TRANS-FoRM-ers feat. NOM

50 mins worth of footage from the night... (with some editing) and we have a NOM video of our project from the night of the event. Its a bit long but as the convoy wasn't experienced by all we wanted to share the bus phenomenon and the gathering of our 40 people, along with very first inflation for the night with our convoy participants.

For those who haven't heard the good news we got second place for the peoples vote and first overall for the architects vote! Judging was done by Pip Cheshire and Sir Miles Warren. Congrats also to This Way Up and Spacebook!

Thanks all for coming and all who helped us. Truly appreciated.
- NOM

TRANS-FoRM-ers... nom nom

Absolut nom?

During the weekend journey of picking up photos from our awesome photographers I happened to stumble across this massive inflatable in Western park in Ponsonby on the corner of Ponsonby Rd and Hepburn St. The event follows the aboslut theme of 'doing things differently leads to something exceptional'. Absolut commissioned cutting-edge New Zealand artists and designers working in every media from film, paint and paper to silver, wood and even skin to exhibit their submissions. Not entirely relevant to our parachute but inflatable architecture with a white skin nevertheless.

The Convoy

This is the idea behind our convoy and its relationship to the constant transformation our project undergoes.

Rather than designing a project for Shed 12 and then finding a way to transport it we designed the convoy (a bus of 40 people) and then designed our submission around the way these people could create their own architecture. The transformation that our project occurs during the convoy is the 40 people understanding their importance to the design and how they assume a place on a bus not knowing what to expect till things start to unfold as they are debriefed on the bus, receive their instruction sheets and then how the bus is unloaded and the project is assembled at the venue.
An element of surprise is constantly experienced by the convoy participant even to the point when the parachute has been spread out and the sandbags have been placed in the rim and they are receiving instructions on how to inflate the parachute. The interior space that is created inside is unexpected and is the most dramatic transformation of our project.
As discussed in previous posts the addition of drawstrings and the entering and exiting of people from the dome further transform the parachute. The parachute's shape is different everytime it is inflated so it sustains a constant change of state.

Nom instructions

Here are the set of instructions that will be attached to each of the 40 sandbags. Each person who is coming on the convoy will receive a sandbag making them a unique participant to the architecture week event. The parachute completely relies on the sandbags to seal the air that is captured when the parachute is flapped.

The 40 people become the creators of our design. They are intergral to our design as if one sandbag is missing the rate at which the dome deflates significantly increases due to the air escaping. The sandbags are only placed in the parachute for the first inflation by the first lot of 40 people. They remain in the rim of the parachute throughout the rest of the night.

These set of instructions needed to be simple and straightforward. They were placed in a small specially made tag envelope that was attached to the strap hole with a piece of scrap nylon (the same fabric used on the dome). By attaching the instructions to the strap hole it also showed where the holes in the strap were on the sandbag.

Flooring Construction

The flooring is white tarp which will be constructed of 40 panels also. They will be sewn in quarters for easier set up, and each quarter has one extra panel to overlap the next quarter. This ensures totally covering the entire 12m diameter circle.

Constructing the centre bean bag

One compartment (8 out of 40 panels) with cardboard pieces sewn in



Panels of beanbag lining up with panels of dome

Bean bags construction

The 10 smaller bean bags mirror the panelling geometry of the dome. They consist of 22 panels with the same maximum width as the centre beanbag, as well as 2 end circles.



And... this is what happens when you fill it with beans inside out accidentally... MARE.

St Cuths Dress Rehearsal

Whilst we were doing a mock up dress rehearsal the Wed before the night of the event we left a video camera at the back corner of the sportcentre running the whole time to document the test and capture the lighting effects. Even though Gertrude is pretty powerful it unfortunately wasn't powerful enough to inflate our parachute as successful and as quickly as the group of 40 people!
Note the movie has been sped up as the entire footage of the test was 40minutes.

St Cuths Light Tests Interior

An interior panorama. The lights were changing as the shots were being taken

The Dress Rehearsal...

Once again St Cuths let us borrow their sports centre space to do a mock up test of what Friday would be like in terms of lighting. We also wanted to take a few photos in case there was too much ambient lighting from the other projects on the night as we need good ones for our aO's for crit! Thanks to Ms Mahon for arranging the space for us (we wanted to use the rec centre at uni but its $900/hr), to the art dept for lending us equipment and to Gertrude for letting us borrow their pump.

Waiting for Gertrude to inflate the parachute.