Habitable Wall

Atypical Sleeping arrangements

"Hobbit Hole"--for the groundhogs

Tents--a home for nomads.

Japanese capsule hotel--great for the commuter.

A good, old fashioned luxurious tree house. --a childhood fantasy made a reality

An ecofriendly tree house. http://www.inhabit.com/-- for the environmentally aware tree climber

a CAPtivating new project

The objective of our new project is to make something out of a used bottle cap. My friend Sara and I collaborated after the preliminary sketching and did the project together. Below are some of her initial ideas.



Below are my preliminary sketches. The one we decided to execute is near the middle on the right. (The little cap man.)
Picture this..a cap..made into a little cap animal, man, alien. You name it. Once this simple idea came up, the possibilities were endless.
We sat together in class and sketched up a storm. We decided together to name them "Capples"--Its kind of like PEOple...only with a cap. So, capple.

First, we started with some wire off of last semester's time capsule project. If that isn't considered recycling, I just don't know what is.
Afterwards, we cut the wire and shaped it into little wire hands and little wire feet. Sara is a master at this!
Then comes the choosing of the bottle cap. (It is amazing how fast these things can accumulate.)
Ahh! This one is perfect.
More wire. Wire is a very crucial part of this project. It is what turns the cap from a regular ol' cap, to something that has personality.
We found that if you twist the wire together, it is stronger and better able to hold up the cap.
Next, one must punch some holes into the cap. This is where the wire goes through to become a limb.
Sara made little "peace" fingers.
Its a hippy! Groovy

He has spunk.
A couple of our Capples are functional. This little guy can hold business cards, notes, or pictures.
A mother, holding her young.
Another functional Capple holds my pen when I'm not using it. How nice of him.
A capple a day keeps the doctor away. Haha...get it?
This one holds dangle earrings.
Here is the whole gang.


We definitely had a blast with this idea. Like I stated previously, there is so much that you can make with this idea. We love how marketable Capples are. I have seen people pay for things like this, so I know there is a market for it. Our Capples are the epitome of good, clean fun and can really brighten up someone's day. This project has been one of my favorites so far. It is amazing to see how one can take something so mundane and change it to be something completely different. I guess that's "recycle" in a nutshell.

System Process

The process of making my "system" was a fun one. I started it off by cutting up a bunch of wood in my grandpa's shop--just to get a feel for the material and the machinery. (If Rich, the woodshop guy at school, saw this picture, he would probably cringe at how close my fingers are to the blade....I was sort of cringing too.)

Then I figured out neat ways to fit things together. I learned a new tip.."Always measure three times and cut once."

I really wanted to bring the word "tension" into the system somehow. I figured the way to really change the form of the 2x4 was to make it so some of the wood curved. I wedged both sides of a thin piece of wood in another big chunk of wood in a way that it curved upward like an arch. I then put that whole thing on another triangle to make it look like it is balancing.

I am really happy with the finished product. The composition of the system turned out better than I thought it would. This has been my favorite project yet. I'm just starting to figure out for myself just how versatile wood is. It is like a whole new world, waiting to be explored.

System research

New project: Construct a self-sustaining system out of wood, making six or more cuts. Adhesives are not allowed.

This is the first of my research for the "system" project. The more information you have on what you are doing, the better your decisions when constructing it. At this point, though, I still don't really know what my system will be. I can't wait to get in the shop and start cutting!!

Final Sketch of Time Capsule

Below is my final sketch of my proposal for our departments time capsule. I did a couple thumbnails of it first from different angles and then decided to go with the second one from the left. I liked the perspective of the building behind it.

This project has been incredibly eye opening. We started it from absolute scratch, and then it gradually grew into an amazing array of different projects. It shows how differently people think and how many ideas can derive from one single idea--in this case, "time capsule."

Metamorphosis::When Two Projects are Fused Together

Hello, world..
The title of this post is very self explanatory. We were to take one project from the person on each side of us on the alphabetical listing of students. The two people whose projects I had to combine were Kara Petrisco and Jessica Crews.

This is Jessica's memory box. I really liked the way the two boxes fit together.

Here is Kara's memory box. The qualities I liked about this box were the dangling mosaic-like squares of foam board. I really wanted to incorporate that into my project.

[thumbnails]

These were my first ten sketches for my project. I finally chose the very last thumbnail sketch as my project.

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"Karsicca"

This is my version of a perfect fusion of Kara and Jessica's projects. The colors came from Kara's project. All of the hanging pieces of foam board were red except for one piece, which was yellow. I wanted to give that same feel to my project; the red overwhelms the yellow squares. The shape of my box came from Jessica's project. the yellow fits into the red like a puzzle piece. as well as the material (foam board.)
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"Jossica"

The next part of the assignment was to create two more "fusions". These were to be of my project and the other two. For instance, I had to create a prototype of a fusion between my new project and Kara's (and the same with Jessica's.) First was Jessica's.This one has the same colors as Jessica's, which is nowhere in the other projects. I actually got the idea for this project from Tommy. After he suggested it, I wondered why I hadn't thought of it. When you think about things too hard, your brain kind of shuts down and you are blind to the obvious.

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"Karsie"

This last project is a blend of my project and Kara's. I sat down and sketched out different things that had qualities of both of our boxes. I settled on one and started working. I wanted to keep the hanging foam board idea, only I switched the shape of it to reflect the shape of my box and the "puzzle-like" quality.

This project as a whole taught me that designers are always inspired by other designers. They take ideas from their fellow designers and make something new out of it. There was a lot of talk about the "essence" of a project. I never really got what that meant untill this project came around. It is breaking a piece of work down to its bare minimum and figuring out why it is special. Design truly is a beautiful skill.