As the purpose of the exercise was to create tile pieces to cover the school’s patio floor, we decide to create an image concept to represent what we think is the essence of the school and the advance architecture at Iaac: The students.

That’s why we decide to create “Topography Faces”, a trilateral symmetry design that represent thinkers of the new architecture.

With 3 diferentes face designs in 3 different corners of the tile, the design becomes a complex pattern formed by the rotation of the title to match with the next face and finally forming a topographical surface for water flow.

The principal goal of the project was to design an dynamic and transfiguring structure . The concept was to design joints which would allow parts of the structure to move, without reducing the overall structural integrity. The capability of motion using the joints was explored trying to enhance the aesthetic qualities.

Our thought process was to design a joint, which had the capability of motion of half circle to move within itself and transfigure into an variant structure .The initial study was to investigate the diverse resultant motion of  joint. The joint designed was an spwith slits with the other rods fitted in allowing  it to rotate on its axis at 180 degrees by taking advantage of the 3D printing technology .The bending properties of the pipe was explored and transforming the structure from a tower to swirling circular form. The 3D printing technology gave the opportunity to explore joints which resulted  in dynamic and kinectic changes in the form of the structure. Thus allowing the structure to transform from a tower to swirling circular form using rolling joints.

The main idea of our tower was to create the most stable and, at the same time, light structure and give it an architectural view.
We were using the triangles in a top with three horizontal elements, which provide strength and stability, joined with three vertical elements and assembled layer by layer using only this one building unit.
To make the tower more stable we joined three triangles between and make it grow in 13-18 levels, it gave feeling of vertical stream.

We also was trying to experiment with the structure of wood, playing with different holes, bending and cutting. That’s why in conclusion we had the line-cuted holes, from the both sides of horizontal element with exactly the same distance according the direction of wood fiber. It gave us possibility to bend it in a dry way and use the tension of material to fix vertical elements better.

Sviatlana Matushko,
Novak Kijac
John Alexander Giraldo Mendez

Structures arrived around 09:30 Wednesday morning Otober 16, 2013. MAA 2013-2014 students used the past week to explore materials, design, and digitally fabricate prototypical structures, joints, and connections. Groups, comprised of 3-4 students, were prompted to create the tallest structure scaled 1:5 made out of 1mm thick cardboard without the use of nails, glue, or any other supplementary material.

Size, shape, and geometry varied between groups and the ideas of advanced architecture as they are applied to lightweight structures were explored through a process of trial and error. Groups experimented with optimization of material, joints and construction process while considering weight and height constraints.

Tutors: Alexandre Dubor, Anastasia Pistofidou, & Edouard Cabay discussed each prototype and gave feedback encouraging students to crush, force, and push the structures to failure. Moving forward the goal is to create stronger structures by understanding the materials and how they will deform. This will be achieved through the analysis of failed members, connections, or supports of each structure.

Further constraints will be given in the following classes. Final installations, of plywood, will be presented on October 30, 2013.