Assignment 1: Modular Structure
For this assignment, I worked with Jonghyun (John) Jee to create a structure that stood by itself using basic pieces designed by us that were assembled into smaller structures that were joined together into a larger structure. These pieces were obtained by laser-cutting a 1.5mm plywood board. I drew at first some shapes on the board similar to crosses or stars, but John proposed to stick to basic shapes with slits, since it would allow us to reach the 120 piece minimum knowing that we will able to get modules done because the pieces would let us make closed structures. We first started using two pieces: a square and a triangle, each with as many slits as it had sides. We first laser-cut a few small pieces and put them together as a hexagon pattern, which proved using these shapes was possible. Our professor wanted the structure to stretch vertically too, and proposed a third piece to be added to the mix, composed of a 15-degree "elbow" with one slit at either end. Two pieces are joined by pushing a piece's slit into the other piece's slit. In terms of sketches, we just drew some shapes on the board before settling on the final shape, John then drew some squares and triangles on paper, which he tested to prove they would work.
We were then asked to double the size of the pieces and did some adjustments to the slits so the pieces could fit better and printed 4 plywood boards worth of pieces, which totalled to around 200 pieces, with an almost equal amount of each piece.We started with the hexagon pattern and added another hexagon around (forming a vertical and a horizontal hexagon at the same module). Then we added some squares below the horizontal hexagon to provide support, but found it was better to convert those four squares into another full hexagon. The next step was to connect the structures. First, we used a series of 3 elbows (alternating their orientation to have a horizontal line) and 2 squares to connect two hexagon structures. In order to have a more firm connection we added a second one on the lower hexagon of the structure. We ended up having three hexagon structures (modules) connected in a triangle shape.
Then John started building the same elbow and square series upwards from each modules, which allowed us to have one hexagon located at the top of the other 3 modules. Because of the way the upper hexagon was connected to the other modules, we couldn't complete the module (we needed two opposite squares to not be attached to any other piece, which there weren't), so John filled the rest of the free squares by adding more support (three elbow-square series), but this time attached to the middle of the horizontal elbow and square series. We had some triangles left, so I put them together to form something we could put on top of the structure to top it off.
