Exploration in Geometry

This project came out of an independent studio class in where each student would research something that they were interested in and create their own project out. With concepts and deliverables. There is quite the challenge in having total freedom without constraints when working on a project and this was a daunting challenge in the beginning.

I decided that I wanted to have a project based on geometry and the best way to start this was to draw and draft. There wasn’t a clear way the drawing had to come out, but I had an idea. The drawing and line work represent a structure of some kind. Each line is some sort of structural member. Some of the questions that came up were. What dimension does this move in forward or back? How does this 2D drawing represent itself in a 3D model or physical model.

With my initial concept and idea figured out I finished the initial drafting phase and started to manipulate the geometry into 3D by folding, cutting, taping, and pinning. This was made with paper and unscaled just a study model. I found that the paper could be manipulated in any way but was not representative of a larger or full-scale idea. I knew that I had to find material that was flexible and rigid. I liked the museum board, thin basswood, and chip board. The thin material worked but was not going to be able to scale up as I was thinking the final object would be human scale.

Triangulation: The material study left me at a point where I was not satisfied and not sure how to move on. With a few triangle offcuts that I decided to tape together, and it just worked. Now I just had to figure out what this triangle shape was and what it could create. I mocked up three options an interlocking, a circular and a cresting. Manipulating the design as a physical object one was a clear choice for me and created a spanning structure.