in order to continue our inflating gold emergency blanket experiments we were invited by peats ridge festival to create an inflatable structure that would literally pop up in different locations over the 3 day event leading up to new year’s eve. armed with the trusty antfarm inflato-cookbook we began designing a 25m x 10m x 5m structure with a dj area to the rear and the aim of entertaining 300+ party goers.

paying homage to the imminent end of the world we decided on a myan / aztec theme of silver and gold triangles which blended to clear plastic. for the main structure we used gold/silver emergency blankets and 100um builders plastic. the floor was built using a thicker 200um plastic to withhold all those dancing feet.

a 3d model was built in rhino and divided into a number of sections at 1.9m intervals. each strip was then unrolled for cutting. the strips were laid out over the required number of gold or plastic sheets, depending on their length and a script was written in order to assign coordinates to each triangular node for easy marking and cutting. in total there were 19 strips plus the floor area to be assembled.

over a period of 4 days with a team of 8 people we laid out, marked, cut and sticky taped together the strips to create the inflatable. in order to tie down the structure in position a series duct taped patches where located at nodes around the perimeter where each strip joined. eyelets were then punched through the tape and a rope threaded through each pair of eyelets. this was then staked to the ground using 300mm tent stakes.

the entire structure was help up using a 900mm diameter drum fan which pumped the air through from behind the dj area. the entrance was designed using the inflated lips technique but in the end it was not necessary as for the structure held its pressure and could be left open at the entrance.

the structure, fan, pegs and tools all fitted in the back of a station wagon and was driven up to glenworth valley, the location of the festival site. the structure took half an hour to layout and peg and 10 minutes to inflate.

a sound system was hired and was rocked out by the radio azteca djs on the night of the 30^th and 31^st. the project was a huge success. it was the after party to the festival and kept on going until the production team, with heavy hearts, eventually had to shut it down in the early hours of the morning. however, the future bubble lives on and and is available to hire for anyone who is keen to throw an event in a unique space.

MAKE YOUR MAKER responds to the idea that ‘Food and the body are inseparable’; a dialogue developed alongside nahji chu, the savant owner of australian cult restaurant MissChu.  lucy continues to provoke the biological edge of the body in her new film, taking on the domain of genetic manipulation and human cloning.

in MAKE YOUR MAKER she delivers a world where clones are edible; their sensory effects abosrbed through the body.

we see a lone woman fastidiously prepare and distill human body parts, using her own body as a test bed, fusing gender and blending ego like a chef constitutes food. her laboratory references the wet and somewhat grotty kitchens found in dimsum markets; the basement housing her inventions.  we see her curiousity in process, operating an assembly line of kitchen appliances, big enough to steam a body. duplicates are cut precisely with facial cutters, dissected according to her mathematical matrix, then sealed and packaged for consumption.

flickerfest, renowned as Sydney’s first outdoor beachside cinema, kicks off the summer movie season under the stars at bondi beach in 2013 from 11th-20th january, screening the best short films from australia and the world in a unique environment that is the bondi beach pavilion.

http://www.flickerfest.com.au/

the structure of the minimal tension terrace canopy has now been completed for the apartment in the sydney CBD.  the assembly of the framing was carried out by students at the university of sydney (USYD) that had been studying the code to production elective in which students researched design, fabrication and construction methods using algorithms within the grasshopper 3d environment.  part of the elective required a week of site construction of one of urban future’s architectural projects.

the canopy was prototyped with USYD cnc / laser cutters, was fabricated at 1:1 by central coast marine installations (CCMI) and brought to site on a one ton ute.  with the site 3d scanned, the parts were assembled on site to an accuracy within 1mm.  the structure will now be clad with a clear impact resistant glazing that will be cnc milled at usyd and 3m taped onto the structure.  below are a few shots of the construction process.

lasercut and brake pressed 6mm aluminium panels

parts in the powdercoating process

parts arriving on site

ordering parts with respect to their mapping location

blind riveting the lateral components

installation of the first ring around the existing skylight volume

second ring installed

connection of the bridge element between skylight rings

covering the assembly area whilst raining

completion of the last right hand segments

structure bridging between skylights

pelicano – one of our recent hospitality projects has opened in double bay, sydney.

the design project called for the re-activation of a sub-ground basement volume located directly on one of the most under-rated  & emerging new gastronomical avenues on sydney’s eastern suburbs.

through an expanding of the entry opening, we were able to maximise natural lighting to the three levels below, creating a layered coherence with it’s locality, celebrating sydney’s relationship with nature.  This referencing is continued within materiality and patterning of the furniture along with the bar staff’s attire, playing on harbourside identity of double bay.

original basquait’s, lichtenstein’s and warhol’s line the walls of the three bar and dining levels, complimenting the nautical furnishings, reflecting the luxury and new theme of the superyacht’s speckling the foreshore of sydney harbour.

all images by reef gaha (broadsheet.com.au)

the crew in the ufo(au) office are working around the clock to update all our grasshopper3d VB scripts to the new RhinoCommon namespace.  we’ve started by converting all our utility functions such as transforms, primitive geometry generation and intersection events.  below is a list of all intersection events available in the RhinoCommon namespace written clearly within separate VB components.

