Workshop Postponed

Hello everyone enclosed below is the email I received from the AAST organizers....

Dear all participants of AAST international Workshop

We have been getting many reports and inquiries about the earthquake and travel information in and out of Japan. It has also affected Tokyo, but damage was minimal.
However It will be confusing by aftershock and we think we should prioritize participant's safe first regarding our status so far.

Organizing committee has now decided to postpone AAST international Workshop

Therefore, we deeply regret to inform you that the symposium starting from 14th, Monday
We hope for those already arrived in Japan to attend the symposium are safe and well.
We will inform you our new plans as the situation improves.

AAST international Workshop Organizing Committee

Earthquake

Please, I hope that the devastation from the earthquake is minimal for all involved in the workshop.

I am currently trying to find some information about the workshop and conference. As soon as I find out any specific information I will post here. I do know several international students have chosen to not attend, but at this moment it is purely their decision.

As far as those of us not in Tokyo, information coming to us paints a dire picture and I only hope that everyone is well.

Twist and hinged system

I like Rodney's idea of Japanese traditional fan ; it is called <SENSU> in Japanese.
It is easy to transform by using hinged system.

I would like to use 5.5mm plywood's property; bending twisting.
This idea is fold-able teahouse like SENSU.

Only to put the bars in holes of floor, It can be formed.

Floor plan is Abe's idea of 2 entrance.
As like slide door, we can open and close the door to change hole which is put by the bar.

As Mr. Jefferson said, we can change the place of twisting by changing the width of bar.
I think the parameters we can use is light, view and privacy.
I'm drawing the program of changing width and twist model.

Some Suggestions from the Road...

A few comments/suggestions...

The material testing looks very good, I am interested to see how changing the profiles or thickness affects the 'location' of the twisting along a length and how that might be utilized to create visual/lighting effects. See the images below.

Also, with that in mind, I am interested to start studying material efficiency as

it pertains to cut patterns on our sheets of ply. (we have 30 sheets of 1800X900 5.5mm sheets already ordered)

Using parametric or scripting techniques to link the cut sheets to a material assembly would be interesting to study as a way to limit waste, which is typically a huge when using these types of operations. I am very interested in generating as little waste as possible.

From what I have seen so far, and knowing the amount of time we will have to produce this,

we should be thinking minimally about the mass of connections, assemblies, and 'walls' we produce. What would be the minimum we might need to define the small space of a Tea House? Looking at what has been proposed, the stacked sine curves look interesting and the nested C-Shape plans seem to produce an interesting spatial flow.

I am continuing to travel until Friday and then I leave for Tokyo Saturday, I am looking forward to seeing everyone there. In my experience with these types of workshops there will be a lot of decisions made while manufacturing and assembling once we are all together. In my opinion the pieces and method of assembly are most important, followed by overall shape and size. Once we have a technique and cut pieces that will go together repetitively we can configure the elements in several ways through different ways of putting them together.

A last note, I have included a couple sketches to both understand the cut sheet link to the produced element and how that might alter the effects. This could also work with the stacked sine curve elements potentially. (The sketch of the variations is greatly exaggerated to show difference more than design intention, but hints at how the variation could be graduated to smoothly transition lighting and visual effects)

Idea Development

I finally was able to develop my ideas further, keeping in mind the concept of "Transformation". I tried to use other's ideas and see how they could be combined with my ideas to form something new. I am most interested in some type of 'hinged' system that can expand and contract like a fan, but am open to other ideas.

I would like to explore further how we can associated different parameters such as width of wood and twisting in a grasshopper definition so that we might be able to use 'tapered' pieces that will twist at different rates down their length. The testing was done using Luaun plywood, but I now see that we will be using Japanese Sheen plywood, so hopefully it will have similar or better characteristics.

Also, I think it will be important to keep in mind the material limits - we only have 30 sheets of plywood - but also the length of the members we are designing... so we will need to understand this when we are deciding on the dimensions of the tea house... we may want to minimize joints.

Workflow

I wanted to talk about the workflow and schedule of the project.

Up to this point, we have been working with the material mostly in terms of a formal/symbolic expression... but I think it would be great to use some type of algorithmic design to generate the systems or form (since that is the reason we are all coming to Tokyo). What kind of experience do people have with Rhinoscript or Grasshopper? .. or another parametric/algorithmic software? (Akinori, I see you have some experience)

Akinori was told by the team C that we must submit our wood order by March 12... so i am assuming the design must be 90% complete by this time? Perhaps we should try to finalize a concept and design direction by sunday? what does everyone think about this? This way we will have 6 days to develop the design.

Hopefully everyone can add a comment to say what they think is the best way forward.