Brief of the exercise:

The exercise was to design a famous Panot hexagonal cement floor tile as designed by Gaudi in 1904.One of the particularity of this design was supposed to be the capacity to be inserted within a larger assembly and to create continuous patterns across several tiles.

Concept:

When it comes to the notion of continuity within an assembly of tiles repetitive look of the whole flooring sometimes becomes mundane, so to break this repetitive laying was the major concern along with the channeling of water on a surface which should be controlled by the level difference within the pattern. And even in water channel the intent was to achieve the water flow which gives the sense of surprise in the journey.

We started with the idea of illusion. We thought of creating an effect of crack. This gives us random look in the overall flooring even though the tiles are of the same pattern. We wanted to surprise the user while walking on this tile, thus by illusion of crack and randomness in the flooring we can always make user to look at the pattern.

 Execution:

To achieve the end result we used 3d software to simulate the pattern. We used the plugin where particles are collided to the surface and it gives various patterns. This collision can be controlled as per the expected end result.

Then we used rhino cam(plugin for rhino) where we defined the strategies for the milling process of the mold. We used two ball mills, 12mm for pen for the carving of the mold and 3mm pen for the final finishing and engraving. Once the molds were ready we applied four layers of sealant at interval of 15 minutes to dry and then wax before pouring concrete into the mold. Each time took 12 hours to dry.

After getting all the tile we cleaned it with hot water to get rid of extra wax and then it was ready to lay cracks all over the place.

The aim of the exercise was to create a dynamic form with minimal number of simple joints. A dynamic structure was designed with only three types of 3D printed joints ie; 1) roller-joints 2) sliders and 3) and perforated ring. The whole structure was made to take advantage of the bending properties of the fiber rod.

The model forms a floral shape with four “petals” that can open and close forming the different instances. The structure begins with ball bearings (fixed to the base on four corners) the rod starts from one corner, forms a loop passing through the central ring (the tying element at the apex) and the slider (on the base) and ends at another ball bearing on the diagonally opposite corner. We also tried to combine laser cutting technique along with this exercise by placing the sliders on laser cut tracks so that they could move along and as well as lock themselves on the track. While the sliders are pushed-in or pulled-out, the resultant compression in the rods and deformation of the peripheral structure are corrected automatically by the movement of the ball bearings.

the process…

the joints…