Week 7 // Story #5 — Story analysis

5. Getting Wasted

If you could use any waste material to construct a building, what would you use, and what would it be?

I’d make it out of stationery waste, I feel like there is a lot of waste in the everyday use of office things. Like all those little paper circles that get hole punched out or when you try to staple a reading but it’s waaaaay too big and the staple just squashes. There’s probably so much paper that gets wasted, stacks of paper are strong too. If you got enough you could probably build a pretty sweet little house out of it. Oh wait, it would get pretty soggy in the rain... it could just be used for interior walls I guess? Actually, what if it was repurposed into furniture or something and put back into the office it came from?

Pallets would make an awesome treehouse! Or the material waste/offcuts and fibres offcuts from fashion garments could be broken down and mixed with stronger materials.

Polystyrene to make napalm?

Off cuts and left over fabric to create a fabric fort or tent structure.

Could you grow a building on waste food?

If it’s actual food - wouldn’t it rot and make one massive compost pile? Plus not to mention the smell if you were inside it!

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This week I chose to work on story #5

Team:

– Harry Boyd

– Isaac Laughton

– Sid Bardiya

– Phillip Barham

The main points we pulled out from the story were:

– The double meaning of 'getting wasted' in terms of waste materials and drinking too much

– The fact that the structure has to be constructed from waste material

– The idea of repurposing the waste material and situating it into the context it originally came from

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Our idea is to repurpose beer bottles and string them up into screen-like structures. There will be eight screens in total each depicting a letter in order to spell out the word 'TREASURE'. The meaning of using the word 'treasure' is to provoke people to wonder if waste product really needs to be wasted. It also alludes to the saying 'One man's trash is another man's treasure.'

The screens will be placed in a way where they are not all visible at once, creating a sort of loose space between and forcing users to walk through in order to read the whole word. The letters will be depicted through use of brown vs. green bottles. 

As an added level of meaning the bottles themselves will individually be sandblasted with the name of the bar that they came from. This will show how many bottles are wasted from these bars and will put responsibility on them.

The aim of the pavilion is to show that waste products can be utilised to create something new and beautiful — Does waste have to be 'wasted?'

Week 6 // Story #6 — Pavilion feedback

After presentation the main feedback points of improvement were:

– The audience didn't get the 'natural disaster' theme
– It was interpreted as more of an installation than a pavilion

The audience didn't understand what the pavilion was about. As soon as we mentioned 'natural disaster' they understood it completely and suggested that we do something to the outside to indicate the idea before a user enters.

We had talked about this while constructing the pavilion but had steered clear as we felt it was too explicit.

The audience also believed that it was more of an installation than a pavilion. This was down to the fact that it was more of an individual experience. Even though the pavilion was enclosed and was an actual structure they felt that unless the structure that our structure was within (in our case the classroom) was utilised in order to get something across then it is an installation rather than a pavilion. They also felt that this was the perfect opportunity to get across the idea of 'natural disaster' before the user enters into the zone of 'isolation through lack of communication.'

Week 6 // Story #6 — Colour

We felt that the pavilion needed some sort of coloured element to bring into a more 'disaster' realm rather than a 'depression' one. We set the boards next to some colours to see what they looked like together.

The orange worked best as it refers to the main colour of spray paint used after the earthquake and also has a 'danger' element to it. The orange also really pops and brings attention to the phone which is the focus of the pavilion.

Week 6 // Story #6 — Type

The graffiti type in the space refers to run down phone boxes and links to the spray paint they used in Christchurch to signal which houses had been cleared after the earthquake.

Week 6 // Story #6 — Light testing

The more we tested the space the more we felt that having a 'static' always-on light was boring and diluted the idea. We played around with strobe lights and found that if we were going to do it it really needed to be on a random flicker.

This video is us testing it with a light dimmer. We have found an app that gives us pretty much exactly what we wanted through translating text into morse code and then into a light cycle.

We also tried using a black light to get the type to glow and to bring more of an old-school phone box feel.

Using the text 'Sorry, this number is not available' gives us a perfect pattern and reflects what is graffitied on the interior walls.

