“Transformer” is a layered, light-responsive shading lattice, designed and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of students and faculty. The system acts as an active shading device, potentially for use within a building envelope.

The prototyped system is comprised of quad-shaped, polystyrene petals arrayed in overlapping, radial clusters. The petals are situated within a lightweight but rigid and patterned support armature formed from planar polycarbonate and acrylic components while housing matrices of sensors and motors.

Local variations in petal movements and aperture size are controlled by simple microcontroller arrays and varying script configurations that interpret light data from photoelectric sensors to drive small servo motors. The axial rotations from the servo motors are converted into opening and closing motions for the petals via custom gears and axles.

The interdisciplinary team leveraged computation throughout the design and prototyping process to
1) actuate mechanical movements (using scripting along with small-scale physical computing equipment);
2) resolve geometry and patterning via parametric design information;
3) simulate and analyze desired lighting scenarios and patterning effects with false color mapping and soft-shadow rendering;
4) fabricate components for prototyping using CNC equipment.

Team:
Xiorelis Cox
Geoffrey DeSmit
Andre Paul Haffenden
Tianxiao Peng

Faculty:
Kevin Klinger
Joshua Vermillion

Students Develop Prototypes Reusing RCA Dome Stadium Roof

tetraMIN is a hanging screen aggregate consisting of componentry generated from tetrahedron geometry via Rhino’s Grasshopper parametric modeling plug-in. Comprised of laser cut polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) scraps, each component forms a periodic minimal surface, and is propagated into a regular pattern by a series of reflecting/mirroring operations. The PTFE is the former roof material from the RCA Dome, a large pneumatic roof stadium prior to demolition in 2008, and was donated to the studio by Michael Bricker, director of People for Urban Progress, located in Indianapolis, Indiana.

System prototyping and fabrication occurred in one week by a nine member team of Ball State University architecture students. Working with the Institute for Digital Fabrication’s faculty and equipment (primarily laser cutters), the team fabricated each component with a tab-and-slot connector system to enable the assembly of the screen. Inexpensive zip ties are also strategically deployed throughout the screen assembly for structural stiffening

Backlit for a glowing visual effect, tetraMIN is currently on display in the College of Architecture and Planning’s gallery to coincide with a special event aligned with manufacturing and materials research.

Team:
Derek Anger
Kate Donnelly
Melissa Garrison
André Paul Haffenden
Kevin R. Klinger, Associate Professor
Kristen Kuk
Derek Newman
Aaron Nordstrom
Natalie Reinhardt
William Zyck

Faculty:
Kevin Klinger
Joshua Vermillion

Partners:
People for Urban Progress / Michael Bricker, Director

Ball State University “speedwaystudio” designs addition scheme for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum

INNOVATE :: In celebration of the centennial of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Ball State University graduate students in architecture accepted the challenge of exploring new ways of revealing the innovation, story, and heart of the Indianapolis 500 and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As a part of the College of Architecture and Planning’s Master of Architecture degree program, a six-week architecture design studio project included proposing a hypothetical renovation and expansion of the existing Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum. The intentions were to spark a discussion about how architecture can align with the legacy of innovation inspired by the Speedway and display the incomparable collection of the Hall of Fame Museum.  To conclude the project, the students presented their team-based design scheme at IMS and presented the museum with a scaled model mounted in a digital designed and fabricated kiosk.

REVEAL :: The exterior of the designed addition celebrates the fabrication methodologies seen throughout the history of the automotive industry as the interior begins to reveal all aspects of racing history and innovation. The building, collection, and narrative of the brickyard’s incredible impact on our Hoosier heritage is gradually revealed as the visitor approaches and circulates through the space. Upon entering the museum, visitors are guided through two paths of exhibits in which cars are positioned, manipulated, and exploded to display an intimate level of detail. The goal of this new exhibit space is to provide a more in-depth experience taking you, the visitor, from the stands to the driver’s seat.

SPECIAL THANKS :: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum, particularly Ellen Bireley, Terry Gunter, and Mel Harder.

