B.P.P - Research Da Vinci

After deciding which design senario I was going to focus on, I proceded to expand on the research that I gathered in the micro project.

I have been looking at some of Da Vinci's sketches of the human anatomy and trying to relate them to the quote "home is where the heart is". These unique sketches have got me thinking about the form of the final product but still have to look into purpose of the final output.

Temporary Homes for the Homeless

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/mar/14/homelessness.politics

This is a link to an article that was posted in the Guardian about that the number of homeless people being forced into tempory housing is rising.

B.P.P - Design Senario

Out of the two senarios, I have decided to focus on senario one:

Design for UK Refugee/Homeless Shelter and Storgae

The reason for my choice is that when we were given our mirco breif, senario one appealed to me more. The micro breif that we were give, to help us gain a better understanding of the project, was to provide visual research based around a selection of key words:

Shelter, Storage, Design for Manufacture, Climate Change, Roto-Moulding, Refugee and Conservation.

Out of the keywords, focused on Shelter, Storage and Climate Change. I look at the literal meaning of these word and then tried to find other metaphorical meanings for each. Mainly based on Shelter, I found that the word a linked meaning to Protection, Saftey and Secure. After identifying this I looked into what those words ment to me, and came to the conclusion what makes me feel protected, safe and secure is my family and friends.

"Home is wher the heart is"

"Safety in Numbers"

Balmoral Plastic Project

With the excitement of last semester over and in the past, it is time to move on and look foward to the future. What better way than the start of a new project. Like the Ponoko project, this is going to be a live project as we are designing for a company. The company is "Balmoral", an Aberdeen based company that has been providing solutions to the offshore, engineering, building, chemical and plastic sectors since 1980. Balmoral Tanks, which is a branch of the Balmoral Group, is a leading tank design, engineering and manufacturing company. The company provides the most comperhensive range of tanks products avaliable from a single source across Europe. Balmoral tanks use roto-moulding to produce their tanks as it seem to be the most suited process to use for the scale of their products.

Our breif is to desgin for one on the following senarios:

1: Design for a UK Refugee/Homless Shelters and Storage

2: Design for Water Adaptation & Conservation

Ponoko - Final Output

This is my final solution for the Ponoko project. I was want to experiment with sound and the different way to produce it. I looked at how the accoustic guitar uses its hollow frame to amplify the sound of the strings, and tried to incorporate this method in to my design. The final output was this sond box that the user assembles themself from the laser cut boards recieved from Ponoko. The box is separated into different volumes so when they are played (hit with a drum stick) they produce different notes. The sound box also comes with a flat pack drum stick.

Ponoko - Open_Soruce Project

From one project straight into another one. As the NCR finishes we are presented with a new challenge to over come. This new project is entitled Open_Soruce: Democratic Design and the client that we are designing for is a New Zeland based company called Ponoko. Ponoko are a company that bases their entrie business on providing a service from designer to send their design to be produced. Anyone can use this service but you have to design something that can be cut from a flat sheet of material that is provided by Ponoko (flatpack).

The outline of this project is to design smething using the facilities that are provided by Ponoko that is based on a design studio, garden or office enviroment.

NCR - The Results

It was a long few week but the NCR project has finally drawn to a close, and the winner is........

Gray's School of Art (of course). Steve was crowned the over all winner with a powerhouse presentation about Ikea.

I do not make it into the final 7 but I tried my hardest with the idea I had. Boards are displayed above. The idea was to add value to digital downloads to make them more appealing to me. This is because I don't download music and prefer buying cds for the tangible object. I designed a service that would be added as an extra when downloading music which would let the user download more media (such as bonus tracks or artwork) relating to the band if they listed to that band enough or visit locations relating to the band.