Intersect-brepBrep.gh
Intersect-brepPlane.gh
Intersect-brepSrf.gh

Intersect-crvBrep.gh
Intersect-crvCrv.gh
Intersect-crvPlane.gh
Intersect-crvSelf.gh

Intersect-lineBox.gh
Intersect-lineCircle.gh
Intersect-lineCylinder.gh
Intersect-lineLine.gh
Intersect-linePlane.gh
Intersect-lineSphere.gh

Intersect-meshMeshAccurate.gh
Intersect-meshMeshFast.gh
Intersect-meshPlane.gh
Intersect-meshPolyLineCrv.gh
Intersect-meshRay.gh

Intersect-planeCircle.gh
Intersect-planePlane.gh
Intersect-planePlanePlane.gh
Intersect-planeSphere.gh

Intersect-projectPointsToBreps.gh
Intersect-projectPointsToMeshes.gh

Intersect-sphereSphere.gh

Intersect-surfaceSurface.gh

a quick exploration and testing of the hoopsnake plugin developed by volatile prototypes allowed our students to intuitively create their own (advanced) recursive geometries within the simplest of grasshopper component streams.

below are a few simple hoopsnake flavours of previous urban future VB scripts:

fractal01_hoopSnake.rar

similar fractal definition to a recursive snowflake generator.
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fractal02_hoopSnake.rar

recursively folds a line and subsequent child segments.
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recursiveSubdivision2d_hoopSnake.rar

a recursive definition that takes a base surface with a list of curves, generating a number of recursive panels whilst the child-quads are intersected by the curves.
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recursiveSubdivision3d_hoopSnake.rar

checks whether a curve intersects a box geometry - if so, the geometry will be subdivided into child geometry. the recursive script is repeated a number of specified generations to produce subsequent offspring.
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recursiveBloom_hoopSnake.rar

uses a triangular closed polyline object and recursively subdivides to polyline offspring – can also include variation to rotation, generation and mutation.

formations diagram

the sydney ufo crew recently threw a party in the office space.  using gold and silver emergency blankets taped together, we built a LARGE inflatable.

as simple cube shape with access airlock tube attached – once inflated to full capacity, the material filleted at all edges, resulting in a negative space and appearing to vacuum form all details of the house interior: including, furniture, stairwells and lighting – producing an incredible effect.

a digital projector was set up & with extrapolated beats from the DJ table broadcast over the internal surface, basslines were reflected in a synchronous VJ set.

expect to see more gold rooms coming your way soon.

laying out the floor, ceiling and walls of the inflatable

inflatable taking shape in the office space using a standard carpet blower

first guests arriving

dirk warming up on the ones and twos

dance floor taking shape

the professionals arrive

full swing

thanks to the amazing community of developers, experts and testers that frequent grasshopper3d.com and food4rhino.com, the plugin has been expanding it’s toolsets and knowledgebase to cater for a very diverse range of investigations and interoperations.

today the plugin got a whole lot better!

the amazing duo of michalatos panagiotis & kaijima sawako which have developed some very interesting bespoke engineering and dynamics software such as graphemes and topostruct (one of our fav’s) releases the grasshopper solver for topostruct which performs structural analysis and material optimizing algorithms on geometry.

Millipede allows for very fast linear elastic analysis of frame and shell elements in 3d, 2d plate elements for in plane forces, and 3d volumetric elements. All systems can be optimized using built in topology optimization methods and have their results extracted and visualized in a variety of ways.

In addition millipede implements a few basic geometric features (extraction of iso surface meshes from volumetric scalar fields or and extraction of curved contours over any mesh) and a few numerical analysis tools (Fast fourier transforms in 1 and 2 dimensions, sparse linear system solver and eigenvalue calculation for large matrices using functionality from the intel math kernel library).

you can download the beta version at: http://www.sawapan.eu/

we will be running a short course over the next few months at the university of sydney (australia) which will explore parametric and scripting techniques used in a real life design to construction project. the studio will run over 5 weeks of lecture and tutorial sessions and there will also be a one week construction phase to assemble the minimal tension terrace canopy designed by urban future and fabricated by ccmi installations.

from code to production: grasshopper, scripting + digital fabrication elective.
starting 2nd may: enrol now!

minimal tension canopy will introduce you to cutting edge digital mapping, design, prototyping and construction through the engagement with a real life architecture project that deals with generative geometries, structural affordances and the assembling of composite building components of a complex system.
(students should have a basic knowledge of grasshopper or similar scripting language).
code + learning outcomes
course on wednesday 4-8pm for 5 weeks
• 1 hour lecture
• 3 hour lab sessions
• 2 days construction workshop

• students will learn and apply techniques of modelling, scripting processes, and production methods through digital fabrication (assessed in weekly exercises, final portfolio).
• students will gain knowledge and experience in generative processes (3d modelling and scripting), and in experience of thinking through design in a framework of digital fabrication.
• students will demonstrate their understanding of 3d modelling and scripting techniques through a series of architectural variations in relation to context parameters (assessed in weekly exercises).
• students will gain practical experience of construction in relation to digital design and digital fabrication.
classes run by dirk anderson, director of urban future organization (ufo) sydney. ufo was founded in london during 1996 as a collective of self-organised architectural practices who share common design strategies in practice, professionalism, and architectural discourse. ufo has an international agenda, yet maintains the specific qualities of local diversity. its members are multi-national design professionals, who conduct their work through collaboration with experienced consultants.
schedule

week 8 – 02 may – lab: leading students through grasshopper introduction + sketch of geometric typologies.
week 8 – 03 may – lab: leading students through grasshopper tutorials of each of the 6 geometric typologies.
week 9 – 09 may – lab: grasshopper tutorial on contextual effectors and field conditions
week 10 – 16 may – lab: grasshopper to rhino fabrication methods translating parts for digital fabrication.
week 11 – 21 may – lab: site mapping techniques (3d laser scanning, spatial scanner, photometry, openstreetmap.org.
week 12 – 28-31 may – site: participating in groups in the assemblage of the ‘minimal surface roof canopy’.
week 13 – 7 june – feedback session on all assignments.
this elective is open to students across the university. students from other institutions are also welcome to enrol through special permission via their home faculties.

register your interest with your name and student number to:
arch.sac@sydney.edu.au | ph. 93513248