Is it possible to create shape with light? Can a hexagonal grid be disguised by casting light upon its tiles? This questions where the main drivers behind the Bermuda Tile concept. Creating a tile that at a simple glance would show little relief yet once was casted on it, a strong relief would be revealed and a completely different pattern would arise.

To achieve this with 7mm profiling was more difficult  than expected, since shadows are not as long and defined as desired. Given the case, the design set of to be done with simple, long lines that would cast long defined shadows, complimented by smaller, less defined sub-shadows. The triangle was selected as the primitive for both hard and soft shadows. By drawing 3 concentric triangles (out of three opposite vertices) and then displacing them and tilting them with different rotation angles. Afterwards, the resulting surfaces between them and with the borders where further triangulated  to create the softer shadows. This smaller triangles got the needed tilt by the joining of its vertices with the main triangles and boundaries.

Finally, the tile was run through Rhino Cam using two 12mm pens carving out the main geometry and then doing a parallel finishing for the details to come out. The milling, mold, and casting procedures followed and finally polishing the pieces for further detail exposure.

Rhino Cam Simulation

3D Model

Rollercoaster Configuration

The idea of Rollercoaster was to achieve two configurations by sliding and locking into position the joints fabricated in the 3D printer. Four joints were created by twisting a pipe which would be joined with itself to create different angles of sliding as well as different amounts of cables running through. This joints would then be coupled with each other by a female-male joint that, aided by the tension of the wire, would lock in place. The different configurations would be achieved by clipping different joints together and sliding the wires to change the inflection point.

Several problems came evident once the joints were printed. First was that the female-male clip lost its precision when printed so it didn’t hold and second, the size of the joint was too small  and the wire wasn’t able to bend so sharply. Given the setback, we turned the sliding joints into clipping joints which still allowed us to change the direction of the cable by segmenting it. This demonstrated the versatility of the joint by changing its function and its ability to create different shapes by using the variety of angles in it.

The shapes then were created by changing the insertion point in the board (maintaining the same holes for both configurations) and by joining the cables in different nodes in the joints.

Tetra joint zoom in

Tripple joint zoom in

Double joint zoom in.

Single slot join