The Assignment: Create a press-fit construction kit using the laser cutter, cardboard, and 2D design software
Materials:
My Project:
Lately I’ve been on a kick of portraying different settings in my doodles, drawings, and paintings. I’ve especially been interested in the way that architecture responds to environmental challenges. One of my favorite visuals borne from this conflict between nature and human construction is the image of a house precariously balanced on tall stilts. While hanging out with a friend and painting a bit over winter break I drew up the following:
The book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino contains a more lyrical description of a fictional city on stilts that I’ve been especially inspired by:
“After a seven days’ march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foliage. There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they nev- er tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.”
For my press-fit kit, I decided to make a miniature set of houses on stilts, hopefully to be a part of a larger city someday. Using Fusion360, a laser cutter, and large cardboard sheets, I eventually constructed a trio of houses of different heights.
Challenges & Workarounds:
Final Product:
