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Critical Mass Posts

Circle Pack Pavilion Construction

Published 2012年10月30日 by T—ADS
Testing Circle Pack Pattern for the Pavilion

Students are working to make a pavilion called “Circle Pack Pavilion.” It is becoming one of G30’s annual events to build a pavilion for Tokyo Designers Week. The pavilion uses shrink film and various sizes of nested bamboo rings to archive lightweight structure. We will update more photos during the event.

Assembly Test

Mock-up
Production of nested bamboo rings 

3D Printer

Published 2012年10月18日 by T—ADS
uPrintSE Plus
3D Printed Test Model

Stratays’s uPrintSE Plus has been added to our digital facilities. This 3D printer has the ability to print any kinds of three dimensional form up to 203mm x 203mm x 152mm.

3D Printed Deli’s Project from Last Year

New G30 Students

Published 2012年10月15日 by T—ADS

1st Year Studio Pin-up

This is G30’s 3rd year since we started in 2010. We have students of different backgrounds every year, and the group is getting bigger. This year, our 1st year students are from China, Korea, Macedonia, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and the US. They have already started working on their studio projects.

G30 Studio and Digital Tutorial Classes Started

Published 2012年10月9日 by T—ADS
G30 2012-2013 Kick-off meeting

We started our new semester, and will be working on studio project to design non-linear tensegrity canopy, developing both physical and digital design system. Digital tutorials have also begun this week focusing on Maya, Rhino+Grasshopper, and Processing. The students are going to develop and exam their design systems by making physical models and 1:1 mock-ups in the first half of the semester.

Cybernetic Urbanism V.1.0, thesis project by Deli

Published 2012年9月6日 by T—ADS

Located at Kitanakano Junior High School in Tokyo, 300 of fluid-transporting components for distributing grey water from the underground septic tank are created on this school’s playground. This alternative purification facility for grey water transforms 10624 m3 of grey water per day collected from the school’s neighborhood to the water resource for the same community’s urban farming activities, linking urban infrastructure with local community. 

Low-Tech Customizable Mass Production Workshop

Published 2012年9月3日 by T—ADS

http://vimeo.com/48716693

Here is our lab’s latest promo video featuring design workshop work from last year. The video was made for the upcoming exhibition at Pompidou Center in Paris as part of a conference and exhibition, Advances In Architectural Geometry 2012. http://aag12.architecturalgeometry.at/ 

The aim of the workshop was to design a low-tech fabrication system to produce customizable components based on repetitive mass-production logic. There is an increasing interest in nonstandard fabrication processes made it possible by various CNC equipment, whose price has came down significantly in recent years, however it is still limited in terms of its accessibility and affordability. In addition, in comparison to those produced by mass production processes, nonstandard fabrications have a tendency to produce quite a bit of waste as part of its process by carving, cutting, shaving, etc. to achieve one-off forms. Students are asked to design and to construct a low-tech customizable mass-production machine and to build a full-scale construct which explores structural/visual/functional potentials of complex geometry.  

Transforming Seattle’s 520 Floating Bridge

Published 2012年9月3日 by T—ADS

It’s been a while since we uploaded the last image of our lab activities. We are planning on uploading a series of our recent projects in the coming days.
Here is the first one; we entered a design competition, “Transforming Seattle’s 520 Floating Bridge: 2012 International Design Ideas Competition”. www.rethinkreuse.org
The competition called for an idea to reuse the decommissioned floating bridge in Seattle, Washington.

Our proposal is as below:
Title:
STACK: the Floating Mountain for Wildlife Habitats & Urban Farm
Project Description: 
STACK is a relocatable floating island in the Lake Washington, constructed from the recycled pontoons that were once part of the world longest floating bridge. This floating mountain of pontoons is designed as a protected wildlife sanctuary and a sustainable ecosystem for the future urban farming where Seattleites could visit by a boat and participate in outdoor activities.
The process of assembling this large structure utilizes the principle of buoyancy as a primary method of construction. Instead of lifting thirty-three of those large and heavy concrete pontoons and positioning them by a crane, water from the lake will be injected into the pontoon, which is hollow inside, to lower its position relative to the lake’s water surface. The balance between the amount of air and water in the pontoon allows it to move higher or lower during the construction process. A simple tug boat tows the pontoons into a designated location and the process of injecting water to be repeated. At the end of construction, water from all pontoons will be emptied and then the submerged stacked pontoon mountain will be lifted into the sky, except a few at the bottom and three of them which will be positioned vertically to stabilize the entire structure.
Wildlife and biodiversity as an ideal model for a sustainable agriculture, STACK is an ecological experimental project to create an artificial ecosystem for the future urban farming where the diversity of species, from small microbes and insects to plants and animals, coexist to create a fertile, life-thriving environment for cultivating food without heavily depending on fossil fuels that current practices of farming is based. In order to maintain our advancing and growing society, we need to find sustainable solutions to maximize our capacity and resources.  STACK is a small step but is heading in the right direction to provide food and spirit for Seattleites.