For this week, we were asked to review The Tricycles, which consisted John Kim, Emily Smith and Vera Wu.
Throughout the workshop, the group went through a process of modeling, manually and digitally with the aim of experimenting and designing the exterior façade for a building (i.e. the hotels). The project involved some really interesting activities. First of all, they had to weave a pattern out of rope. This pattern represented their ideas and interpretations of the material used for the façade of the hotel. They tried to create a sense of a brick surface by having different rows of textures weaved together. According to them, this whole process did not take long to complete, even for inexperienced people.
Having the weaved pattern, they made a 3D mesh model out of it. Any appropriate 3D modeling program can be used such as: Rhino, 3D Max. This was the experimenting process as they tried to explore the ideas of the shape and feature of the weave pattern and corporate these ideas into the hotels. The idea was to move away from the physical fact of the weave itself and exploit more about it from an abstract point of view.
We were also presented with their models created in Second Life. These models were really strong pieces of work as they showed a great transition in their thinking and interpretation of the weave pattern into the façade of the hotels. They utilized a great extent of Second Life program and technique that gave really interesting features on the models such as the moving parts of the buildings as we saw from the video clips they made to show their models. From the texture, they started to come up with ideas about which part of the hotel this pattern can be in. It was from these models that they finalized their works into a more abstract perspective of the models.
Talking about the background story that influenced their ideas, they explained that the ideas mainly came from their interpretation of what was happening in the story “The Ultimate City”. They also said that they did not have to present the utopian and dystopian ideas in this project yet but only tried to corporate these ideas into the design of the hotels, as shown in their presentation.
Overall, it was a satisfying presentation and we really enjoyed really great works from the team. It also gave us some good indications about what is expected in the workshop as we will take part in it.
