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. 

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Practice name
48sky

Blog Address
48sky.blogspot.com

Review

The group explained the idea of the workshop quite clearly – to produce two modes of transport that could move itself (through means of wind/water/ or burning materials etc.) to get to the two hotels. No glue or cardboard was to be used. And they had to use a tea light candle. According to group 48 – they really struggled to create a flying object from a tea light, and explained that they had to create several mock ups in order to prove that it was very difficult to produce such a thing. So instead, they developed another way of creating a mode of transport through burning something (nonrenewable energy source) – and they came up with a flame boat system. It was slightly unclear on how this worked, but the video did show some movement from the boat without any exterior help. The materials for the boat consisted of rice paper, with another layer, and a paint job to make it waterproof, as rice paper would go flimsy when exposed to water. The other mode of transport was a rocket like vehicle, that was blasted from a pipe type of object – the video showed that it did work, but was a very rapid, fast ending journey. This vehicle was mainly made out of seaweed. The two vehicles illustrated two different kinds of journeys from the hotels. The rocket vehicle was for a quick, rough way to get to and from the hotels, whereas the boat was a slow, scenic journey that allowed the users to enjoy the scenery through the waters. This differentiation of the two journeys was explained and demonstrated well.

On the other hand, we found that group 48 didn’t really explain or show in their A3 illustrations the landings or taking off zones of the vehicles. It seemed as if they hadn’t planned on where the boat/rocket was to set off or land, as well as what this landing/taking off zone would look like. This made it a bit more difficult for us to comprehend on how the vehicle was going to set off from the hotels – were the users supposed to walk somewhere first? Climb on to the hotel roof top? The explanation was a little unclear, and didn’t illustrate that aspect very well.

In regards to the Ultimate city, we thought that group 48 did indeed illustrate quite clearly the differences between the utopian vehicle and dystopian vehicle – obviously the rocket being dystopian, and the boat being utopian. This was shown in their illustrations (A3 drawings) as well as their explanations, of trying to create two different journeys, both physically and emotionally.

Over all, this team really did explore the idea of burning a material to create movement, which we thought was well executed when it came to designing the mode of movement in the boat. They gave us a relatively clear indication on what was expected in this studio workshop, and some helpful tips on the materials, their strengths and weaknesses.

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