Bending (a biscuit)

Alright I guess it's time I post for project 2A seeing as we have pretty much 2 days to complete this bad boy.

So I guess I started off with a little research the climate/weather conditions of Las Vegas.

Some things I found really interesting: although it can get really hot in the day time, it gets pretty chilly at night (so using the temp. difference could be interesting), average rainfall for a year is about 0.35 inches...with the most rain happening in August, and the record snowfall is 9inches (yes I did say snow)

Then I moved onto some precedents:

Prism Cloud by Logan + Johnson

Uses sunlight + wind to create an interesting space underneath the structure.

Rosa Muerta by Robert Stone

I really like the dug-in outdoor living room of this one, I think it creates a unique (spiritual?) connection to the Earth.

I was interested in doing a yoga meditative space. So I started looking into breathing features in nature (since that's an important aspect in yoga). I looked into the respiratory system of insects (since they don't have oxygen in their blood) and they have a cool tracheal system that circulates oxygen through their bodies really quickly. Without getting too indepth, I'll try to explain the process. The air goes through the spiracle (which is a porous opening on their side) and moves through a series of tubes to bring air to organs and cells.

Neat little diagram

Here it is in action woooooo cool!

Anyway, seeing that video, I wanted to do something that expanded in time (yes...it's beginning to sound a little like the SSEF project... it still haunts me).

I had first come up with trying to harness wind as the engine to move my facade... but apparently I had forgotten a key aspect about Vegas... it's some sort of dust bowl... where there's not a lot of wind...just like how wind will pass over a cereal bowl (don't mind me, I'm just hungry). But talking it out with someone coughcough who told me not to do a dome...because Americans apparently will make fun of the fact that I design igloo-like structures...

No-no o_o

So I was taken towards a route that uses solar energy and heat as the main source of energy if I were follow through with this "breathing" building. Here's a cool video showing how different metals coupled together will cause really cool bending:

Thermal Interrelation from robert garlow on Vimeo.

Anywho, that's where I'm at right now. Form again seems to be my biggest obstacle.

P.S. Happy Valentine's everyone! ^_^ I get to spend it in the most romantic place ever...woo studio.