Digital Fabrication » Sebastian Alvarado Grugiel

Underwater

Luca Gamberini — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 20:39:51 +0000

The exploration of the natural forms in the Catalan Modernism has been conceived with the water. In this tile the flow becomes both form and function. The organic form and natural topography seem to be the results of the natural shaping process the sea water produces by touching upon the sand bed. The topography of the tile represents the dualism between liquid and solid: what was once a product of the water flow now is the pathway which drives the water to some constrained estuaries. Tile by tile the continuos and smooth submarine environment takes form within the water and sand.

The milling process has been evaluated with three different ballmills: a 12 mm diameter one to remove material, a 6 mm one diameter to mill the designed shape and a 3 mm ballmill to finish the outputs.

Once the mold was finished we applied 4 coats of sealer and let it dry. Then we applied a layer of vaseline so that the cement did not stick into the mold. Next step was to pour a mixture of cement, water and additives. The mixture dried for 8 hours. After taking the piece out of the mold, the surface has been cleaned out of the vaseline and the oil has been applied to uniform the finishing.

To be continued… (once we have more tiles)

INexplosion

gokhancatikkas — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 18:36:10 +0000

Digital Fabrication – Exercise 3D Printing

Group 22: Gökhan Çatıkkaş, Juhi Patel, Sebastian Alvarado

The project consists of simple joints and their response to the stored energy inside the rods. Playful. The rods stay in form with the already stored energy and if you touch and release the energy it “explodes”.

The explosion does not make the installation irregular, but it makes it back to its ordinary geometric form. This explosion does not mean destruction and irregularity, it brings silence and order to the geometry.

500 Joints High Tower

sinemsamanci — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 18:02:18 +0000

The initial idea was to cut the wood in strips and develope a three-dimensional structure by joining them, in order to minimize wastage and take advantage of the natural properties of plywood. The concept stems from native basket weaving techniques which can be used as a structural system to develope different kind of three-dimensional volumes. Firstly, we experimented the material properties for warping, bending, joining and twisting. We tried strips with different lenght, width and fiber directions to find the best performance of the structure. After assembling the main grid, we reinforced the tower with longer pieces gradually. We discovered that the joinery we designed gave the structure possiblity to grow in height by pulling it in the longitudinal axis, and the diameter was contracted. We could get the opposite effect of expansion of the diameter resulting in a shorter tower. The form has the flexibilty of changing the shape without any adverse effect on the structure.

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

Tutors
Anastasia Pistofidou
Edouard Cabay
Alexandre Dubor

Special Thanks to Chirag Kumar