Radiography
Personal Role: Researched, and experimented with Kangaroo's physics different behaviors/arrangements in tensile structures. | Scripted the bamboo screen around the factory's production level. | Developed a narrative that breaks the preconceptions of living in factories, having them be the showcase of a culture's heritage heirlooms, and changing from being places associated with many stigmas to a space of enrichment, and proliferation of national identity. | Co-Produced the rendering imagery, and three-dimensional drawings.
Medium: Rhinoceros | Grasshopper | Kangaroo | Photoshop | Illustrator | Vray
Main Challenges: 1. Finding a stable tent configuration that would allow us to maximize space usage without having towering tent structures. | 2. Developing a narrative case in which a factory can be smart in its processes, and sensible to the urban implications of being at the core of a capital city. | 3. Dealing with the strong radial form that is bestowed from the tent structure.
Unraveling: 1. After many explorations using different opening sections, and profiles, the one that produced the cleanest, and perhaps efficient mesh was a circular section. Additionally, having an opening instead of a point, allows passive thermal regulation. | 2. Kente weaving is a comunal process that requires large open spaces. By designing this factory to include an educational component in which the public can appreciate the handcrafted side of it, in addition to creating comunal open spaces, the vicinity becomes a cultural exchange hotspot. | 3. Using the radial configuration as a mean to organize both, the handcrafted, and mass produced processes consolidated quite well the connectivity between the factory's three main areas: spooling, weaving, and handcraft weaving.
Group: José J. Sosa | Steven Fendley
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When confronting the challenge of developing a textile factory in Ghana, our team felt it was important to first outline several parameters under which we would operate. Firstly, we feel it is imperative that our proposal works to serve the people of Ghana at the maximum capacity possible. This includes the social, economic, and cultural realms. We seek to accomplish this goal by first researching the agricultural exports of the region and developing an infrastructure which is capable of locally sourcing and processing the product into the final stages of its production. This diagram represents all of the various processes and actions working together to create a machine that is seemingly both organic and mechanic. Ideally, all of these components are working together to create a whole that, when considered, can be seen as greater than the sum of its parts.
In the endeavors of producing, processing and manufacturing raw materials, the systems involved in such task should stay true to their purpose while maintaining efficiency and cost effectiveness. Understanding the textile production process, the internal systems can be grouped into three main “processors”. We seek to accomplish a system that is both exquisite to work with, and self explanatory for outsiders who wish to educate themselves in the realms of Kente weaving. The final outcome of this entire system is a singularity that resembles an organism, where the entire weaving process mimics a biological cycle of any sort. Thus, celebrating the tradition in its purest form.
Kente Weavers from an Ashanti village near Kumasi, Ghana. (July 2016). They are generally a large community of weavers set up in a large open space since the cloth is woven from a longer span of thread base attached to a heavy object.
Cable Net Studies
