Assignment 4 | Furniture | Amy Rosen and Jenny Wong

For our furniture piece, we decided to combine chairs with a dining table and counters.  Our bath house is organized into layers of thermal enclosure by virtue of wooden frames.  In the center of our design, we planned for the frame to fold down into our furniture piece. Our initial design looked like this:

 We then realized that these hard edges, although they match the orthogonality of our design as a whole, are not ergonomic, so we researched ideal heights and curves for comfort:

 From that research, we designed the following furniture piece composed of a series of ribs:

Our CNC file looked like this:

For our joint prototype, we connected two sample ribs with aluminum tubes and connected the frame to the horizontal piece the ribs rest on with a folded aluminum extrusion.  Our final join model looks like this:

Fah & Alyssa wooden joint

We started out this project by looking at scaffolding precedents, specifically Kengo Kuma's Prostho museum and bamboo scaffoldings. At first, we wanted our joint to be a scaffolding structure where hikers would climb and inhabit the space. From physically making these joints, we learned that we should never use nails to hold pieces together. We should've used dowels to make our wooden joint more stable. However, recently we decided to change our joinery to be rotating wooden panels for hikers to stay protected from the weather when they're sleeping in our 'tower'.  

Test Joint 1:

Test Joint 2:

New Joint Sketch:

Assignment 4: Amber Qasir and Daniel Ha

     We made a locker as our furniture piece. The hikers/sleepers and the bathers have a ton of stuff that they are bringing to the bath house so it makes sense that they would like a place where they can store and keep safe their stuff. The prototype is at a much smaller scale than the real thing would be (you've seen what a real locker looks like, so imagine that size). Our furniture piece has two joints. The first is shown by the prototype (the sliding door) and the second is how the furniture piece attaches to the walls of our bath house project. 

     The first joint was made by using the CNC to cut out the two outer frames. They were "hollowed" out so that the sliding door could be place inside. This granted the door the ability to open and close the full length of the opening (as opposed to only being able to partially open).

     The second joint is how the locker door would fit into the bath house. The poured in concrete wall would be made so that there are voids left in the wall. That void would act as the storage space of the lockers. The door would then be placed into the entrance of the void and be nestled in there so that people can't just break in and steal everything. 

     The furniture piece makes certain parts of our project do "double duty." The walls they are a part of act as dividers. On the first floor they define the changing areas/bathrooms and on the second floor they define the beds for the sleepers. The lockers will be embedded in to the walls that are to the right and left of them.

Furniture Joint (Omar Cheikh-Ali & Eugene Jahng)

Our joinery piece originally came to us as a design for a movable table around our hearthspace, however after problems with the concept (the idea of movable tables conflicting with the social atmosphere we wanted to create around the hearth) we ended up scrapping that idea fairly quickly.

From there we brainstormed what kinds of furniture could we possibly include in our bathhouse; tables chairs yeah, but what did our bathhouse really need? We ended up settling on the idea of our bed space, our initial intention was to have hikers sleep in slots cut in the walls, giving the resident the feeling of being encased and protected in the warm earth (warm because our hearth was adjacent to the beds at the time). However we just couldn't shake the feeling that our beds were looking a little too much like this:

Catacombs are NOT what we were shooting for at all - not in a million years would we want to create that kind of atmosphere for our residents. So we decided that in order to break away from that dead feeling, we would create a furniture piece that worked off of our carving out of space in the walls. We rotated the direction that people would sleep by 90° so people could still experience the feeling of being protected by a carved niche in the wall while breaking away from the catacomb stereotype. Our original design was fairly simple; just an upside down L shape where people's legs would be resting on the bottom line of the L:

At this point in the design process, we were more interested in how the structure would connect to the concrete cutouts in the wall. We thought about making the joint as seamless as possible, having a steel or aluminum half lap base cast in the concrete (both on the sides and with lips into the bottom), the bed pieces placed on top of that with another half lap coming down on top of it being bolted into place to support the cantilever out of the wall and make sure the bed was securely attached to the wall. Our design concept was almost like knitting the furniture piece into the concrete structure:

With the logistics for our joinery piece finished, we moved on to manipulating the design of the ladder to get to the bed as well as how the top and bottom beds would connect with some amount of personal storage space for the occupants, we ended up keeping our original concept of subtraction of space, having the bottom bunk be enclosed by plywood on the bottom and up over the top leaving the sides open for people to get in or out. In addition to this, we created a small nook for the person on the top bunk to store something below their legs. We also changed the design of the steps on the ladder to be more stable than a waffle grid and also more spatial than the strict regulation of planes that a waffle grid would offer.

You may notice that the beds are not very wide, however for the average hiker, the size is perfect for a common foam sleeping mat and sleeping bag. As a result of the top half of the occupant's body being in the concrete niche, the design would prevent one from falling off by rolling out of their bunk. Now if you would excuse me, I myself will head to bed.