Week 6 // Story #6 — Built structure test with sound

Week 6 // Story #6 — Sound test

We played around with multiple sounds such as dial tones, tsunami warning sirens, earthquake rumbles and combinations of the above. We found that the dial tone by itself was best for our idea and in terms of feeling 'isolated'.

Week 6 // Story #6 — Building the structure

We ended up using the text 'Sorry, this number is not available' which plays on the idea of isolation through lack of communication when a disaster occurs and the phone lines are down.

Week 6 // Story #6 — Story analysis

6. Climate Crisis

Climate predictions for the Wellington Region

I often think about if a tsunami hit Wellington…. What would you do? Run up Mt. Victoria?

The wind is going to hit new record highs up to 260 knots per hour and blow roofs off houses, sweep people into trees and create a twister.

Hailstorms with hailstones the size of tennis balls. There will be rain and flooding, the airport will all be flushed away.. And Miramar peninsula will become Miramar island. There’s a sign that asks ‘is the Miramar Peninsula possum free?’. It sure would be if we have a tsunami!

Our country is smack bang on the ring of fire - earthquakes are a given, ripping the country in half.

That one time a few years ago when we all thought that Wellington was going to be hit by a Tsunami, me and my mate were playing monopoly at mine when the warnings went off and tv reporters were telling everyone close to the water to evacuate to higher ground. We ended up in Wainui at her house eating toasted sandwiches until the tsunami was no longer a threat. The funny part was that we went back at my place continuing our monopoly game after all that.

Could we build an arc like in the movie 2012???

Build a massive platform that the new wellington would be built on, water goes underneath, platform would be earthquake proof.
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This week I chose to work on story #6.

Team:
– Harry Boyd
– Isaac Laughton
– Ryan Scott
– Caitlin MacEwan
– Natalie Harris

After reading the story we decided to pull these ideas out of the story to work with:

– The unknown. Not knowing what to do if anything happened. Panic
– The idea of isolation
– The idea of interruption through it not being expected
– Warning sirens and evacuation communication

We talked about the two main ideas of isolation and interruption a lot and eventually ended up running with the idea of isolation as we felt that interruption would be very hard to do well with a pavilion. In order to create interruption there first must be routine and normality which is very hard to achieve without ending up with a spatial installation rather than a pavilion as such. 

We also felt that isolation has a lot of potential. The idea of isolation plays on:

"... Miramar peninsula will become Miramar island."

and can be translated into the many different forms of isolation that come with natural disasters; communication, physical, family, normality.

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Our idea is to create a black telephone box-like structure that will sit in the middle of a large dark space (isolation). The outside of the box will be black and plain in order to hide what is within (plays on interruption as well). Inside the box the walls are covered with rough, ghostly, white spray painted graffiti type repeating 'Sorry, this number can not be reached'. There will be a phone hanging on the wall with the phone off the hook and a large, bright orange cross over it. There will be a light in the roof that ideally would flicker to give the effect of the phone box being rundown and potentially broken because of the disaster. In the space a loud, dead dial tone will be playing over speakers to further enforce the idea that the phone doesn't work and that there is no chance of communication (isolation). Users will go in once at a time in order to get the full experience of isolation and fear.

Week 5 // Story #10 — Pavilion feedback

After presentation the main feedback points of improvement were:

– The pavilion lacked the actual spatial 'pavilion' aspect
– That the projectors could be projected onto surfaces in a crazier way to really emphasise the use of three different projectors

The pavilion was received very well and the majority of comments were positive. They really liked how we'd used light and sound to convey the ping pong game and how well they were used to transition into a dance party-like vibe.

Week 5 // Story #10 — Experience video

Week 5 // Story #10 — Potential space ideation

We had a think about space in terms of our pavilion. Our pavilion needs a large, dark space which made it hard to construct one. We decided it would be more worth our time to just use what we have and put our effort into making the other elements awesome.

We wanted to have a think about what sort of space we would need though in case we did end up running with this idea further on.

We initially tried using the photography studio. It worked well but we didn't realise that there are no speakers in there. We tried using what we had but it was too quiet and didn't achieve the immersion that we wanted.

