Connections

During the laser cutter's hiatus, I had to look for something else to do other than my model. This was tougher than it seems, but I did manage to get a bit of thinking done about what I want my building to be and how I can accomplish it. I decided that I wanted to have small pods on the outside of the building that could hook into the existing facade for support. This was actually a pretty tough thing to do, since I have no spot to actually cling to, and I have to come up with a way of securely fastening the pod structures to the exterior of the building.

This was my initial design for the platform connection.

I think it should work out pretty well, and it could be built rather easily. The second thing that I looked at was a system of cooling the building. I already know of a few good ways to passively heat the building, but cooling is another issue entirely. I felt like I wanted to do something pretty drastic, like have the building actually react in a physical way to the changes in its environment. Instead of just activating a fan or something like that, I could actually change how the building looks.

To do this, I came up with the idea of the "breathing" pod structure. Basically, two of the walls were on some kind of mechanical connection, when the pod was too hot, it could shoot two of the walls outward and let fresher, cooler air in, and promote air movement inside. This would cool the pod, and hopefully its occupant(s).

Here is a REALLY quick drawing of what I think my structure might look like towards the end of the project. This is quite rough, and was more of an exploration than a careful drawing, but I started to notice that some of the pods could use tension to be hung off the building, while others could rest on cornices and use compression to stand up, while still others could use a hybrid system. It's all pretty preliminary still, but I think I like the direction this is taking.