STUDENT TEAM :: Jared Burt, Majdi Felah, Matt Flamm, Eric Gerding, Mo Han, Madeline LaPlante, Adam Miller, Kevin McCurdy

FACULTY :: Kevin Klinger and Mahesh Senagala

EXTERNAL CRITICS :: Kevin Frank and Alexi Karavokiris [RTKL Associates, Chicago]; Matty Bennett and Bendan Fox [SEQUENCES DESIGN, Indianapolis]; Donna Sink [MWHarris, Indianapolis]; Harold Baker [Harold Baker Architects, Brazil, IN]; Torrey Dawley [Sandpaper Studio, Indianapolis]; David Russick [Indianapolis Museum of Art]

Indianapolis Star Article: here.

After the shortlist of finalists were announced, the team presented to a jury for final round of judging. Final results from this jury will be announced on May 20.

More info here (Ball State University press release): http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,7273-850-63996,00.html

Students Work with Industry Partner, Zahner Metals, and State-of-the-art Digital Technologies to Design/Fabricate/Build a Park Structure for the Muncie Community:

The reBarn project aims to enhance a public park along the White River in Muncie, Indiana. With the support of Muncie’s mayor and partnering with the local parks commission, students selected and researched the Westside Park site while developing design proposals. By providing a new semi-programmed platform for activity and reflection, users are connected to the landscape in a tactile and visual manner. Rejecting the over-simplified archetype of “bench” or “platform”, reBarn purposely anticipates many different programatic and ergonomic moments by engaging park users with a formal ambiguity. Without a predetermined and easily read use, users are invited to invent uses for sitting, reclining, climbing, etc. A sense of human scale and proportions is embedded in the layout of the panels, and its form is pulled specifically from the site as it creates a third levee above the river to encourage visitors to engage the structure.
reBarn is composed of reclaimed barnwood (275 unique pieces for a total of 300,000 board feet) donated to i.M.A.D.E by a local family. Each piece of barn wood was de-nailed and power washed, numbered and inventoried by species, length, width, depth, and other physical characteristics. This catalog of available stock was used to efficiently nest reBarn components which were unrolled from a digital Rhino model. Each wood component was custom milled using a 3-axis CNC router.
Connections between individual wood components and panels were informed by a partnership with Zahner Metals in Kansas City. Our students and a team from Zahner discussed this project very early in the process in order to effectively design and engineer reBarn according to the many fabrication and structural constraints. This collaboration included online meetings, phone calls, and a visit to Zahner’s headquarters in Kansas City. Zahner generously supplied materials and fabricated all of the aluminum components for reBarn including five water jet cut aluminum surface panels and over 350 variable aluminum joints.
After fabrication, reBarn was installed over seven days, including all site work and preparation. On-site, the digital model (loaded on laptops) was the only reference for placement of structural supports, resulting in precision assembly. In fact, digital design and fabrication technologies along with industry partnerships were instrumental in realizing the project.

i.M.A.D.E wishes to thank:
Mayor Sharon McShirley of Muncie and the Muncie Parks Department, particularly Doug Zook for their support of the project.
Bill Zahner, Tony Birchler, Roger Reed, Sam Miller, and the rest of the team at A. Zahner Metals for their collaborative help throughout the design process and their generous production and material support.
Ken and Karen Newton in Cambridge City, Indiana for their generous donation of the barn wood used for the project.
Stacey and Linda Burt in Eaton, Indiana for lending tools and equipment and donating site and landscape materials.
The College of Architecture and Planning’s wood shop staff–particularly the shop manager, Kyle Sechrest.

Design to Production Team:
Elizabeth Boone
Eric Brockmeyer
Adam Buente
Jared Burt
Dustin Headley
Kyle Perry

Student Help Team:
Amber Agan
Rudy Arroyo
Ariel Aurellano
Deepak Baniya
Ben Fruehling
Ben Greenberg
Austin Lucari
Joseph Martin
Claire Matucheski
Brianna Newton
Priyanshu Shrivastava
Mark VandenAkker

