large

These patches are “too big” for the frame. We cut minimal holes in them in order to make room for the joints in the frame. The frame had to be extended to be able to push the flaps in the minimal holes away from the joints.

medium

Square membrane patches attached to the spaceframe, “filling the holes”.

framework

Until now we had only made membrane systems in the big generic spaceframe. We wanted to look at alternative spaceframes that could support membranes. Units of three perpendicular rods (cartesian crosses) can be stacked and conquer space in all directions. (A problem with these (oktahedra)units, if they are to be assembled like we have done here, is that they can’t be packed tightly in space.)

“dancing chicken”

We made a system of five rectangular patches, each connected to the spaceframe by the four corner-points and to the neighbouring patch by two internal points. The two “flank” patches were also connected to the frame by one internal point.

We developed a notational system in order to be able to draw simple diagrams describing the basic structure of the membrane systems.

Additional diagrams were made to describe different spatial characteristics.

I thought the system looked nice and had some interesting spatial qualities, but of course someone had to spoil it all by saying it looked like a line of headless, dancing chicken. I guess the dance would have to be can-can…

initial experiments

We started off by making the three basic shapes with tensioned membranes: the saddle, the cone and the barrel. The material used is lycra. Then we made a simple arrangement of three saddle shapes, and moved the control points (the corners attached to the frame) to change the shapes. We also did some basic experiments with minimal holes (v-shaped cuts in the membrane). The large image shows three membranes interconnected by internal points and minimal holes.

horizontal and vertical sections