CNC Panel Joinery Notebook I’ve been collecting clever ways of slotting flat stock together since I first read Nomadic Furniture back in 1999, well before the advent of the accessible hobby-class CNC tools that today make manufacturing parts like these pretty easy. Now, the world is full of people designing models, project enclosures, sculpture, furniture, and all kinds of other cool stuff to be assembled from parts made on laser cutters and CNC routers. I keep expecting a definitive book or website to emerge that covers the “bag of tricks” in an organized way, but so far, I haven’t found it. Maybe this article can serve as a jumping-off point. In presenting this material, I want to first acknowledge my respect for the world’s established and ancient traditions of joinery. I may abuse some terms, without meaning to, and I am glad to be corrected by those who are in the know about traditional joinery. To simplify things, at first, I’m only considering joints between two panels. Laser vs. Biasing Cross (“X”) Joints
Energy Efficiency in Thermal Comfort- Passive Air Flow Principles Energy efficiency in design is ensuring that the usage of energy in your building has been optimized to ensure that it is not wasteful or uncontrolled, but rather well regulated and made sustainable. The implications of energy efficient design are realized at the point whereby huge savings are made in the built environment simply because of the simple energy saving measures that have been put in place. energy efficient airflow through an atrium Many buildings in the developed world have been designed with strong emphasis on maximizing on views and optimizing on space use. The result of this is that some spaces such as toilets and storage facilities may end up being relegated to zones of the building that are not prime. The current reliance on artificial systems is not energy efficient design. However an intrinsic weakness of this model is its reliance on energy to ensure it works as required. Energy Efficient Ventilation – The Chimney Effect General
Stellarium Education Theory/Constructivism and Social Constructivism - UCD - CTAG "Constructivism is the philosophical and scientific position that knowledge arises through a process of active construction."(Mascolol & Fischer, 2005) "As long as there were people asking each other questions, we have had constructivist classrooms. Background Constructivism and Social Constructivism are two similar learning theories which share a large number of underlying assumptions, and an interpretive epistemological position. Underlying Assumptions Jonassen (1994) proposed that there are eight characteristics that underline the constructivist learning environments and are applicable to both perspectives: Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality. Epistemology The default epistemology in education is an empirical/reductionist approach to teaching and learning. There is no absolute knowledge, just our interpretation of it. Students ‘construct’ their own meaning by building on their previous knowledge and experience. Main Theorists Dewey Piaget Bruner
2007 November Archive for November, 2007 071117_Aperiodic_Series003_Gazebo PAVILION – Free-standing structure (ie wikipedia)Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in its intended use. A pavilion built to take advantage of a view is referred to as a gazebo. POWERS OF TEN (ie wikipedia)Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray. The film begins with an aerial image of a man reclining on a blanket; the view is that of one metre across. AA PAVILION “the powers of ten”The different renders of that post are extracted from theverymany proposal for the AA Ten pavilion competition. Theverymany is now developping further its proposal -currently pushing with its aperiodic series- and is looking for sponsors and eventual venues to construct it – anyone interested?
How Products Are Made Shelter Shelter - Building Systems A catalog of non-toxic building systems. Monday, June 12, 2006 EcoNest - Creating Sustainable Sancuaries of Clay, Straw, and Timber This recent book by Paula Baker-Laporte and Robert Laporte details these architects' current focus of work, the 'EcoNest' sustainable and non-toxic cottage based on their revival and improvement of the clay, straw, and post & beam 'wattle and daub' construction techniques common to traditional archiecture of Europe and Japan. Paula Baker-Laporte is one of US's few non-toxic housing specialist archiects and has been known largely for her work in the US Southwest using pumicecrete construction. She is also author of the book Prescriptions for a Healthy House, one of the important textbooks and sourcebooks for non-toxic housing. Unfortunately, those looking to this book for a detailed system of instructions for this clay and straw building technique and the design of homes based on it will be disappointed. Strawjet Sunday, June 26, 2005
Solar System Scope Afritecture: Exploring Africa's influence on contemporary architecture - Afri-love Afritecture aims to celebrate the African influence on today's built environment. Africa's influence on modern art and music is well documented but African architecture is rarely considered with reference to contemporary architecture. "Over the centuries, cultures within continental Africa have developed and used numerous design principles in the design and construction of their surroundings. Out of necessity, availability, and creativity, these aesthetics - which are as varied as the continent’s vast cultural diversity, and further modified as they have passed through the screens of Eastern and Western cultures - are still prevalant within today’s urban context not only in Africa, but throughout the world." (Afritecture) Image: The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, by Dick van Gameren, Bjarne Mastenbroek, Abba Architects
Weierstrass functions Weierstrass functions are famous for being continuous everywhere, but differentiable "nowhere". Here is an example of one: It is not hard to show that this series converges for all x. In fact, it is absolutely convergent. It is also an example of a fourier series, a very important and fun type of series. Here's a graph of the function. You can see it's pretty bumpy. Below is an animation, zooming into the graph at x=1. Wikipedia and MathWorld both have informative entries on Weierstrass functions. back to Dr.
I-BEAM DESIGN + ARCHITECTURE The Pallet House project by I-Beam Design, was initially conceived as a transitional shelter for the refugees returning to Kosovo after the war. These people needed an immediate alternative to the typical tent solution that could potentially transform into a new permanent home over time, even without access to sophisticated tools and materials. It has since become our aim to also develop the project as a more permanent housing solution to serve not only refugees in disaster stricken areas but also as a modular, prefabricated solution to affordable housing everywhere that can improve people's lives, the environment, society and even inspire greater diplomacy among the various cultures of the world. The Pallet House is an inexpensive, efficient and easily realizable solution to the problem of housing people displaced by natural disaster, plagues, famine, political and economic strife or war. The Pallet House is made of wooden shipping pallets.