1.1 The Floater

Ultimately my methods of starting off seem to be a little different from a couple of peers after reading a few of their posts. After getting my feet wet and delving into the massive world of biomimicry taxonomy, I decided to take a step back and ask myself what I want to design. In a way, I thought that instead of having a specific natural phenomenon generate my design intents, I would let my design intents generate opportunity to incorporate certain biomimetic elements that would accent my design.

My intent is to design a small dock on a hypothetical shore that can serve as a rowing dock, and attached to this dock would be a small 'pavilion' that could possibly serve as a storage for smaller boats. (Rowing rigs come in 4 sizes; singles at 9m, doubles/pairs at 10.9m, fours/quads at 13m and eights at 18m.) I say 'smaller boats' because I think that accommodating an 18m boat might be a little big for the scale at what I want to design the structure. After considering this I thought my pavilion could accompany the larger storage that rowing clubs already have on site.

When I say rowing, i mean sculling. Please take time to note the glorious mustache.

This is an example of what the inside of a rowing club storage looks like, pretty much where all the coach boats and sculls sleep when they aren't being used. This portion of the club is usually 50-100m from the shore, and that's an h-e double hockey sticks of a long way when you have to carry these boats yourself.

Carrying the boat is for the most part a team building exercise where you carry the boat to the water with your crew, but when you have a large team, the lineup can get bogged up on the docks when everyone is trying to put their boat in the water at once. I think these are some private school students at the Bayside Rowing Club in Toronto.

Boats are already designed and built with biomimicry as its ultimate goal; achieving a design that's as efficient and aerodynamic as possible. Along with the shoreline condition, I think there's a chance here to breed biomimetic elements. For example, rowing launches really only have one thing present by the water, as you can see in the images below. Your typical launch really only consists of a cellular bubble dock that's can be broken down into smaller sections or re-shaped at will to accommodate any dock size. The dock itself has to be temporary because it needs to be pulled out during the off season due to the freezing and sometimes change in water level in river conditions. These cellular pieces are usually broken down and stored the clubs boat storage, pretty much sitting in a corner for a couple months.

Rowing launches are notoriously known for their lavish designs and meticulously integrated landscaping dot dot dot.

Here's an example of of the cellular dock systems that are mass customized and produced for efficiency in structure and deploy-ability. This is also an example of how much of a pain in the ass it is to post on a blog without any problems. I.E. why is this paragraph underlined and hyperlinked?

So serene.

This gave me the opportunity to think about how I can re-evaluate the scenario for these 'pods' to be stored, and I thought perhaps instead of neglecting them, they could be used elsewhere. Not necessarily 'recycling' but more of a 'reuse' or 'repurpose'. This gave in to the idea of having some sort of FLW contraption that could pull the dock up on a track and have it serve as an extended awning for the winter perhaps serving as a canopy for skaters over the frozen water. For tomorrow I'm considering the mechanics of the system, and I'll post my findings after hours to illustrate the progress, but here's some initial sketches of what I want the dock/awning to ultimately do:You can see in the middle the idea to have a track system guide the bubble deck up above the waterline to act as a canopy. The general form of the pavillion for now is a bastardized ellipse.

Backing up to the biomimicry aspect; I mentioned before that anything nautically oriented already has biomimetic elements in play as in 'how do I design my scull to be quicker than the fish beneath it' or 'how do I float a large material surface over water?' Let's ask Janine Benyus..

Violet or 'bubble rafting' snails secrete thick goo from their feet, and then fold the mucus to form air-trapping pockets. These little guys are the reason why industrial designers can create pontoons and the like out of steel and other materials denser than water by using air and buoyancy properties. The picture also resembles the soap bubble geometry, the name of the mathematician escapes me right now but maybe something I can consider for my docks. Another example of form that thrives in such an environment are lily pads. For instance the underside of a giant lily pad has a ridge cellular system that traps air underneath to help it float. The natural growth of these ridges could also prove as a nice form generator.

I just wrote a novel so I'll stop. Tomorrow I'll upload my thoughts on the dock mechanism and how that evolves further. If you read to the end of this post, I salute you.

Scott.