Wednesday, November 26, 2014

3D Prints - in Space


Another pioneering effort by NASA: a 3D printer has been installed and placed into operation aboard the International Space Station. The first object to be printed is a face plate for the 3D printer extruder. Great to keep up with the company, Made In Space, their activity (and more pics) on their blog. The zero-gravity printer uses ABS plastic, but a second generation printer, planned for delivery in 2015, will use other types of materials. Their stated plan is to print tools and parts, as well as 3D designs submitted by students, with the goal of establishing a manufacturing capability in space.


Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Pixar's Tony DeRose Explains 3D Surfaces

Math and Movies (Animation at Pixar) - Numberphile


An amazing explanation by one of the brainiacs at Pixar's Research group: how to mathematically determine a method for making smooth 3D surfaces. So while you're yelling at your screen because SketchUp is making you nuts, remember: at least you don't have to do the math.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

More Architectural Tourism - A Field Trip




We were so fortunate to be able to take a trip to see works from two of the most significant american architects of the 20th century: Frank Lloyd Wright and I. M. Pei. I found it interesting that all the students recognized the buildings we visited - they had "seen" them, but few had visited or really delved into the heritage on their doorstep. Both the Civic Center and the Buck Institute are such visible parts of Marin's highway landscape. So it was a real treat to be able to enter, tour, and to really get acquainted with these two important architectural campuses. 


Our first stop was the Buck Institute for Aging; our guide was Ralph O'Rear (VP, Facilities and Planning). Pei had a hand several buildings that have played a part in my personal architectural experience: the Hancock Tower, and the Kennedy Library. The Tower was particularly familiar as I worked next door to it for many year, spent many a lunch hour in Copley Square absorbing the geometry and the reflections of Richardson's Trinity Church.

The Buck Institute had many familiar I. M. Pei design features: stark geometries, clean surfaces, and acute angles. Wandering around the lower passages, with long halls and 60-degree turns was a true mouse-in-maze experience - very disorienting, but saved by amazing, framed views out to the landscape.

I have an even more personal connection with Wright, having grown up in Madison (my parents were married in, and I attended school at the Unitarian Church), and visited several on more than one occasion: the Guggenheim, Falling Water, the Robie House, and the Unity Temple in Oak Park. I particularly recall seeing an exhibit called "Designs for an American Landscape", which showcased several intimate, unbuild projects that underscored his unconventional imagination and poetic vision.

The Civic Center was in amazingly good shape, and also had lots of familiar Wright design cues: dark passages and entries, taller and brighter public spaces, rhythmic details, and warm tones. The building was much longer that I had imagined, and balconies on the upper levels were surprisingly narrow.

Strange that when I was in architecture school, Wright had fallen out of fashion, and was derided for his "space ship architecture" by the faculty - who seemed to be more aligned with the post-modernist movement at that time.

In any case, I suppose you might think of these two facilities, or any remarkable piece of architecture as "being from another place". Or you can visit and reach into these places, and find the value that each designer can bring to a building.


Thursday, October 23, 2014

Tinkering with Tinkercad



When I first started out as an architect, personal computers were just hitting the practice; small offices were just starting to give CAD (computer aided drafting/design) a try. Now, we have 3D modeling in the cloud. It's rather astonishing.

Even more astonishing, modern CAD software now outputs to 3D printers. I made this little test house to see how to link and embed a model made from geometric primitives in Tinkercad. I then exported the model as an .stl file and printed it.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Jony Ive Talks About Care and Value in Design


A great interview, followed by an even better Q&A session with Jony Ive - a couple of highlights:
  • I was struck by his explanation of Apple's design process, and how he said the process shifted gears when the design of a product got three-dimensional: "as soon as there's an object ... it really galvanizes and provides a focus to an entire team, and very often when they're struggling with these abstract, tentative ideas, suddenly you've got a flag";
  • I enjoyed his description of a Braun food "mixer" (processor?) as "extraordinarily, achingly beautiful";
  • I got a little rush, as did the audience, when he described copy-catting as theft, and copy-cats like Xiaomi as "lazy";
  • I appreciated that Jony expressed his disdain for Augustus Pugin in the context of making products with care, and that that care can be made tangible within a product.
Here's a little bonus - also from Vanity Fair: 

Friday, October 10, 2014

Moshe Safdie: How to reinvent the apartment building (TED Talk)


A kind of "blast from my architectural past", it's great to hear from Moshe Safdie - and architect who I used to see around Harvard Square and the Boston area a way long time ago. I think he had an office in Cambridge or Somerville at the time. Always a bit of a hero of mine. He's bringing his Habitat 67 ideas up to date in China. A short but very interesting presentation.

