Model Makery Redux

So, after my talk with Patrick on Monday, I was much dismayed to find out that I was going to have to re-do my entire model. I won't lie, it was a huge kick in the teeth, and I was bitter, but I'm better now. Now my substrate model is pretty much half done, which is a lot better than I can say for my previous one, so I guess things are going OK.

The first thing I had to deal with in this new model was how to connect my walls together without glueing them together. I thought I had achieved this with a small connection I had cooked up. This is the connection with a slight modification on it. Basically, the piece on the left goes through the first sheet, then through the second, leacing a small hook on the end, like this:That hook would then be fastened by the piece on the right hand side, like this:
The problem was that this didn't quite work because the tolerances of the MDF are just slightly off. If it was truly 1/8th of an inch, the friction between the outside (bottom) of this piece and the front piece would have been enough to fasten the outside piece into place, but since it was loose, the outside pieces could quite easily fall off, and that was a problem.

It was easily fixed with a small piece of black card paper which you can see fastened to the bottom of that top piece. With those pieces worked out, the rest of the model started coming together really quickly, and it's already looking pretty good.
This is how it's looking right now, which I'm actually pretty happy with, considering I had to re-do the whole joint system in a day. I laser cut again on Monday, which means the whole thing will be together, and then I can start getting the pods cut out and put on, and then I can start creating all the wacky connections and interactions between them, which is when the real fun will begin.

The Story So Far

Since it was brought to my attention that my narrative for my project was in need of a lot of work, I decided that it would be one of my mian focuses for Friday's sort-of-deadline. I've been thinking about it quite a bit anyway, but I decided to put pen to paper this afternoon after I got my model together and wrote out my inentions for how the project would go.

To start my narrative, I had to develop a few conditions that I had to abide by for the project, such as how many people would inhabit the space and their methodology regarding the site. I decided to have four different people inhabit the outside of the building, each with a different area of expertise. These four people would work together to create a functioning building on the fringe of another building.

In order to live on the outside of a building, there were four main problems I have to address:

• Structure

• How the pods and spaces are actually resting on the building and interacting with each other

• Electricity

• How am I going to provide power to each person to accomodate their needs?

• Heating and Cooling How can I keep people comfortable without resorting to on-the-grid techniques?

• Water

• How do I ensure these people don't die or reek to high heaven?

There is a nice coincidence with all of this, of course, in that I have four people, four problems, and four sides of a building. The question is, how can I make a plan so that all four people can actually get going?

The first step is to choose which sides each person is going to inhabit. To do this, I had to look at site conditions to figure out who would benefit the most in which area.

• West Side

• The West side would be occupied by the structural specialist, and this is also the jumping point for the whole project. The reason I chose this side for the structural specialist is that there is a parking lot directly below this side. That way, a truck could come in and deliver materials to the person on the west side, who could use a shop to create the rest of the structures for the building.
• This is a really important side as well, because the size of that shop will determine the maximum size of any piece that can be used for the rest of the project

• South Side
• The south side is the side that is exposed to the maximum amount of light on the building, and this makes it the perfect spot to gather solar energy in many different forms. This is where the electrical specialist will reside, and it will be his or her job to harvest, store, and distribute the energy that can be obtained from the south facade.

• North Side
• The North side is the least enviable spot to be in for this project, and this is where the heating/cooling specialist will have to reside. The reason I chose to put this person back here is that I wanted to create a computer controlled system for operating the heating and cooling devices around the building, and since this will probably require a few computer terminals, it means that this person is naturally going to have a couple of heat sources to rely on when it gets cold out.
• This is the toughest side of the building to live on, and will require the person on it to have a lot of mobility, and this person will most likely have to be the biggest draw on electrical resources due to its shaded facade, meaning that things like solar cookers and radiators will be much tougher to employ.

• East Side
• The only side left is the East side, and this is where our plumbing/water specialist will have to live. This is a tricky thing to stick to, as the water will have to be gathered and stored in many different spots about the building, but it is the only side left to work with. The plumbing system will more than likely be gravity fed, but there may be some kind of pump involved for things like showers and waste removal, but this is all preliminary.

So that's where everyone will live and what everyone will be doing on the building. I think that the premise for this exterior inhabitation will be that these four hackers will rent out a single floor on the building to start their first platform, the workshop, and when they can start to exist on the outside free from the rest of the building's systems, they can simply stop renting that floor and then move on to living on the outside of the building exclusively. That's my hope, and I think that's my project.

