Matthias Pliessnig

www.matthias-studio.com

The projects on this website are interesting because they show how non-linear forms can be made from wood... using the material for rigid structural ribs and also skin. I am not sure about the process that this designer uses... and it may be different from ours, but thought the forms were inspiring.

to cancel bending stress & joint

I and Abe talked about the design on skype.
It may be better solution to join 2 different sin curve for canceling bending stress.
Joint of 2 sin curve is finger joint.

This is a joint as key to connect 2 sin curve.

It is put a slit of board of sin curve.

Next, it is twisted to tie the boards. 

However, it will not transform...

So, It should be unitized and connect as sliding system of joint.

Splinter Concept

My apologies for not posting this earlier, but here is my conceptual design.

Material Testing

Here are some photos of the material testing I completed. The photos of the bending were taken at the maximum amound of curvature before the material failed. The photos of the twisting show the maximum amount of torque I could exert on the material, but I believe the material was close to failure. Please let me know if there are any other specific tests that would be helpful.

Material:

5mm Lauan Plywood 1m in length at various widths (50mm, 75mm, 100mm). This was the only Lauan plywood I could find. The material was labelled as 5.2mm but also 1/4" which is 6.35mm, however it measured 5mm. The material was cut so that the grain of the outer layers ran legthwise along the piece of material (parallel to bending force)

Conclusions:

- maximum bending does not change with width of material.

- maximum twisting is inversly related to width of the material (the narrower material twisted the most). The max twisting decreased more when the width of the material increased (50mm - 75mm = -30 degrees, 75mm-100mm = -60 degrees), meaning that a smaller increase of width has a greater effect on max twisting as the width increases.

Notes:

- Due to material imperfections and the nature of the wood, rate of bending along the length of the material was sometimes not constant, creating an uneven curve. Also, this caused the material to sometimes fail unexpectedly at lower levels of stress

- The maximum bending was most easily acheived after 'warming up' the material by flexing it several times at lower levels of stress. I believe this can be attributed to breaking the bonds between layers and the rigidness of the wood grains (in the inner layer)

- Due to the the length of the clamp holding the material, the effective length being twisted was 820mm. However, I would assume that one would not want to use the material under maximum stress in the project, so perhaps using the same amount of torque at the 1m length would provide an adequate safety factor.

Dear teamD members,

I'm sorry for not uploarding my idea until the deadline.
Your ideas are very interesting and I agree the shape or the system of the transforming.
Then,I've thought of the concept of the teahouse that we will make.I think we have to image some point of our teahouse, and Iwrote them in the image.
I think the teahouse should be the place where enjoy the tense, the owner could be accepted anybody,and the using purpose is sharing just the silent time,without talking,and feel something from the place or the air.

Besides,when the teahouse transformed to something, is it a teahouse, or something different?If it is a teahouse, is the concept or way of using different?

How do you think about them?
I look forward to have some discussion with you.

thank you,

saki

morphing cage

Flexibility and handling ability are important factors about tea house as window, entrance and set of tea-things. 

The tea hosue is weaved like bamboo bag. Each joint is slide system, so we can morph surface to loose each bolt on joints. 

If we morph top of the surface down, the tea house become more closely.

We enter inside to move boards as  opening “Nijiriguchi”.

I didn't test material yet, next I will test bending.

If I can't bend plywood, I will cut a gash as I have shown you my previous work of teahouse.

I would like to see your works soon.

Please comment my idea, I want to discuss with you.

Thank you.

Plywood characteristics and two joints

About the material testing, unfortunately I’m not able to do this because where I am is not available plywood 6 mm thickness. But I found a table that shown some plywood’s mechanical characteristics at this link:

http://www.worldpanel.com/Plywood%20Data1.pdf

Also I thought about the connection between the pieces, and I made two examples that eventually they might be joined each other.

The first image is referred to an orthogonal joint:

The second one is referred to a joint along a longitudinal axis:

Tea-House Research

A different look on Tea Houses,

One way of thinking of what is a tea house, is thinking that it simply contains, holds or surrounds the tea ceremony which is its primary focus.  Another way to think about it is that the house is the embodiment of the tea ceremony’s principles.  Thus an approach in designing a tea house is to understand the tea ceremony (as I will state below). 

Tea Houses research

These are the images of my research about the Tea Houses and my idea, that I've alredy emailed out.

Assignment

We are starting to get some research done which is great. I would like everyone to post their research on the Tea House by Wednesday so we can move to designing! Already some good suggestions being made about direction in terms of how to use the material to scale. Alina, excellent document you emailed out, is it possible to post here so we can track comments?

We should quickly move to the design phase and everyone should post ideas for designs by Sunday night (GMT +5, because thats where I am).

To complete this task is going to involve working simultaneously on the design and with material testing. While individually developing initial design concepts to be posted for Sunday, I would also like the group to undergo a coordinated testing effort.

Ultimately, I would like us to explore the relationship between material and form through patterning and coding. In order to do this we need a general idea or concept of how the material behaves under a variety of conditions. Most importantly under bending and twisting.

We need to organize a spreadsheet and begin testing under very prescriptive conditions such as: 50mm, 75mm, 100 mm,..... wide strips at 1 meter increments when clamped and deflected how far will it bend before breaking? And likewise, what is the amount of twisting that the material can take measured in degrees before breaking.

Developing this empirical data set will help us build limits into our code/equations.

BE SURE TO PHOTOGRAPH THE TESTING PROCEDURES!!

These need not be overly scientific. Simply clamping the material to a table in front of a gridded background and photographing will work as a measure. (Think Myth Busters if you are familiar)

Would someone take the lead in organizing a spread sheet and as a group decide who will tackle what aspects of this sort of material database?

Okay, I am very much looking forward to what everyone has

Reference

Here are a couple reference images.

This first one is a Tea house that my firm, E/Ye Design produced.

Here a departure from a traditional Teas was made to use the concept of Tea House loosely and create an ambience of lightness and visual play with the gesture towards spatial capturing for the unit.

The Second is the luan Screen Divider Myself and David Riebe designed.

The intention here was to change tha material properties of a piece of standard plywood to behave in new ways; physically and optically.

transforming cage

I have researched about windows of teahouse and flexibility of teahouse.

Size of plywood board  is 1800mm*900.

So in my proposal, each ring consist by connecting 3 or 4 plywood to make a long wood bar to bend by natural curvature.

Example of Bending Method

Here is something I found interesting:

http://forum.atomiczombie.com/showthread.php?2201-Moulded-Wood-Seat

He steams the wood, then holds it to the jig while the material and glue dries.

Material Properties

Hi Everyone.. I have begun some research of Tea houses... and will post about my findings soon.

Also, as per Professor Ellinger's suggestion, I think it is important to understand the properties of the material that we will be using.

Does anyone know the exact type of 6mm plywood that we will be using? Will other materials be available to use as jigs, forms or other parts? what type of glue/fastenners are available? or should we explore ways to minimize fastenners (different types of connections)?

Will this be similar to the material we will be using? (Baltic Birch? 5 ply?)

http://www.halexcorp.com/halex_underlayment_4.shtml

Also, what is the size of the sheets?

Has anyone taken a basic structural engineering course? In my program, I have, but have never encountered any calulations/values for the forces, moments and stresses for plywood. If we find the limits of the material, we will know what is possible for the design. Values that might be helpful are maximum compression, tension, bending, shear, and torsion... although im sure we may need to do a certain amount of experimentation...

Welcome

Hey,
We have started a blog, in order for us to communicate with each other and also to help share ideas. 


Sheldon Pei