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Reflection

Throughout the duration of the project (research, design, making and installation) I think we both did a fantastic job! Lots of work has been put into the development and the final design. We faced few issues but made it through in the end. The overall experience was amazing and so grateful to be one of the contributors to the CupaDupa design community. 

There are things that we could have been done better such as testing the installation on site before the installation day. I do understand that due to the short time frame we didn’t really have time to visit the site to test our flags with the trees. The tree ended up being the problem to our installation, which we had to quickly find a solution on the day of installation. This was quite stressful but it worked out in the end. 

On the day of installation, we were waiting on bamboo poles that were meant to arrive but never did. Good thing we had some spare bamboo poles which we quickly assembled together on the first day of CubaDupa Festival. Lots of obstacle along the way but we eventually made it through. 

I received many great feedbacks from my friends and family on our group project. They all really liked the flags and though it looked really cool.  

I learnt and improved: time and work management, teamwork, collaboration with other groups and taking on critique for development.

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Updating our location for the installations. This is due to trees being in the way.

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I made these technical drawings to show the dimensions of the tree cage and the flags. How this look visually. 

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These were my notes of things that have already been done and things that needed to get done. 

We each took home four flags each to cut out the patterns/holes and have them prepared for next class. 

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I made some visualisation as to what this may look.

There may be some problems with the flags getting caught by the tree.* 

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Returning to the site to take measurements of the tree cage and take photographs of the possible area for installations. 

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Making flags

Making a small scale version for testing.

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Taking notes of the new flag dimensions. 

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After the presentation to Cupa Dupa team, I wrote down the changes needed to be made according to feedback. 

‘These are my notes from our Cuba Dupa people: Scale - we will need to source longer length bamboo (3-4 Meters), either double or triple the size of the bamboo poles. They want it to be big and extra and also for safety reasons. Location - our installation needs to be located near the park entrance because there will be food stalls and toilets along the street. (We can maybe sort the layout on the setup day) Flags - Ant suggest we run rattan wires along the edges to hold up the flag and give shape’ - me

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Did some testing and making of the new ideas

I made few other designs (sadly did not photograph it) such as two long length flags on one stick, 1 long length flag, one with and without holes and etc. 

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Me: Do you think the frost cloth hides the structure/curve shape? I feel like it does, from the picture.

Victoria: Yeah I wasn't expecting for it to hide the water barrier that well- but it looks like we'll need a LOT more if we want to also use frost cloth to hide the barriers.

Me: If we have time we could make a wooden box/walls to hide it  would we need more frost cloth for Tuesday testing?

I felt that it hides away the pattern of the bamboo poles and in overall the installation just does not feel right. We will need to find a better way of wrapping/weaving the frost cloth around the installation. 

End the end, we went along with the flag idea just I had roughly sketched up during class presentation. 

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Digital model version of the installation.

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Full scale Discussion

I had a play around with the model on Sketchup and tried converting from 1:5 to a full scale. 

Me: Hey Victoria, What dimension do you want the full scale to be? I tried converting from 1:5 to full scale and it’s 50x25cm. The 50cm in length seems a bit short. And 25cm thickness seems really thick. I was thinking we make the block 100cm (Length) by 20cm (height). The poles can be roughly 15-18cm deep? 

Victoria: So I’ve actually already cut the wood block to scale (I just had a piece lying around) and it’s 150cm long (I’m 5’2” in that last one for scale) so it should be just a few cm shorter than the water barrier which was 152.9cm

Me: Do u think the height of the block is thick enough for the poles to sit in stable enough?

Victoria: Yes, we want the bamboo to sway a little as well in the breeze- but I’ll do a test one right now hold on. 

Now that I’ve got the dimensions of the full scale model (height-5cm width-10cm length-150cm) I did some more testings and finalised the placement gaps and the bamboo angle for Victoria to start drilling holes. 

Diagram above shows the length of the gaps between each hole and the degree angles for the bamboo poles.

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After few testings in class, I finalised the pattern for how the bamboo poles will go in. So that Victoria could get started on the full scale model. 

I liked this curved/wave pattern because its fits in more with the organic concept and it kind of gives a sense of motion and movement. 

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Concept Presenting to the Class

Made annotations and rough sketches of site planning.

After hearing other groups concept and their prototypes. I further developed our designs with new ideas as to how frost cloth can be use in a different way, linking to other groups project. 

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I returned to the site at around 7-8pm to take pictures of the entrance way at night. The area was not all lit up, there were some lightings coming from the surrounding buildings and very few street lights. 

If we were to use lighting for our installation, this could work out fine. 

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Further Development - Preparation for presentation

Mapping of the installations

I made this map to show the start of entranceway and where water barrier installations is located. 

Dimensions of the entrance way installations

At this stage we have only decided on the size of water barriers and the height of bamboo poles. Currently the patterns of bamboo poles is zig zag. Yet to confirm the patterns, and still need further testing. 

Concept Visualisation 

The visualisation of the installation, consists of water barriers, weaving of frost cloths through bamboo poles, cloud patterns painted onto the fabric and fairy lights along the poles.