the final prototype

figure 3.5a materials diagram (drawing credit: Gina Engelhardt)

figure 3.5b layers diagram (modelling credit: Georgina Cai

36 37

the final digital model was a way of resolving how differ-ent part of the design work together.it is a way of representing and keeping the information about the object in an objective way.

3.8 FINAL DIGITAL MODEL

figure 3.8b close up view

figure 3.8 front view

figure 3.8c model partitioning*all digital modelling on this page by Georgina Cai

38 39

3.9 FINAL PROTOTYPE

the final sleeping pod turned out to be both beautiful and structurally sound while successfully responding to the notions of comfort and creating person-al space. it fits well into location and the scale in itself suggest the possible uses.

all of our desired effect were achieved using colour - the combination of calming blue and camouflaged grey; and form - blobby shape is inviting and the perforated wings create secluded, almost transparent views to-wards the outside that we explored earlier in this subject.

figure 3.9a sleeping pod occupied in location figure 3.9b sleeping pod unoccupied in location

*all photos on this page are by Riley Sherman

40 41figure 3.9c opening sleeping pod figure 3.9d getting in sleeping pod figure 3.9e closing sleeping pod figure 3.9f enclosed in sleeping pod

*all photos on this page are by Riley Sherman

42 43

figure 3.9g close up of wings over body figure 3.9k wing gradient

figure 3.9m stitching detail & joining two layers

figure 3.9i opened edge, torn stitchfigure 3.9h riffling detail

figure 3.9l wing edgefigure 3.9i fabric layers

*all photos on this page are by Gina Engelhardt

44 45

3.10 FABRICATION SEQUENCE

body assembly

wings assembly

figure 3.10a exporting the file as a template

figure 3.10i figuring out how much fabric is needed

figure 3.10b outlining the edge with wire

figure 3.10h cutting up fabric to fit the laser cutter

figure 3.10c outlining inside with wire

figure 3.10k washing the fabric

figure 3.10d taping wire joints

figure 3.10l dipping in dye to create gradient figure 3.10m dying the fabric

figure 3.10e using the template to cut pillows

figure 3.10n ironing the fabric for an accurate laser cutting job

figure 3.10f pillows assembly

figure 3.10o submitting rhino file to FabLab

figure 3.10g stitching pillows together, referring back to the template

figure 3.10p layering the wing over the wire

figure 3.10h stitching pillows over wire

figure 3.10q stitching and stuffing the wings figure 3.10s stitching down the blobs and the edge

fabric overlay

46 47

4.0 REFLECTION

48 49

MODULE 1 - IDEATION

MODULE 2 - DESIGN

MODULE 3 - FABRICATION

MODULE 4 - REFLECTION

OVERALLwe learned the importance of considering design and making as integral parts of the process and that as designers we are not only ‘problem solvers’ but also ‘puzzle makers’ (Loh,2016).while developing the sleeping pod we discovered the non-linearity of design workflow and the importance of fabrication in considering the ‘making process’ and ‘transform techniques to fit materials’ rather than coming up with a certain design and only producing it after (Charny,2010).

WHAT WENT WRONG

most of optimization was resulted from underestimating the needed size of the sleeping pod and limiting the format to dimensions of the laser cutter underestimating the blobbyness of the pillows - when measuring the heights of the blob we didn’t anticipate how much they would squish and appear as a flat surface

addition of the head turned out to be too heavy and even though we attempted to tension it with the wires it didn’t hold up as desired

stitching method - we tried out double stitching but landed on using single stitching which was much cleaner, however, it didn’t result in a strong connection and towards the ends some of the edges started opening up

WHAT WOULD I HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY

to resolve this i would have printed a template for the overall template before fabrication process to see its actual scale

the head piece probably doesn’t need the internal blobs and would have been functioning much better with just one layer of stuffing around the wires; another solution could have been to try out springing wires to tension it back up

using a sewing machine for internal blobs could have sped up our process much more if we would have figured out the forms earlier; for the outside fabric and the edges it probably would have been faster to use a hand held sewing machine

50 51

Page Drawings ComputationModel Fabrication

Model Assembly Photography Writing

Graphic Design Page Drawings Computation

Model Fabrication

Model Assembly Photography Writing

Graphic Design

Cover rrrr rrrr r r r

6 r r r 31 r rr rr rr r r

7 r r r 32 rrrr rrrr r r r

8 r r r 33 rr r r

9 r r r 34 r r r r

10 r r r 35 r r r

11 r r r r 36 r r r

12 r r r 37 r r r

13 r r r r 38 rrrr rrrr r r r

14 r r r 39 rrrr rrrr r r r

15 r r r 40 rrrr rrrr r r r

16 r r r 41 rrrr rrrr r r r

17 r r r 42 rrrr rrrr r r r

18 r r r 43 rrrr rrrr r r r

19 r r 44 rr rrrr rrrr rr r r

20 r r r r 45 rr rrrr rrrr rr r r

21 r r r r 46 rrrr rrrr r r r

22 r r rr rr r r r 47 rrrr rrrr r r r

23 rr rr r r r 48 rrrr rrrr rrr r r

24 rr rr rr r r 49 r r

25 r r r r r 50 r r

26 rrrr rrrr rrrr r r r 51 r r

27 rrrr rrrr r r r 52 rrr rr rrrr rrrr rrr r r

28 rr rrr r r r 53 rr rr rrrr rrrr r r r

29 rr r r r 54 r r

30 r r r r

HANYA HOANG GORGINA CAI RILEY SHERMANGINA ENGELHARDT

CREDITS

5.0 APPENDIX

5.1 CREDIT

52 53

5.2 IMAGES

54

Andersen H. CHR. 1955, Poial-Liisi, Illustrated by S. Skop, viewed on 27 March 2016, < http://www.nlib.ee/html/digi/rmt_ill/autorid/skop_s/P7ial_Liisi/b/GEA_6358_001.jpg>

ArchDaily 2009, Burnham Pavilion / Zaha Hadid Architects, viewed on 1 May 2016, <http://www.archdaily.com/33110/burnham-pavilion-zaha-hadid/>

Heath, A., Heath, D., & Jensen, A. 2000. 300 years of industrial design : function, form, tech-nique, 1700 - 2000 / Adrian Heath, Ditte Heath, Aage Lund Jensen. New York Watson-Gup-till.

Sommer, R. 1969, Personal space : the behavioral basis of design / Robert Sommer. Engle-wood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, c1969.

Charny, D. 2010, Thinking through making. Design and Making, Danish Crafts: 2010.

*all lectures mentioned were presented by Paul Loh for the subject Digital Design & Fabri-cation (ENVS20001 S1) at The University of Melbourne, 2016** all images and photographs are mine unless stated otherwise

5.3 BIBLIOGRAPHY