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.

To find the most versatile components we started looking into simple 3d shapes that could be altered to display an array of assembly possibilities, movement and interaction throughout the structure.

The cube fitted most efficiently within the bounding box assigned for the 3dprinter.

The cube has been hollowed to reduce usage of material and alterations to the shape have been made by perforating the component in 5 different directions with a precise diameter to fit the plastic rods.While experimenting with the possibilities, we created a ∞ shape that could be twisted and bent into different shapes and curvatures. The 3d printed component would allow movement along the curved length of the rod.The result, an ordered interactive chaos of infinity loops.

Rodolfo∞Ruxandra∞Shweta

Rodolfo Parolin Hardy – Brazil
Sinem Samanci – Turkey
Sebastian Alvarado Grugiel – Costa Rica

Tutors
Anastasia Pistofidou
Edouard Cabay
Alexandre Dubor

Special Thanks to Chirag Kumar