Metal Parts have been cut!
Drawers Constructed
Manolo Blahnik & Materials
According to some websites around the internet, there are "signature" trade marks to ensure authenticity of Manolo Blahnik's shoes, high-end luxury shoes popularized by "Sex and the City".
- No embossed serial numbers.
- Authentic white dust bags with black lettering. The box is also white and black.
- Leather sole.
Manolo Blahnik & Marcia Patmos' 2011/12 Spring Sandles made from waste Tilapia Skins and other natural materials.
… more to come but here is an interesting case for the perception of materials verses the cost of these shoes.
Drawers
Finally gotten around to making the drawers after spending the last few weeks finding fabricators and refining drawings for fabrication. It's the first time, after starting at Pratt, I will not be making all the parts for a prototype. Needless to say I learned a lot in this process. The metallic parts are being cut with water jet and hopefully they will be ready early this coming week. I'll be taking them to another metal worker for bending and welding. Unfortunately the breaks at school is not wide enough. The aluminum legs will be TIG welded, unfortunately I don't know how to do that yet. The table top was also sourced out because we do not have a large enough planer. The facets are also too difficult to do at school and a large CNC would be much better.
Thanks to a new miter gauge and a digital tilt meter, these drawers were easier than I first though. Though it was still difficult as I'm much more use to having things perpendicular.
Bent Plywood Pavilion
On my search for plywood and composite innovations, Archdaily released an article regarding a pavilion of curved plywood designed by students at the architecture department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
The pavilion functions as a sun shading for parts of the stairs in front of the department. Based on bending behavior under the self-weight of over-sized sheets of plywood of up to 11 x 2.5 meters, the design activates the material properties as the defining element in the transfer of force.
The cuts within the sheet influences the bending resistance of the sheets, an idea much like the work of Alvar Aalto and the Eames, scoring, cutting and bending plywood to achieve curvature. Other similar works include: Skylar Tidbbits' Surface Ornamentation, and the Probotics of the AA DRL.
Skylar Tidbbit's Surface Ornamentation
Probotics
e2e Materials' Miraculous Wood Substitute
Found via Core77, e2e Materials is a Cornell University research spin off company that developed bio-composite materials that not only offers a stronger, more human-friendly alternative to OSB/plywood/particle boards, but also a scalable manufacturing plan that could replace the old system.
3D Veneer
Following up on the exploration three dimensional weaving with wood, the more conventional method of creating three dimensional wooden objects using plywood pioneered by the Eames and Saarinen was further improved on with 3D Veneer. One company that manufactures this material is Reholz.
The image on the left is what happens when the shape is molded with conventional plywood. The image on the right is the same shape with 3D Veneer.
Referenced on Reholz's website is Ron Arad's Three Skin Chair, which is an excellent example of the application of 3D Veneer.