And here's another on the state of the art in 3D printing. Yep. TED Talks are always good for a few blog posts.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Using Google Earth to Tell Stories: Follow Muir

Here is a part of an installation I worked on at the Oakland Museum of California. On August 5, 2011, we opened a new show called "A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir's Journey". One of the interactives that I worked on will allow visitors to virtually join Muir during his epic trek during the fall of 1873 to the top of Mount Whitney. It was called "Follow Muir" and it runs on top of Google Earth. The user interface for that presentation was being custom-built by Lawrence Dolton at ViewPoint Geography, but the data is going to be made available for everyone to download and use. The data was specifically built to run on both the personal computer and the tablet (iPad) versions of Google Earth. It'll work on an iPhone, but it may not be easy to use.

The tour consists of a series of "campsite" placemarks connected by purple (with horses) and yellow (on foot) paths. Most campsites include a pop-up balloon with Muir's journal notes and drawings, along with other additional info. There are also a series of "Fly-bys" which allow you to visually "follow Muir" on one of four peak ascents, as well as a number of "Sketchbook" photo-views which places Muir's sketches into the landscape - use the transparency slide here to help you see what Muir saw.

Here's how you can try it out ...

To download Google Earth for your PC or Mac, click here.

To download the data file for Google Earth on your PC or Mac, click here.

The iPad version does not include the "Fly-bys" or the "Sketchbooks", as these are not supported in the app - but you get everything else, sized for consumption on your tablet.

To add this data set to your iPad, do the following:
1. Get and login to a Google Account
2. Find the map data at this link
3. Click on "Save to my places".
4. Install Google Earth on your iPad
5. Click the "Layers" button in GE on your iPad
6. Login to "My Maps Account"
7. Select "John Muir Climbs Mt. Whitney"
Curious about Muir's journal? You can check out the whole thing here.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

STEAM Engine


Our rallying cry for the new Science and Innovation Center has been STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), and now the class has had the chance to stand at the confluence of a few of those subjects. Our physics teacher, Jon, has asked us to print out a few parts for a Stirling Cycle Engine - a highly efficient, closed-loop engine.

The class arranged the parts on the build plate in two sets - the first set pictured here; parts were downloaded from Thingiverse. You can clearly see the cylinder body along with other parts - the Stirling uses a "displacer" as well as a piston; the top of the displacer is the larger disk opposite the cylinder body on the build plate.


The Stirling uses the difference in temperature between the gases in the chamber and a pair of plates, which are the aluminum parts mentioned in the video - there is a hot plate (on the bottom) and a cold plate (on the top); a variety of energy sources can be used to create the temperature differential. Once the flywheel is set in motion, very little energy is needed to keep the engine running.

The whole thing makes more sense if you download and study the assembly drawings. We'll release and clean the parts and give them to Jon's class. Can't wait to see the thing in action.




Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The Renaissance Started with a New Way of Seeing

Albrect Durer, 1525 ("Durer's Window")

In architectural history, I was taught that the Renaissance started with the completion of the cathedral in Florence by the addition of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome. The story goes something like: the ambitious Florentines built a church so big, they could not figure out how to cover the center of it, until Brunelleschi came along, with some knowledge of classical building principles, and designed a masonry dome strong enough and light enough to span the opening.



I love the thought that the Renaissance was not started with a grand accomplishment (which is also a great way to start a new era), but with the planting of an idea. The the way we see the world is "explainable" from a mathematical construct: the linear perspective. That both the accomplishment and the idea both came from the same man just makes you wonder who he was, and how he figured things out.


Friday, September 12, 2014

Using Prezi to Show Drawings and Relationships



This Prezi presentation shows the relationship between the various types of architectural drawings: elevations, section, and plan - as well as the plan axonometric (plan oblique). Prezi is particularly useful in showing this because instead of a image-to-image slide show, Prezi allows the presenter to create a path between the "slides".

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Making Plans


Drawing architectural plans is not only useful in describing spaces, but "planning" how to use those spaces. A recent episode in my own life brought this fact back to me - when we went shopping for some outdoor furniture. Before we went shopping, we measured out our deck and took the plan with us. We measured the furniture options and made small paper cut-outs to scale that we could move around on the plan. We selected some light metal pieces, called "Eos" we found at Design Within Reach. Though I have not practiced architecture for many years, I realized, I never stopped using these kinds of drawings.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Architecture Bucket List

Last year I made a big dent in my architecture bucket list - by going to Florence, Italy, I was able to see Brunellesci's Duomo, Michelangelo's Laurentian Library, the Ponte Vecchio, and more.


