Chameleon Tile

Сlick to see the process!

Our inspiration is simple, since we are in the city of Gaudi, we chose one famous work of Gaudi in Parc Guell : the Chameleon.
And because of the shape of the tile we are going to make is in hexagon,
we tried to achieve a design that comprised of continuous lines and shape, for the tile to be able to rotate to connect with another around.

The design process started with mirroring, rotating, and tracing the above picture to create a circle-like, head to tail, chameleons badge.
Then we used a plug-in called “pointreconstruction” in Rhino to give the triangular texture throughout the design.
The plug-in easily grasped the corners and edge of the Chameleon and create “Delaunay” out of it.
(The process of altering the height of each vertices is very manual and we hope we had more time to study the easier way of doing this)
Anyways, we finished off the design by connecting those water channels in the mold with our branches behind our stars.

The RhinoCam process finally finished .
Then came the job of the milling machine. The mold was done with foam block and consumed about half and hour time each.
We brushed the inside of the mold with thin layer of vaseline. Mixed the concrete. Poured it into the mold.
Shake. Get rid of the bubbles.
Waited for 8 hours to dry (very depending on the temperature and the weather)
Gently twisted the mold and the tile came off easily.
All these processes were very time consuming and we need to work well as a team.
The milling machine also needs a very precise and correct type of strategy.
We also learnt that the concrete work is not easy.
It turned out to be a very delicate work compare to the work on computer.

Our approach was to create 5  large circles and to connect them to the base using a simple peg-like joint which could be moved around  in our experiments and fixed for presentation. With a focus on the transition between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional space, the intention was to create a sphere-like object out of circles that could be manipulated by a central ring through which they were threaded, and distorted by changing of their diameters. 

we made a conscious decision to eliminate the need to deal with the ends of the rods, as the capacity for the plastic rods to rebound out a secure position was too great. Thus, we instead designed joints which we could feed the ends of the rods through, creating a relatively strong connection through friction which was still loose enough to allow for the pulling of the ends and the tightening of the loops. In testing our joints we bore holes into the base in a pentagonal radial grid so that we could have the regularity of a pentagonal alignment, and we achieved a number of formations which reflected our initial intent, but the circular ring joint was not as easy to move. Without the ring we created two movements (pictured), but the other joints and our base treatment afforded us more flexibility to experiment further with different formation that could be more dynamic and fun.

The product is the result of our experiments with different configurations on the base and different levels of interation between the circles. Linking and twisting them together  counteracted the rebounding forces of the rod and reduced the number of counteracting angles threading through the central circle. As a result we achived assisted movement from 2d to 3d using the ring as a control point. As this movement involves only four rods, the 5th is introduced as a control device activated by tightening of the circle.

(Click to see animated gif. of the movement)

(Click to see animated gif. of the movement)

(double click to animate!)