I had noticed that the owner Claudie St-Arnaud liked playful designs from the inspiration file she sent us, and so I created visual puns, used bright colours, and chose more rounded, friendly sans-serif fonts. There are indeed gun/bullet references: a very typographical bullet from a C and an asterisk, and another logo that clips a section of a woodcut-style illustration of a revolver until it looks almost abstract.

The best way to see the work is to go see the slideshow (opens in new window) at my Flickr account.

Here are the results:

The project set:

Download the model (3DS Max file, 14mb).

See the set on Flickr.

Download the CAD drawing.

View the specification (PDF).

The gear and text patterns were created in Illustrator, and oh, was it ever miserable work. Illustrator and AutoCAD dislike trading files back and forth. In the end I triumphed and had a very nicely steampunk-and-Art-Nouveau bar.

See the set on Flickr.

Download the CAD drawing.

This was my first serious try at colouring an image in Photoshop, and I am delighted with the results. The original pencil sketch shown below is by Makani.

This set of drawings detail the main guest stairs at the Tesla. Unfortunately our detailing teacher had certain requirements, so they are not the same number of risers as the final project stairs. They do however share the shape, rise and run, and tread materials and detailing. The construction is not quite the same, since the version for detailing class was freestanding with no stairwell wall to attach to.

See the set on Flickr.

Download the CAD drawing.

The first effect was “narrow, deep, and low,” seen in the feature image above. I used long, slender slits pushed to one side of the room, running front to back. This was to create a series of lines leading the eye deep into the space, which were all close together, leaving the other side of the room unlit, so that viewers would not notice that area so much. The slits were also cut so that on top, they were wide, and at the bottom they were narrow. This produced interesting patterns with the light source held at certain angles and distances. Very little light hit the ceiling, pushing it down.

Narrow, deep, and low -- patterns created by triangular slits

Wide, shallow, and tall

Dappled light

The second effect was “wide, shallow, and tall.” For this one, I cut wide rectangles running across, and then built dropped reflectors that bounced light back onto the ceiling. One opening was specifically placed by the back wall, to make sure that wall was well-lit, bringing it forward. The wide bars of light running across the space made it look wider and shallower. The reflectors also created patterns of shadow when lit at angles.

The final effect was one of our choosing. I wanted to create a dappled light with different intensities, by filtering some openings but not all with translucent paper. The paper was also an openwork Japanese tissue, to further break down the light. Many small organic shapes were punched through the ceiling, and they created an effect somewhere between a disco and a forest.

See the whole set and the presentation slide deck on Flickr.

The "box of crosses" structure is clearer when seen from above

Adriana Garcia and I went through several designs until we settled on our competitor, which as seen above was a set of crosses lashed into a box shape. The interesting thing about this design is the way that it adapts to the load put on it. Though the dowels transfer some load to the ground as compression, the remaining force becomes a moment of rotation, spreading the arms of the cross. When the arms spread enough to tighten the lashing, the tension of the cable counteracts the rotation, and the structure stops changing shape. It was built of 1/2″ hardwood dowel, 1/16″ steel cable, screws, washers, and epoxy. Lots of epoxy. Steel cable is extremely slippery and treacherous, and unlike the fishing line we’d built the concept model with, would not stay wrapped tightly to the wood if left to its own devices.

Adriana loading it with bricks

We also had to analyze how our structure would fail. I had expected the cable or glue to snap, but was wrong. Adriana accurately predicted that uneven loading or sheer strain would snap the wood around the screws where it was weak, and that then the structure would rotate and collapse. Our structure was middle of the pack for both the weight it took — about 480 lb — and for its effiency rating. The winning structures were all boxes built out of lots of simple X frame trusses. We had considered such a design, but decided against it. As well as being less original, it would have been expensive and difficult to build: we did not have a table saw, so instead of slicing a sheet of plywood into strips, we would have had to use expensive but weak softwood square dowel; neither did we have an accurate means of making angled cuts, so our trusses might not have fitted together accurately and thus not transferred force well.¹

It smashes to flinders!

Maybe some time I’ll build another iteration, one that lacks the flaws of the old — I’m sure it’ll have exciting new flaws of its own — out of dowel or pipe and rope. Definitely not from steel cable. You see, the concept model showed a lot of promise. It weighed at most half an ounce and held up almost 50 lb of bricks, a ratio of over 1000 versus one of 400-ish for the competition model. I’d like to see what it can do if I do a better job of building it.