Assignment 4: Liz Dolinar and Kayla Quinn

Our joint began as a part of the roof structure for the inner lodge portion of our bathhouse. The main focus of our lodge is on looking up at the stars through the perforated roof while laying on the bunks. Although the joint is no longer found in our project, the intent of the roof is still to draw your eyes upward. We began with a grid of overlapping pieces that would create an interesting geometry of hexagons. This stacking and repeating of the pattern of 3 different pieces (of various curvature) allowed for the depth of the roof structure. The individual wood strips fit together by a system of notching and are then connected together by screws (which cannot be seen from below the roof).

 

Module laid out in Rhino; CNC cut sheet (2-sided) with pocketed notches and "tabs"

Geometry/roof diagrams

Our design process began first with the geometry and figuring out the 3 piece "module" that would allow the pattern to continue along the entire roof. We had originally intended the material to be wood with some sort of glass screen to protect the occupants of the room and complete the enclosure (the roof has since changed to poured concrete with glass inset into the openings). Our CNC process began with preparing our Rhino model, which was fairly painless. The challenge came when an unidentified mistake was made and the router took 4 passes and still didn't cut all the way through. A lesson was definitely learned: always leave extra room to account for inaccuracies in RhinoCAM time estimates. The CNCed notches came out well, except for a few rounded corners (we used the smallest bit to minimize this problem). The process of assembling the modules was somewhat confusing (we completely forgot to add labels to the pieces while CNCing), but all of the pieces fit together. It was assembled backwards so that none of the screws are visible, in order to create a more seamless look that focuses on sky and stars, not screws. The intention of our joint was to help support one of our major design concepts, rather than draw attention to the joint itself.

 

Final stacked and screwed assembly

Matthew Lin: Looking Out Week 3

La Baita Lodge
Architects: Gubbins Arquitectos + Polidura and Talhouk Arquitectos

       
     
   Located at the base of Llaima volcano, La Baita Lodge layers wood to create a wall system that includes cladding, insulation, and structure all at the same time.  This project brings out another aspect of wood, which is its diverse colors.  The outside matches the volcanic landscape with a gray ashy tone, while the interior's brown colors present a warmer tone.

Matthew Lin : Looking Out Week 2

WISA Wooden Design Hotel / Pieta-Linda Auttila
Architect: Pieta-Linda Auttila
Location: Valkosaari island in Southern Harbour of Helsinki, Finland

          

           Constructed with lumber cut from native trees in Finland, this hotel uses the same wood to create two entirely different forms.  The curved atrium space amorphously explodes from the middle of the orthogonal portions of the structure, showing the versatility and potential of wood as a material.

Assignment 4: Furniture Joint (Quresh Tyebji and Noopur Suckhlecha)

Integrated and Interactive Furniture

We decided to design a "special wall" which would be part of our lightweight structure. The "honeycomb-like" wall would have a multipurpose use (explained in the diagrams below).

As for the joint and interactive furniture, we though that it would be cool for the hikers / users to be able to shift the seats in and out at certain lengths. To make this possible we CNC-ed the end portions of neighboring units and cut out 3 holes. The purpose of this is so the end panels can be shifted at the certain lengths. The rectangular joint is removable and fits into the holes. Once you turn the join 90 degrees, the two panels lock into place. The joint is simple. A 7/8" diameter extension spring is attached between the two blocks so that one can pull the joint into place; when it is let go, the join snaps the end panels tight in place.


To make the joint: 
1. CNC the 2 block pieces with plywood.
2. Drill press approx. 3/4 of the way in each block (with a 7/8" diameter drill) so that the spring can fit snug into the holes.
3. Cut the extension spring using a metal grinder (aluminum oxide belt) at a length shorter than the total width of your combined panels. (see diagrams)
4. Heat the spring and add industrial hot glue into the holes and on the spring and twist until the block line up.
5. Stick in fridge to cool and dry.
6. Sand and add finishing.

Area of the
honeycomb wall in the model. (where mouse is on the right)

 
 






Things to fix / rethink:
As marked in the picture, we could cut the ends of the corners to follow the angle of the overall unit. Also, the length to width ratio could be increased for a better joint fit (easier lock). Due to the sanding and close dimensions of the rectangle, the rectangular joint is closer to a square, which is problematic in attaching the two panels together properly.

Eugene Jahng: Looking Out Week

Kengo Kuma's Sunny Hills cake shop in Tokyo is like a giant wooden cloud. It's inspired by traditional bamboo baskets with the entire structure made of wooden lattices. These lattices are angles at 30 and 60 degrees, allowing it to be assembled by just the slats, "no glue or screws."

Looking Out Week 7 - Charmaine Y

This is the Inariyama Special Education School by Atsushi Kitagawara architects in Chikuma, Nagano, Japan.  The architect uses traditional, cultural Japanese construction methods using lumber to build almost the entire structure to give a "homey" feeling to the students and everyone using the buildings.  The architects designed an entire complex of buildings of various programmatic functions to create almost a wooden town.