I'm hoping our next trip may allow me to knock off a few buildings from one architect in particular: Le Corbusier. Above is a little sketch of his little chapel in Ronchamp, France - and known as Notre Dame du Haut.

I sketched this out on trace paper, and took a picture with my iPad mini, transferred it to my MacBook using Google Drive.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Digital Drawing


The promise of the iPad (way back in 2010!) was that it would revolutionize publishing by replacing your books: trade (reading) books, text books, comic books, and many others. All these types of books allow for new models of consumption, and that had been one of the consistent critiques of tablets in general - that they are not production devices. Well if you want to replace your sketch-book, then the tablet will have to be a production device.

I've been attempting to do just that with an iPad mini, and the Paper app and the Pencil stylus by 53. So far so good. In fact, it's been great fun both learning a new way to draw, and getting re-aquainted with an old skill.


While something is certainly lost in the tactile feel of real paper and pencil, much is gained in being able to adjust darkness, erase without damage, undo complete sequences (there is a "rewind" function), and share. Still getting used to building tones with the pencil strokes, and that is helped by the "Mixer", which can vary shades as well as blend colors. The "Zoom" feature also helps get into the corners, cause the tip of the Pencil stylus can be a bit fatter than I like - this features is greatly improved if you have a Retina Display iPad, as the resolution of the drawing image matches the resolution of the screen.

Friday, August 15, 2014

MakerBot Replicator 2


A couple of years ago, MakerBot took a turn from making 3D printer kits and printers that looked like kits, to "mature products". It introduced the Replicator 2 in 2012, as their first real attempt to make a salable consumer product - for about $2200. The Replicator 2 got rave reviews and seemed to spark the market for "pro-sumer" devices, as the number of competitors seems to have swollen in the meantime. And this new class of devices has now found their way into homes and schools everywhere.

This year, MakerBot introduced their latest "5th generation" products, and the price for the Replicator 2 dropped to $1899 - too cheap to ignore. So I went to the Microsoft Store and grabbed one. Set it up, pushed some buttons, and it's very easy to get started - really impressive how easy it is to get started. I printed a couple sets of the nuts and bolts on the provided SD card. Piece of cake.

But there are nuances and issues. My idea is to teach a technology class as an art-architecture class (we'll be using he 5th ten Replicators), so I tested my printer by printing a model of the house, and the steep, curvy contours of the landscape made a giant mess - the extruder never stops extruding, and drags a thread of plastic every time it has to "cross a valley", thus filling the valley. After the printer finished, I had to go back and clear out these threads, leaving lots of funny edges and bumps.


There is also an on-going balancing act going on in the hobbyist community between getting the plastic to adhere to the build plate during the printing process, and releasing the printed object when finished. It involves: blue painter's tape, kapton tape, isopropyl alcohol, acetone, hair spray, glue sticks and other household cleaners and chemicals - or some combination thereof. The basic process I've started with is to lay down blue painter's tape on the build plate (made of acrylic), and clean it with the alcohol between renderings.

The other battle going on is a search for a solution to the curling of the plastic as it cools. The nuts and bolts are about 3/4" in diameter, and I had no problem printing them directly on the build plate. When I first tried a larger print (4-in square base) without the tape, the plastic peeled up at the corners, and began rocking back and forth as the extruder crossed the area. The tape does not prevent the curling, but seems to keep the print job in place, holding the edges steady to get a better render.

I've also found that by turning the model in the software, you can get the extruder to cross the "valleys" in different ways, so it's worth checking the "print preview" to see which position gives the cleanest render.

Any way, there is much more "art" to this process than it might seem. Regardless, it's an amazing technology.

Bonus cool-thing for the weekend: Apple Maps, as of last spring, finally has Berkeley (and San Rafael) in 3D, and that includes our house - compare to the model above:

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Inspiration from Invention


A recent trip to Florence rekindled my interest in studying architecture, especially a visit to the Michelangelo's Laurentian Library, in San Lorenzo. When we arrived on our first day, we were told that the Library was not open to the public, except during days when there is a public event, and luckily one was planned in just a couple days (looking at the schedule, we realized that events were spaced out by months, so we were rather lucky).

One is struck by the invention - the almost modern expression of the classical language:
  • the broken pediment over the main entrance at the top of the stairs
  • the clean, honest presentation of the stone, plaster, and wood
  • the dynamic, elliptically shaped, cascading stairway
  • the monumental classical columns, inset in the wall, floating on scroll brackets
  • the inverted window pilasters, thicker at the top than the bottom
The over-scaled composition, with its syncopated rhythms - like a blast of jazz in and age of symphonies.