Assignment 7 - Luminaire Poster

Our final course assignment was to create a poster for our luminaire. I approached it from the standpoint that it was a "marketing" piece used to promote the luminaire for sale. Shown here is the final poster, as well as a couple of my favorite images at larger scale.

More digital sketches

Over the course of several class periods, I used the digital pen to take notes--for my facade class, studio design development, and for architectural history. Here are some of the more interesting recorded drawings.

Assignment 6 - digital sketchs revised

Based on a suggestion from Nancy, I created two new layouts--one showing the vertically oriented facade sketches, and the other showing the horizontal facade sketches. She felt that having both orientations in one layout made it hard to understand the development of each line of sketches. I agree. The new layout is a lot easier to grasp conceptually.

The Stockholm Public Library Competition

In contrast to the experimentation of form and light that we've been exploring with FormZ, I've also tried to utilize the program for architectural purposes in the modeling of my studio project. Shown here is the Stockholm Public Library (designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund), and my proposed addition to the library. This is a preliminary model--very much a work in progress, both in terms of the design of the library addition, and my modeling of it with FormZ.

Luminaire Development Images

This sequence of images simply shows the evolution of the spherical luminaire design.

The first sequence (above) consists of 17 tilted discs; in the second sequence (below) I removed some discs so there are now only 12, and they too are rotated; and last you'll find the upside-down version.

The shadow casting makes me feel like I'm in a jungle surrounded by tigers. Not really the effect I was hoping for. I thought the discs would simply diffuse the light, but instead they create really sharp-edged shadows. That wouldn't create a very soothing or pleasant lighting condition if it were a real luminaire.

The Luminaire Revisited. . .Again

I wasn't thrilled with the effect of the rendering for the previous luminaire. Therefore I decided to once again tackle FormZ to learn some new tools and create a new luminaire. This time I worked with the Boolean and Derivative operations: intersection, difference, and boolean split. In the end, I used the intersection and different tools the most, as I didn't need to split objects so much as I needed to remove pieces of one object from another.

I started with a sphere, then split it with rectangular slabs to create the circular discs. Then I inserted smaller spheres within the largest one, and used the difference tool to hollow out the center. At first I left the resulting discs parallel to each other, but didn't like the effect of the shadow casting. So then I rotated the discs to try to shield some of the distributed light, but that created even more distorted shadows. I decided to try reversing the effect by turning the luminaire upside down and hanging it from the ceiling, but that didn't help.

So, I'm returning to the first luminaire I created, the S-curved face. That is unless I decide to try one more thing. . .

The Luminaire - Round 2

To create the first digital rendition of my luminaire (see Assignment 4), I drew a simple rectangle on a flat plane, rotated it to stand vertically, then manipulated it using the distort tool. All this enabled me to do was twist the rectangle. I was not able to create the S-curve that was created in my physical model. However, I was able to easily create the punch-outs on the face of the plane.

By using the loft tool, I was finally able to develop the s-curve and create, essentially, two different planes that meet at the center. I was also able to curve the edge planes as well. I did this by drawing lines in different planes (XY, XZ, and YZ), then using the loft tool to create a continuous plane between the lines.

Once the luminaire was done, I built a simple room and table upon which the luminaire stands. The first rendering is confusing because the light source is positioned in a way that it casts uncomfortable shadows on the wall. The second rendering shows the light source adjusted more appropriately.

More Nurbz, Sweeps, a Lofting

But mostly Nurbz and Sweeps. By the end of my little experiments, lofting became easy. Using the nurbz and sweeps was a little more unpredictable, so I kept working with them. I wasn't ever able to figure out how to "control" the final result, that is to say, to recreate an image in my head in 3-D digital format. Nonetheless, the nurbz and sweep tool are pretty neat to simply play around with.

Loft, Sweep, and Nurbz

In an effort to better understand how to use more of the tools in FormZ and to further develop my luminaire, I experimented with the loft, sweep, and nurbz tools. Shown here are a few of the wire frame and the RenderZone images that resulted. To use these three tools, I drew two lines in different planes (XY, XZ, and YZ), then I selected one of the three tools, and a smooth, continuous plane was created between the selected lines.

The first two images are large scale views of a nurbz creation. I'm not quite sure how to "control" the nurbz tool. How the program determines the configuration of the continuous plane is a mystery to me. With the loft and sweep tool, i felt that I had some control in terms of guiding the form that I wanted to create. However, with the nurbz tool, interesting forms can be created, but what that form will look like was always a surprise to me.

I found that it was very important to label each object as it is created, in order to keep track of all the duplicate images that are created with each operation. It can get very confusing and hard to keep track of original images, copied images, ghosted images, and the like. In order to create to create the double plane with the S-curve face, I had to create the first plane with the S-curve, then ghost that plane, reactivate the S-curve to create the second plane, then unghost the first plane. Yes, it is unnecessarily complicated and confusing.

Assignment 6 - Digital Pen sketches

Over the course of the last week, I used a digital pen to record the strokes I make when drawing/sketching. The most interesting drawings were a series of sketches done for "The Facade" class, a course dedicated (as the title suggests) to learning how to more effectively design building facades. The title of the assigment was "The Difficult Whole," in that we were to design a building facade consisting of either 4 bays, 3 to 4 stories tall in horizontal format, or 2 or 4 bays, 4 to 6 stories tall in vertical format. The challenge was in that there is no clear center (as with a 3 or 5 bay format), and that is comprised of components that aren't grounded, that threaten to "rip apart," but has an element that tethers the composition together.

The sketches recorded using the digital pen are my efforts at developing this "difficult whole." After the drawings were downloaded, I imported them into Adobe Illustrator and did some simple renderings, to emphasize the different materials, i.e. to distinguish the windows from the solid masonry, for instance.