John Reynders Architecture Portfolio | CITA Fall 2014

semester portfolio fall 2014 john reynders stu1469 cita studio

1.1 MAKING TOOLS

Hulda Jonsdottir Katre Laura John Reynders

The goal of this project was to design a tool and a process to manipulate a sheet of clay. Many variations on tools and actions were tried before proceeding with a process involving punching clay with a steel pipe through a stitched textile membrane.

After choosing the primary tool and process, many experiments were made testing different textiles, tool sizes and shapes, angle of attack of the tool, depth of the punch, and connecting punch points on the textile with additional stitching.

Through the experiments we discovered material properties and processes that we attempted to categorize and quantitate.

Things like depth of the punch, distance between punches, and the timing of the punches (first punch vs. last punch) were all interconnected and we attempted to understand and control these variables.

Stitched Cotton

Raw Cotton

Fabrics tested

Testing with fabric overlay

Plastic composit

Testing force against outcome

Plastic aluminum composit

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Cotton fabric no elasticity

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Fabric high elasticity

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Profiles tested

Developpment of the tools

Testing with metal tubes as a tool

Testing force against outcome

Minimum distance required Profiles tested

Targ1 X 503.34, Y 412.93, Z 272

1.2 MAKING REPRESENTATIONS TO MAKE ARTIFACTS

Miguel Ruiz-Rivas Avenda単o Chen Chi Lo John Reynders Eduardo De Francisco Del Saz

This project continued the work of project 1.1 Making Tools and refined it, with the goal of translating the process to the industrial robot arm and producing a fragment of an architectural installation with it.

The most significant development from 1.1 Making Tools was development of a thin clay surface married to a synthetic mesh.

This hybrid process created lighter weight, stronger piece while also reducing material waste.

In addition to the development of the physical processes, both the design of the panels and the production process was digitized.

A free form surface was created, along with an attractor curve on the surface.

Next the surface was populated with points that were drawn to the attractor curve, but maintained a minimum distance determined in 1.1 Making tools. Next the surface was divided into uniform panel sizes, and tool paths from the panels were created in grasshopper for robotic production.

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1.3 CONSTRUCTING CONTEXTS

The aim of Constructing Contexts was to perform analysis of a project site in Wolfsburg, and to transform this analysis into a distilled set of rules or strategies to guide the design of a Maker Space in a future project. The analysis of the site was based both on practical urban analysis of: connections, adjacencies, sight lines, and accessibility, and also socio-cultural analysis of: demographic info, employment, and the connection between Wolfsburg and the Volkswagen plant.

This information was then synthesized and lead to both a set of basic individual design guidelines, and a conceptual framework based both on historical uses, and spacial adjacencies of the basilica plan church. The final result of this work was a concept and set of strategies designed to be combined and weighed against each other to structure the architectural design of the Wolfsburg Maker Space

Giselle Bouron Hulda Jonsdottir Raphael Kรถlmel John Reynders

1.4 CONSTRUCTING STRUCTURES

Constructing Structures was a three week workshop with the goal of designing and building a full scale tile structure using traditional Catalan vault building techniques and computational design methods. The process of designing was two-pronged utilizing both parametric models and computational form finding, and the construction of physical scale models balancing both design aspiration with construct-ability and material feedback. The result of the workshop was a free standing arch with a 180 degree twist along its axis. The arch was constructed Catalan style, one layer of tile, with formwork only serving as guide to construction.

Giselle Bouron Magdalina Haslinger Asya Ilgun Riccardo Justi Katre Laura

Chen Chi Lo Janusz Maczewski Jesper Nislev John Reynders Wenyu Wu

1.5 CONSTRUCTING PROPOSITION

The design of a Fab-Lab in Wolfsburg, Germany served as the conclusion of the work started in 1.3 Constructing Contexts.

Considering the site, the program, and the guidelines created in Constructing Contexts, an initial architectural proposition was developed. The building is primarily oriented around the combined open Fab-Lab and workshop space, which is defined by a perforated concrete vault. The rest of the program was arranged around this central space creating a flexible space where creation, education, and exhibition co-exist.

The goal of creating and open flexible environment that also has spatial differentiation was achieved through the design of a highly faceted roof with varying levels of opacity. The roof was designed with a recursive algorithm that varied the number of recursions, and thus light transmittance, based on a gradient map of goal light intensities.

Finally, major fixed program elements are housed in oversized columns that bring the faceted geometry of the roof down to the floor level, making these complex geometries inhabitable.

Giselle Bouron Hulda Jonsdottir Raphael Kรถlmel John Reynders