Partners:
A. Zahner Metals
Muncie Parks Department

Faculty:
Kevin Klinger
Joshua Vermillion

The Institute for Digital Fabrication at Ball State University is testing ecological design strategies for the building industry following generous awards from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Discovery foundation. The research uses a digital database of component pieces from available scrap material, digitally catalogs waste products from the building industry specifically the Indiana Limestone industry and develops computational means to apply the cataloged information to parametric design models. Taking scanning technology mostly reserved for the auto and industrial design industries and deploying a portable system outdoors allows the recording of heavy stone scrap objects into a digital coordinate space. The idea of the project embraces irregularity rather than the regularity that is traditionally used in most refined stone design work. Since each recorded stone in unique in size the two dimensional composition of pieces form an overall irregularity organized wall. The constant and measurable depth of each scrap piece allows for a recognizable three dimensional organization to emerge.

While digital technologies have improved the flow of digital information from designer to fabricator, this system, entitled ‘SmartScrap’, is unique because it improves the flow of information from the fabrication process back to initial design decision-making. Completion this digital information ‘feedback loop’ will seamlessly inform design and fabrication decision making based on available sizes, shapes, and quantities of leftover/waste stone inventories.

Student Team:
Ben Greenberg
Greg Hittler
Kyle Perry

Partners:
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Discovery
Indiana Limestone Fabricators

Faculty:
Jason de Boer
Kevin Klinger
Joshua Vermillion

Developed by students from “An Inconvenient Studio”, MorphoLuminescence utilizes an understanding of fashion photography to find its form and provide optimized lighting, enhancing the experience of trying on clothing.  A three-point lighting set up is commonly used by fashion photographers, arranging a bright key light above eye level, in combination with softer fill and back lighting to create subtle shadows and a three dimensional effect.

Comprised of custom laser-cut “petals”, “stems”, and hinges, Morpholuminescence was pre-assembled for testing prior to shipping in pieces to the SPOT ON SCHOOLS exhibition in Florence, Italy. MorphoLuminescence provides variably tuned hue and light intensity levels in order to affect the fitting room experience and adapts its form to accommodate changes in the space.  In its idle state the dimly lit surface of petals hangs free, signaling to consumers that it is ready for use.  Through simple infrared sensors, human presence and variations in the space are analyzed, initiating its state of change.  Differences in height are read by the sensors and interpreted by two Arduino microprocessors which drive servo-motors, in order to actuate the surface.  MorphoLuminescence amplifies the experience of the individual by expanding and contracting, recognizing when a user is bending over or reaching up to remove clothing, only arriving at its state of pose when the consumer is ready.  In this final state, each panel of the surface is backlit with an individual light source. Relative to the ratios of the three-point lighting set up, more illumination occurs where the density of panels increases.  MorphoLuminescence focuses on efficient, optimized lighting for the individual, as well as physically amplifying the experience of change in a fitting room.

Morpholuminescence will be shown at the BEYOND MEDIA festival in Florence, Italy in July.

Team:
Elizabeth Boone
Eric Brockmeyer
Adam Buente
Kyle Perry

Faculty:
Mahesh Senagala
Joshua Vermillion

Partners:
The Morpholuminescence project was made possible by the generosity of the following industry partners:
Buente|Buente Architects, Capstone Real Estate, LHI Lighting Sales, Ridout Plastics, The Estopinal Group, and VPS Architecture

Process Photos

Arcus Animus is a kinetic mesh system designed by Waterloo Architecture/Philip Beesley Architect Inc., in collaboration with Ball State’s Inconvenient Studio/i.M.A.D.E (Senagala/Vermilion) and Pratt Institute Epithelium Studio (Beesley/Sarrach/Wang). Fabricated and installed in four days, the hanging, layered meshwork composed of impact-resistant acrylic, bamboo, and mylar components reacts to human occupation interpreted by arrayed proximity sensors. These physical reactions consist of “shaking” and “waving” movements actuated pneumatically using solenoid valves and custom air muscles, and controlled by Arduino microcontollers with processing-based code development.

