B a r t S h aw, AIA

Lift:Home FEMA trailers are by their nature temporary and by their character demoralizing. What if a permanent solution could be deployed quickly enough to help people retain their community, spirit, and viability? Lift:Home was developed for this purpose. Originally developed for the Texas Grow Home design competition, this concept uses hinged components to allow inhabitable shelters to be deployed and erected as rapidly as possible. The core module contains a living area, kitchen, bath, and two bedrooms. A second module, which can be added at a later date, will contain one additional bedroom. Modules are fabricated and stored in compact units. A unit contains half of the exterior shell of a new home. This split allows the module to be loaded and shipped within the standard width of a semi-tractor truck. Interior partitions, ceilings, lights, and fixtures are delivered in a third module. The design makes use of economical lightweight, durable materials, multiwall polycarbonate panels, metal panels, and perforated particleboard.

Nicho l a s Rich a r d s on

Light Modulation Simulation helps designers see virtual space as more

In the first phase, a repetitive system can be

than just a mirror of reality, allowing the user to test the

understood as the repetition of a unit that when col-

potential realities – site conditions, material properties,

lectively organized provides or performs a synthesized

lighting, and the laws of physics – of a design before

function. For this experiment, the repetitive system of

constructing it at full scale.

braided rope was examined for its varying qualities.

This project was designed and constructed through

The rope weaving process provides a pattern that

a three-hour seminar course at the University of Texas

can become more or less opaque depending on the

at Arlington on digital fabrication. The professor ana-

tightness.

lyzed simulation as “a way of assessing the unfolding

In the second phase, the geometric structures iden-

performance of the project and limits of a spatial

tified in phase one are implemented in an interlocking,

system through a direct engagement with the underly-

repetitive form meant to diffuse light through the use

ing geometry of the design.” The ultimate goal of this

of simulation. Three different CAD/CAM pieces were

project is to develop the digital and physical groundwork

designed and manufactured using a 3D printer, with

necessary to provide design guidelines for the produc-

the pieces then used to create latex molds for casting.

tion of a screen that will modulate and regulate natural

A final 36x36-inch model integrates the three modules

and artificial light. There are two phases: 1) identify

that interlock to function as pockets that can encap-

and analyze repetitive systems; and 2) use research to

sulate light from the source and modulate its release.

design and produce 3D field conditions.

1 1 / 1 2

2 0 0 9

t e x a s

a r c h i t e c t

33