Next we tried the pit. We initially stayed away from the pit as we thought it was too big for what we wanted. Once we got in there and set up the projectors we realised that the huge scale was definitely a key element to our idea. The huge walls and space really allowed us to make the most of having three projectors and use a lot of different surfaces. The sound system in the pit also allowed us to make the music really loud and truly immerse the users.

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In terms of future implementation we would really like to try and create a large orb like structure that you can walk inside and almost feel like you are in the ping pong ball. If the structure was made out of fabric then the projections could be projected from the outside too which would add another element of immersion.

Week 5 // Story #10 — Space test photos

Week 5 // Story #10 — The pit tests

Week 5 // Story #10 — Photography studio tests

Week 5 // Story #10 — After Effects motion graphics type video

Week 5 // Story #10 — After Effects video build

Building the typographic video for the projectors. The video will then be split into thirds – one section for each projector.

Week 5 // Story #10 — Ping pong song

This song was made by recording a ping pong game and using the sounds to make a song. It reflects the ping pong tournament/dance party and will be used to create a sort of ping pong soundscape.

The song starts off sounding like a regular ping pong game and then slowly builds up and into a beat and eventually a song. It ends with the sound of a ping pong ball bouncing to reflect the end of the story.

'...The doors are locked.. But wait.. I can hear something.. Its getting closer.. It almost sounds like a ping pong ball bounce...'

Week 5 // Story #10 — Story analysis

10. The Wildcard (this one’s free)

This one’s up to you!

This one time, late at night, up on level E...

The dance party/ping pong tournament was getting way out of hand and the 100 person strong crowd were cutting shapes so hard that the building started to shake so violently that there was a power cut and all the automatic windows and doors closed and locked everyone inside. Suddenly…

Due to the violent shake created by all those ping pong masters, they began to think about what they just did, well, because they were trapped inside and had run out of pizza, what else is there to do? This caused them to develop their methods of pingpong. They thought of a new version of ping pong called…

Ping Pong Parkour! The multiplayer, free-running game where you can ricochet the ball on any surface back to the other player. In this case, it was indoor parkour.

This new invention had to be shared. So, everyone there whipped out their iphone’s cause let's be honest iphone’s are the best. From there, it led them to make a facebook club which MAWSA quickly funded after seeing it had one hundred like’s.

It was now ready for a bigger….

better level of competition!! We all decide to settle this through 1 last friendly game of PPP (Ping Pong Parkour). Just as we were ready, the lights started to flicker on and off.. the annoying automatic windows fling wide open and gusts of wind are howling in the background.

Unable to hold strong onto my manhood I sprint up the stairs for the door.. After the first few steps I began to regret the amount of $5 Beef and Onion pizza's I’ve been consuming for the past couple weeks.. The doors are locked.. But wait.. I can hear something.. Its getting closer.. It almost sounds like a ping pong ball bounce...

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This week I chose to work on story #10.

Team:
– Harry Boyd
– Isaac Laughton
– Sid Bardiya
– Caitlin MacEwan
– Nathan Meeks

After reading the story we decided to pull out these parts of the story to work with:

– The fact that it's a ping pong tournament and dance party

– It's late at night and there's a power cut (darkness)

– The lights flicker on and off at some point

– The ping pong ball is ricocheting off lots of different surfaces

– The dramatic and ominous ending with the bouncing ping pong ball

We cam up with the idea of using a dark space and creating a sort of ping pong soundscape which will be bouncing off of different walls. A ping pong game will be recorded and the different sounds will be used to make a song. This reflects the dance party element as well as the ping pong tournament. 

Type will also be projected onto the walls to reinforce the different ping pong sounds, the back and forward of a game and to bring in the dance party/flickering light dynamic. Ideally, the type will be projected in a way so that you can't take it all in at once to create a real sort of immersive experience.

Week 5 — Good pavilion example

Architects — MIA Design Studio

Location — Hanoi, Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi, Vietnam (2015)

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I really like how the pavilion is made up of almost pure repetition or poles with lights on the end. I also like how by using a simple framework it was able to really define the space without creating/using any sorts of roof or walls. Also a very adaptable space