Arcus Animus is a recent incarnation from a long lineage of mesh and actuator installations at Waterloo Architecture and Philip Beesley Architect Inc. from 2006-09. The custom air muscles and code cores were originally developed by Christian Joakim in 2007. A revised kinetic mesh and air-muscle system (which was the basis for this meshwork) was developed with the Pratt Epithelium Studio in 2008. This meshwork was redesigned at Waterloo Architecture and Philip Beesley Architect Inc. for Ball State in January 2009, with code redevelopment by Brad Rothenberg of Pratt Institute. The Ball State workshop entailed fabrication, assembly, and installation, along with further mesh and actuator details and code refinements throughout February 2009.

Ball State Installlation/Development Workshop:
Philip Beesley, University of Waterloo/PBAi
Brad Rothenberg, Pratt Institute
Mahesh Senegala, Ball State
Josh Vermillion, Ball State

Ball State Team:
Deepak Baniya
Elizabeth Boone
Eric Brockmeyer
Adam Buente
Luke Christen
Brad Horn
Brandon Hoopingarner
Paul Konwinski
Yevgen Monakhov
Brianna Newton
Daisy Winkler

Pratt Institute:
Richard Sarrach
Evan Douglis

Waterloo Architecture/PBAi Design Team:
Rob Gorbet, Engineering Director
Hayley Isaacs
Manuel Kretzer
Yoshi Washi
Jane Wong
Eric Bury
with
Jon Gammell
Christian Joakim
Kirsten Robinson
 

Process Photos

i.M.A.D.E encourages design students to focus on the creation of unique prototypes based on material interrogations and market viability. Students are actively developing business plans and exploring commercial outlets for design prototypes based on emphasizing the production of ready-made, yet customizable products. Indiana has a long tradition of producing hardwood veneer from regionally harvested trees. Made of Indiana Hardwood veneer, the “Bodhi Tree” highlights some of the more subtle properties of hardwood. The thinness of veneer allows wood to bend, twist, and glow—revealing latent and innate qualities of thinly sliced wood. These qualities are exploited in projects that reveal the “light/lighter” qualities of this typically “heavy” material.

Using a hand-assembled notch/slip joint system, the “Bodhi Tree” was formed from self-similar laser cut veneer components with no hardware. The curvature and tension of twisting the veneer strengthened each unit to form a stable and resilient lattice. The overall assembly and geometry resulted from a self-organized form-finding experiment, which led to the creation of gradients of variegated densities, strengths, and geometries of light-catching surfaces. The resulting mesh was used to define space and filter light in an otherwise stark interior environment.

Faculty:
Steven Deters; Lecturer, UCLA +  Fall 2008 i.M.A.D.E Fellow
Kevin Klinger

Student Team:
Deepak Baniya
Elizabeth Boone
Eric Brockmeyer
Adam Buente
Dustin Headley
Kyle Perry
Priyanshu Shrivastava

Partners:
David R. Webb Company
Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Association

i.M.A.D.E encourages design students to focus on the creation of unique prototypes based on material interrogations and market viability. Students are actively developing business plans and exploring commercial outlets for design prototypes based on emphasizing the production of ready-made, yet customizable products. Indiana has a long tradition of producing hardwood veneer from regionally harvested trees. Made of Indiana Hardwood veneer, “Luminaires” is one such pilot project with potential for commercial spin-out, as the project highlights some of the more subtle properties of hardwood. The thinness of veneer allows wood to bend, twist, and glow—revealing latent and innate qualities of thinly sliced wood. These qualities are exploited in projects that reveal the “light/lighter” qualities of this typically “heavy” material.

Described by a fully-parametric digital model, the shape and proportions of the “Luminaire” can be easily customized, with precision laser-cut veneer components. These components are coated in polyacrylic and assembled by hand using notching and slip joints. The detailing of the slip joints was inherent in the design development, such that no hardware is necessary, and anyone can assemble the final form. Once linked to a web interface, the product of the design can be uniquely customized by consumers and shipped flat-packed.

Student Designer:
Eric Brockmeyer

Various Student Production Teams:
Eric Laine (IHLA Showroom)
Mark VanderAkker (IHLA Showroom)
Ben Greenberg (Spot on Schools Exhibition)
Greg Hittler (Spot on Schools Exhibition)
Austin Lucari (Spot on Schools Exhibition)

Faculty:
Kevin Klinger
Joshua Vermillion

Partners:
David R. Webb Company
Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Association