S'Winter Station - Virtual and Augmented Reality

Using Hololense 2 throughout all project phases, AR aided students visualized the pavilion at a 1:1 size. Virtual and augmented reality were the ideal tools for conceptualizing shape and scale since the design team had to create the pavilion during a COVID-19 lockdown.

S'Winter Station - Prefabricated Construction With Experimental Casting

The towels were soaked in concrete and then laid on these Baltic birch plywood panels. Water was constantly sprayed on the concrete towels during drying to prevent the concrete from cracking. One hundred fifty panels were made with four different aperture conditions, cataloged, piled, and sent to the site. The conical concrete cast beach towels provided a fluid enclosure with various aperture sizes.

S'Winter Station - Technology

To create the conical shape for the textile concrete cladding with apertures, 270 Baltic birch plywood panels were CNC (Computer Numerical Control) cut. The CNC machine additionally provided students with the ability to egg-crate the pavilions wooded structure. This innovative construction technique that allowed the material to interconnect with itself seamlessly, creating a simplistic assembly approach.

Camp Winston Fabrication - Design Proposal

Camp Winston commissioned students to design an animal paddock. Camp Winston is a camp for children with complex neurobiological challenges, and they use animals as part of their therapy program–the kids respond very well to them. Their existing animal paddock was this very small shed. Students utilized Unreal Engine 5 to create enhanced video renderings for Camp Winston. The renderings gave students and the client a vision of the paddock's materials, details, and virtual experience during the design phase.

Shop drawings and Assembly Diagrams Ensue

The ParkletTO team has finally finalized their design

Low-Tech Design Challenge

As the students developed the design further, the idea of using household objects to maintain a low-cost, low-tech project that was still intriguing and engaging came into play. The room would be filled with 8 modules that attached to each other to shrink the size of the room. One module is consistent of recycled wood for the structure and frame, a household floor fan sealed by a plastic bag, LED’s, fabric and black bristol board paper for the textile skin.

Using Arduino technology, a monitor is being mounted above each module which sensors as a person walks by, this will cause the LED’s to turn on behind the black skin and the fan to expand the bag onto the fabric, resulting in the skin imposing on the individual. FRAKTUR focuses on a modular assembly to achieve the breathing walls without over complicating its design.

The Gladstone Hotel, being a heritage building offered a list of restrictions on the team; small door and corridors, few outlets, unlevel floors. The students visited the space several times while developing to ensure the design was possible to achieve.

CUTMR 2019: FRAKTUR meets Gladstone

As the school year is coming to an end, the deadline’s continue… Submissions for the Gladstone Hotel’s annual Come Up To My Room exhibition are making way. #CUTMR2019 is all about exploring interactive design that stimulates creativity and imagination. This year the [R]ed[U]x team made a proposal to represent Ryerson for one of the small rooms of the hotel.

Exploring the means of expansion and contraction through kinetic design, FRAKTUR intends on making the static room feel alive. It breathes life into an otherwise dark and confined space. Akin to the mechanics of organic beings, FRAKTUR will create the sensation of breathing that is naturally associated with life and its reaction to humans. It may evoke fear, claustrophobia, curiosity, or maybe even comfort as visitors enter the room. As soon it senses the presence of a wanderer, it reacts defensively. The walls begin to breathe and expand, occupying a greater amount of space. Glowing cracks are revealed in its once uniform jet-black skin as it attempts to interact eerily with the foreign entity. One may feel as if they had entered into the belly of a beast as the pulsating walls close in...