Panels

Examplars

Internal light shafts

Canopy Sketch

Sketch

Canopy cover

Model Pics

site plan

Canopy design

The canopy structure is an interactive entity that may also provide shelter for those roaming the hill  - i wish for the space to remain an outdoor green space however, currently there is little natural ventilation and penetrating sunlight ..... from here i decided the canopy needed perforations

These perforations took form in an abstracted Aboriginal art pattern.

The learning center

Note - outdoor space is indeneded to provide natural light

Elastopolomer canopy

The canopy will be an elastopolomer membrane with electronic capabilities. The material is flexible durable and extremely strong.

Using sensors the canopy reacts to interaction below - using portable devices -- either their own or hired/borrowed devices (from the learning center)  - visitors can search topics and images, audio and visual material will be displayed on the canopy  - the canopy will expand or contract depending on the amount of ppl within this space. 

There was a good website explaining the polomer membrane hower, i cant seem to find it ...will keep searching.

merging the cnopy with the built form

The combination of the canopy and the bulitl for  - i wish it to seamlessly meet and and when underneath appear as one entity.

Spacial planning

Looking at spacial planning - access - organics and circulation

The spatial arrangement of circulation was originally inspired by the 21st century Museum of Contemporary Art  Kanazawa,  -  Circular in form, with a diameter of 112.5 meters, the building has no front or back, leaving it free to be explored from all directions, and has five entrances. - this resonated with the idea of the entire top hill beoning to the public and the freedom to roam the hill with no boandaries.


I ended up with a clear concept - to create a continuous space to include all functions - no barriers

- using the typography of the hill the building is graduated and flat according to public and private spaces within the building.

- also punctuations of glass circled courtyards to provide natural light  - leaving some spaces darker than others.

Is It A Political Injustice For Young People?

Is It A Political Injustice For Young People?

Talking to an inspiring mediarite who works with young people a few days ago, I came up with the idea to write this blog post. I want to look at how I, along with many other young people, disregard politics and refuse to vote. Why? because we really don't believe it will make an ounce of difference.

This conversation really got me thinking. I found myself effusively making excuses for myself and other young people. Many young people don't really understand politics and it's this that causes us to doubt it. Is this really the case though? Not really, it's just choosing not to understand with a touch of ignorance. The fact is that we all do it though!

I feel that by not opening my mind up to wanting to understand politics, that I have done myself an injustice. I think that by not wanting to know helps me to use not understanding it as an excuse. I guess we can all find something to blame if we really want to. The plain truth is that I choose not to know anything, which means I have excused myself from voting. It may seem like I am being harsh on myself but at times we all need to push ourselves into learning about something that bores us.

Then I thought, what if they came up with a way that they can make politics more interesting? I went onto Google and found some great groups, here are some of my findings:
- Heads Up
- Electoral Commission

I think that the way forward is to be planted with politics and the basics at a young age so that we are curious to find out more. I have always thought of politics as boring but this one conversation caused me to challenge myself about the way I felt about politics. Here is an article that should be Read.

All that I can say is that it's never to late to start caring. We can't continue to complain about the state of our country if we are not doing anything to change it. Politics is everywhere, even when you buy a chocolate bar at the shop. If all of the young people, including me, that have refused to vote in the past, did vote, then we might be able to fight to change things. We have the power to make things better, so let's make it happen.

Opinions are life changing and we all have one. I am asking young people to read my blog and vote in the elections. If we all do it then we will be able to make things more positive and make a better life for ourselves.

We are the future, so let's make sure what we say counts!

The Canopy ...more ideas

At the moment I'm playing with the idea that the interactive part of the canopy will be a flexible entity, expanding and contracting similar to the flowers below.

interative flower

This image is similar to the architectural entity i want to design - an interactive canopy structure the provides KITS to the public below.

Bumblephone is a design for a large scale interactive installation. Collaborators: Lauren Fenton, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Veronica Paredes, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and Laila Sakr. It was originally proposed for IndieCade’s Temporary Installation 2010 in Culver City.

Bumblephone participants speak to each other through giant phonograph-shaped flower pods, triggering a mischievous aural remix that blends their intimate interactions with the ghostly sounds of cinematic and videogame history. Composed of four fluted canopies that hang from a central stalk, the piece is designed to evoke experiences of intimacy, memory, and a playful rearrangement of history. Visitors can whisper to one another through tube-like apparatuses that resemble the reproductive organs of a flower.

When someone speaks into one of the tubes, the “organism” interjects by echoing back the participant’s words and mixing real-time communication between visitors with sound segments composed of memorable lines, refrains, sound effects, and dialogues culled from histories of cinema and video games. In massaging these soundtracks into a dialogue with its visitors, Bumblephone gives rise to delightful surprises, stimulating confusions, and uncanny presences. By designing these flower-shaped objects to be suggestive of multiple forms — a camera, a projector, a telephone, a phonograph-horn, and an interactive organism — we encourage visitors to think about the ways that various technologies tend to absorb and respond to one another.

We will assemble the frame of this evocative structure using aluminum tubing for the supportive structure and lighter PVC and wire for the sound flowers. A central pole will be secured by four tension cables, supporting a hollow aluminum platform, in which a laptop and a mixer will be housed. A hollow aluminum ring circles the platform, connecting the two curved aluminum tubes that serve both as support for the flowers and carriers of sound from flower to flower. Visitors speak into a microphone that amplifies the sound within the tubes and also records their speech, prompting the Voce speech recognition platform to decode participants’ utterances — looking for keyword matches within a library of lines from noteworthy films. A positive recognition will trigger a Processing program to playback sound from these particular filmic moments. In addition, sound recognition sensors will trigger the Processing program to translate the participants’ voices into sound effects from a library that includes classic video game sounds.

The sound flowers themselves will be assembled using thick copper wire sheather in clear colored PVC tubing, while their decorative buds/stems that link them to the aluminum structure will be composed of molded PVC. To make them sound proof, clear vinyl upholstery fabric will cover the flowers’ wireframe.

Canopy ..thinking it out

Playing with the idea of expantion and contraction of the canopy based on the idea of use.

Technology aplications

Existing Applications

There are already several instances where interactive touch screen technology is in use, it's just in a very small limited scale and used particularly for a limited purpose.

This first image above, is an interactive real estate application allowing people to scroll through and look at different properties and their features.

The second image is taken in an airport in England and is the worlds largest interactive touch screen, it's 18m long, but with current technology, it is said that it would be no problem creating a screen that is 800m long.

My idea is along these lines, except that it allows people to send and receive information between parliament and the people.