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Assignment 2: Shelter
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This is our second project/exercise for the Design Studio I module, and it is a group project which we are required to build our own shelter choosing from a few given materials, in groups of 6-8 people.
For our group, we decided to use bamboo and sand as our main material.
We studied about our chosen client, Ang Zhen Xiang, and found out that he loves nature, are energetic, loves music, and also like photography and sports. He has a dynamic personality and had always been an active person. We decided that we want to build a shelter that are rhythmic, dynamic and fun, as well as to act as a comfortable,yet natural shelter for him. Above are some initial design options of our shelter. They are designed to suit the properties of bamboos, and consideration was taken in the designing process on applying principles of rhythm and dynamic.
This is our first design. Is is a L-shape covered shelter with slanted roof, and it is separated to 2 areas, which is the resting area on the left, and the activity area on the right. the door is placed at the right area so that when someone enters the shelter they do not look right to the resting area, to secure the owner's privacy. Windows are planned to be on both sides to allow sunlight. The slanted roof is to be facing the wind direction so that uplift force is created on the shelter when there are wind blowing.
The plan, and elevations of the shelter:
On the left: This is the mock up initially made by spiraling in random degrees. It looked messy so later on we decided to spin them in 9 degrees per layer instead.
This is our second design. Bamboos are placed horizontally and are interlocked by layers. The parts highlighted in blue are to be cut off and disposed, to be the door and passageway.
On the left are the drawing of one block of modules stacked together which each layer is rotated horizontally upwards in 9 degrees, and our shelter will be made out of two interlocking blocks that spirals int he same direction.
This is our third design. The spiraling part from our last design (second design) is used here as the upper part of the shelter, as it is too heavy and time-consuming to be made as the whole building.
In our third design, similarly spaces are divided into two, the resting and the activity space. The resting space on the right, is covered by a roof and has limited openings to limit the sunlight entering the space for a better resting experience. The walls are designed as rhythmic beatings.
The activity space on the left is an opened area with a lot of sunlight. The walls are made from unique organic panels that are hollow so that the owner can choose from the different panels for photography uses, to angle for the perfect photo. There are also drums made from bamboos in the activity space as out client loves music.
Here comes the most important part of our shelter, interlocking, because this is technique that supports it without using any other connector. First we make two angle at the end of the bamboo then we make two holes at another bamboo that we need to interlock and we used cutting machine to cut because it is hard to create those holes using saw. Since the thickness of side of all bamboos are different so we measure the width of holes we going to cut before interlocking.
On the left: This is the measurements for the upper part of the shelter (the spiraling part).
Below: The half completed upper part.
On the right: Our shelter in site (half complete).
Below: The bed in our resting area.
Below: Example photos taken (on site) using our various panels in the activity space:
Presentation Boards
Here are pictures of our presentation boards.
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On the left is the exploded axonometric drawing of our shelter. It is drawn to scale 1:25.
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