It's All Been Done Before...

Nigel sent me an e-mail a little while ago about something called the Backpack House. Basically, the Backpack House is a small, welded steel box that you can add to your apartment that's accessible through the window. You basically just bolt it to the side of the building and then use chains to hang attach it higher up. The idea is similar to mine, but different in a few ways. First of all, it's really just meant to be an extension outside the building, like a small room to have a studio in or something like that, it's not actually meant to be lived in on a regular basis like I intend mine to. Also, the chains at the top of the box preclude any other boxes being put up, which is kind of a shame, because it would be really cool to mount a bunch of different looking boxes all over your building, but this isn't the case, unfortunately.I think they look interesting, but I don't know if I'd want one hanging out of my apartment building. They're nice, but they're nice like a pug is cute, I think...

Model Makery

Lately I've been focused on making my substrate model for studio. Its been going pretty well, minus a few goofs, and I only have one side of it left to cut, which is pretty exciting.This is a picture of one of the connections. The other side simply slots into this piece and then they can't move. It's been working fairly well, but I am experiencing a few slight problems with it, but it seems quite fixable.
Here's a couple shots of the connection in action.





This is the part where I screwed up. I can't actually believe I did this, and I talked about it in my presentation, but it still bears repeating. Basically, when I got the first couple of pieces of the North facade cut, I realized that they were about an eighth of an inch too long, and the front wouldn't fit together unless I changed it. So in order to change it, I did what any logical person would do, I MADE IT BIGGER. Of course, this was completely idiotic and set me back pretty badly, because now each piece was a whole quarter of an inch too long, which really sucked. I've since rectified the problem, but my ego is still experiencing some pain from the bruising.
Here it is in its current state. I don't have the back so I have to use front pieces on the back as well, limiting me to just a few floors at a time. It's encouraging to see it all coming together, though, and I think I should be able to be finished the substrate model in only a few days, and then I can really go to town on this thing.

Review

During our reviews on friday we discussed my project and its direction, and it seems like I'm basically on the right track. I think the two major concerns were the narrative that I want to explore as well as the sameness of the pods I was making.

Patrick suggested that I could make them in any shape I wanted really, and I think that makes a lot of sense. They don't necessarily need to be squares or cubes, and they certainly don't need to look the same all over. If my idea is that I want this building to react intelligently, then I'll need to let each pod play itself out in a smart way, and then work on making them breathe, heat, and do whatever else I need them to do.

My narrative came into question as well, but I kind of expected that, since I was really unsure of what I wanted to do with it. I knew that I wasn't building this for homeless people anymore, even though I had done some research on that. If this is going to work, the pods need to be inhabited by technologically savvy hackers so that the building can be wired and tinkered with during its operation.

I think my real question is who are these people? How many of them are there? Why are they living on the side of a building? These are all questions that I really want to consider and have a solid idea about, because when I start building, some of that character needs to come out in their pods.

I have a lot to think about now, but I think I'm on the proper track, there's just a lot of work ahead of me.

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.

B&E is Fun For Me!

So, a while ago, Randy decided that he needed to get into his site so that he could survey the inside and take some photographs for his project. I know it sounds like a simple goal, but there were two big problems with his plan: a great piranese and a mutt. There were two guard dogs in the way, and so Randy had to enlist my help in distracting the dogs while he ran inside.


Just in the interest of scale, Randy is holding a treat out at WAIST level and the dog is bending DOWN to reach it... This is my favourite picture of the whole escapade. I was feeding them both canned dog food off of a giant metal spoon. I was kind of worried, because it was just about absolute zero outside and I thought their tongues might get stuck to the spoon, or to the fence. I would have felt like a jackass, and the dogs would most likely have retreated to the building Randy was sneaking into, which could have turned out pretty terribly.

However, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Randy got his pictures, I got a cool story, the dogs got a big meal they otherwise wouldn't have had, and now one was incarcerated.

(Borrowed)Research

I was pretty interested to find that the ED1's were doing their solar cooker assignment outside the Russell Building a little while ago. I remember doing the solar cooker assignment, but I hadn't really thought too much about it since. I decided that since I was going to need something to cook food and possibly boil rainwater to drink, that a solar cooker is certainly a good thing to be thinking about.

