Assignment 4 | Mark and Kirk

In our initial considerations for our furniture we focused on how it could act as a dynamic piece that connected spaces together. At first we thought the furniture might wind its way throughout all the programmatic elements in our baths and become a kind of vine off of which useful programmatic elements grow.

In the end we boiled down this connection and unity into having one function - we ended up choosing sleeping - that the furniture could unify, and went off from there. At first we focused on how the units would relate to each other in terms of privacy and screening. This led to an exploration of openings based on views, privacy, and air flow.

For our final prototype we mocked up a corner joint connection where the various planes of the sleeping unit come together.

In the fabrication of our module we tried to think of what the CNC router can and can't do. This is why in our connector pieces there is a kind of tabbing - it's the only way to get a ninety-degree fit while accounting for the rounded cut. We had two kinds of connector pieces: a ninety-degree joint, and a 45-degree joint.

We CNCed out of MDF because, frankly, it was cheaper than buying plywood. If we were to actually build our building and hence all of the bed units along with it, we would use a nice, light birch plywood. The one problem we ran into was that the connector pieces were not completely friction fit, so that in order to show the piece as "assembled" we had to put pieces of double-sided tape on each side of the connector. This speaks to the fact that if we were to fully build our unit it would have to have a very high level of craft to friction fit, and that it might be much more robust if the connection joints were also attached to the panels using hardware.

Assignment 4: Garrett Rauck and Matt Porter

Our design for studio project 1b hinges on the utilization of the mudroom as a central, communal space for socialization between the hikers and bathers, catalyzing conversation and encouraging ethnographic discovery. At the center of the space sits a fire to provide warmth and attract conversation. Due to these conditions and the importance of the mudroom/fire, we chose to study our chimney as our furniture piece. Another concept we were exploring in the bath house project is the effect of parallax as it relates to circulation. This idea came through in the way we detailed our furniture.


Theoretically constructed of heavy timber, the chimney vertically penetrates the aluminum roofing to establish it's presence within the subterranean mudroom as well as along the trail above. Slats of timber are cut into trapezoidal shapes and then bowed to ultimately form a hollow truncated cone for steam ventilation (for our detail, we used MDF and CNC-ed the bow rather than physically bending it). As shown below, steel 'fins' are attach to either side of each slat, allowing each module to be attached using nut and bolt connection. The gap between modules originates from the decision that this chimney would be suspended above the fire by tension cables running to the circular concrete wall around the mudroom. The lines suggested by the tension cables, which radiate out from the chimney/fire, created a set of geometry for us along which we could articulate reveals on the chimney, across the aluminum roofing and down into the interior spaces as well. This articulation of detail beginsthe experience of parallax that we are trying to achieve, creating rhythm as you circulate around the chimney, through the mudroom, as well as around the mudroom. 

Assignment 4 - Madhura & Charmaine

Initial Rhino render

For our furniture piece, we decided to make a unit of sheet material that would then be multiplied in various iterations to form a bigger structure. This structure would eventually become a cladding on the walls of the living space, and the protruding parts of the unit would become the structure that holds the mattresses. 

For this project, we explored how every unit could be connected to its adjoining unit.

We made a physical model to better understand the strength of this individual pieces at their weakest points i.e. where the form curves and has the most force put ton it, because of the mattresses and the people. We changed some of our geometry based on our observations from laser cutting the pieces in 1/16" basswood. [some of them broke at the curves because they were very thin at these points)

Aluminium bars go through the L-brackets, that make the angle stronger, to sustain the weight of the mattress and the person sleeping on it.

Once we had our Rhino file, we made three router paths. The first one was the 2-axis horizontal roughing to cut out the area that needed to be shaped as a curved surface. To get this curved surface, we made a 3-axis parallel finishing path. In the end, we made a profiling path to cut outside all the lines to get the desired pieces.