I think the designs are interesting, especially the umbrella one pictured here. The problem that I found with this particular crop of cookers is that not very many of them have any kind of insulation. Getting the sun to be focused on your cooker is only half the battle in this case, I think. The other, even more important thing to consider is insulation, and it seems like most of these designs are without it. A pane of glass has an R value equivalent to a sheet of printer paper, which is nothing at all, really. If you can keep the heat in and let the sun keep adding to it, I think that the solar cooker can really be a valuable tool, and it doesn't just have to cook food, it could also heat water or some other kind of thermal mass so that it can radiate out later on and contribute to the internal comfort of a building.

Drawings!

Since I've chosen my site already, I've decided that I might as well start making a few drawings. Initially, my intention was to go inside the building and use the existing infrastructure to support my own replacement infrastructure until I could move completely off the grid and live in there without relying on anything but what the building provided. I think this was spurred on by my desire to use sterling engines place on hot water pipes as an initial source of free power. After speaking with Patrick, we decided that this wasn't the best way to go about attacking my problem, and that creating a building using only the outside layer of another building was more interesting.

Since I decided to move in a new direction, I had to start mapping out the exterior of the building, using the previous drawing.



Here, I've started to dimension the building so that I can draft it and get it laser cut. I initially only intended on only modeling three floors and working on them by connecting floors together using the infrastructure I created. Using this method, I would decide where I was going to place the floors on a smaller scale reproduction of the building, but since I changed my approach, I had to change my method of modeling.

What I'm doing now is modeling the entire Facade, as well as the roof of the building in order to be able to latch on to it and start spreading across the building.

In order to latch on, though, I had to think about connecting to the building, and this is where I set a constraint for myself. I don't want to puncture the building with a drill or do anything that will harm the goings on inside the building. Rather than being a parasite on the building, I'd like to be in a symbiotic relationship with it. If, by latching on to the building I can also help it in some way operate better, then I'll do it. If that connection will adversely affect the occupants in some way, then I can't do it and I'll have to find another way. I just think this will make it more interesting, and will force me to consider the rammifications of what I'm doing to the building in a deeper way.
This is the first connection I drew up, and it's kind of interesting. Basically, it's a wrap around on the lintels of the building. if I can latch on to the lintels, I can create a plank to walk on or stick out poles or other surfaces to attach to. It wouldn't hurt the building, either, so it would be OK to do, in my book.

This is my favourite connection, due to its craziness. Basically, it's for sticking in between the channels that run down either side of the front facade. The idea is that you would take a steel pipe, insert a metal plug, a nail, and something to hold the nail straight. Then, on the other side, you'd pour water in, then add another plug, nail, and stabilizer on top of the water. You could then stick the pipe in the channel and let the water inside freeze. When water freezes, it expands, and since it can only expand in two directions, it'll force the nails into the brick, making a solid connection that you could hook around.

Patrick said it was strange... and if by strange he meant awesome, then I agree.

Thinking Outside the (Power)Box

So, I've been doing even more research into sustainable (what?) technologies. I really enjoy learning about these kinds of things, I have to say. I don't know what exactly it is that draws me to it, but I just love imagining new kinds of technology and applications for these things. The stranger, the better, I say.

Obviously, the first place I started looking for alternative energy sources was photovoltaics. I'm not really a fan of solar panels to be truthful, I think that they use a lot more energy to create than they need to, and the fact that they wear down over time is a huge downside for me. Nonetheless, it's a very established energy source, and it certainly warrants investigation if you want to generate electricity.

The most interesting book I found was called "Off the Grid Homes", and the nicest thing about it is that it was published in 2007. The houses are beautiful, and the systems are recent, and the solutions seem pretty ingenious at times, but I always notice a few key things about these houses that bother me a bit.

The houses are always in rural areas, in order to take maximum advantage of the sun. The climates they're placed in are almost always very temperate, or very hot, never in conditions that swing like the conditions in Winnipeg. The other thing, which is strange considering the name of the book, is that all of the houses have backup systems that will put them back on the grid in case the occupants overload the system.

What if you have no redundancies? What if you can't relocate to a rural area? What if you live in a climate like Winnipeg? Everyone seems to want to explore sustainability, but no one seems to want to push the boundaries and come up with solutions for less than optimal climates. No one wants to do without, either, which is a problem to be reckoned with, because at some point, people are going to have to give up a few things to do their part.