The Pelican in progress

Testing out some parts of a piece named "the pelican" for its awkward way of moving...

Personal Statement Piece

"Personal Statements" is a project that all of us second year design students just finished. We each spent the last two weeks creating a piece with the intent of introducing ourselves to the design community. On Friday night we had a big presentation and party with lots of alumni and faculty, plus friends and family. It was a wonderful night - everyone's project was just a perfect presentation of the variety and talent of the design program.

My piece was inspired by a toy I had when I was younger that was made up of a hoop with colorful washers strung on it. If you spun the washers and the hoop just right, you could get the washers to hover on the side of the hoop. I built a much larger version and powered the hoop with an old typewriter motor hooked up to some pulleys I made. The hovering rings I made out of acrylic and polycarbonate, and each one has a magnet on the inside. Initially I thought the magnets were what made the hovering thing work, but I was wrong... it's a purely mechanical effect caused by the wobble of the rings as they fall in a helix around the hoop. As the hoop spins, it gives the rings a little lift. It's a pretty magical effect, and the noise the spinning rings make is great. My favorite part of the evening was watching how the hovering rings fascinated people and hearing their crazy explanations for why it worked.

in progress...

first-aid project

For my Medical Device Design class, our first project was to design a first-aid product or improve an existing one. I decided to make a Band-Aid dispenser that you could use with just one hand, since I've noticed it's pretty hard to open those sterile bandage packages when you've cut your finger. My redesigned Band-Aid packaging comes with suction cups to mount it in the bathroom and a ratcheting crank to hold one side of the sterile packet while you peel off the outer covering.

some initial prototypes

For my master's thesis project this year, I'm working on designing some gynecological devices. These are a couple of prototypes I've made to test out suction and curved pinching as ways of holding onto tissue. In the top photo you can see me trying out the suction method on a chicken thigh - it works pretty well until you poke the tissue in the area surrounding the suction cup, which breaks the seal. Stayed tuned for further prototyping updates...

a container for wires

I built this steel holder for my assorted wires and tubes so that I could start the new school year out with some well-organized materials. The project also gave me a good way to practice welding.

a collaboration with d.goligorsky

David Goligorsky proposed that we do a collaborative kinetic sculpture in which he would pick out some materials that he liked and I'd put them together.  This is the resulting gizmo in action.  The idea for the reciprocating mechanism came from a visit to the Da Vinci exhibit at the San Jose tech museum last December.   You can see David's blog here: http://thegoligorskylaboratory.blogspot.com/

aquarium-inspired mobile

This hanging mobile was inspired by the movements of jellyfish and shrimp at the Monterey Bay aquarium.  

a springtime vase

This is my first project for a class called Professional Design Explorations. Every week we present pieces that we have made in response to the previous week's field trip. The form of the base of this vase was inspired by the shape of St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, which we visited last week on Good Friday. The egg shape of the vase's rim was also inspired by it being Eastertime. The thin white plastic and asymmetric form remind me of a calla lily flower, which makes me think it'd be fun to try making a taller, thinner version...

balancing blocks

This set of building blocks was my last project from winter quarter.  The angled edges of the blocks make it necessary to counterbalance them using the dowels in order to make them stand up.  The structures that result are sensitively dependent on each block - removing just one can upset the balance and make the whole thing fall down.  

Illuminating Object Party

an awesome time-lapse video of the party:

http://www.vimeo.com/3534293

Illuminating Object

These are a few pictures of my illuminating object - the Vogel Pendant by Volare Lights. It's meant to be a reading light suspended over a Corbusier chaise lounge. The tilt of the arched copper piece can be adjusted by moving the magnetic steel counterweight, and the whole thing can be rotated about the axis of the copper tube that connects to the ceiling plate. I wish the height were adjustable too - the cables should come through the copper piece and be perfectly counterweighted so that the light can be raised out of the way or lowered for more directed illumination.

a book

This is my book project for art studio class. Yesterday was a really good day for the class critiques. The professor, Matt Kahn, laughed like a five-year-old over David's temperature-sensitive pillow, hugged Brooke for her wooden bowl, called Stephanie's wireframe gestural sculpture "exquisite," and teared up over this little book.

a poem

I am in a seminar class called The Designer's Voice, in which we talk about our worldviews, meet some interesting speakers, and read articles related to finding our individual voices. This week we all wrote poems, motivated to some extent by Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Common Things." It was really great to hear everyone's poetry, which absolutely reflected each person's inner voice. Here is mine:

Meditation on a Cup of Coffee
-Karen Shakespear

A time apart
sacred, reserved,
given space, encouraged,
allowed and understood.
A cup of warmth and comfort,
a passage to a place
of inspiration, motivation,
energy and grace.
Physically fleeting, a whiff of grounds
with a promise of endurance,
of stimulus found.
A magic ritual
the affirmation of a faith.
A complex intertwining,
participation in a race.
Imagination, history, exploration and romance,
power struggles of caffeine
chemistry in a dance
Atoms in the brew, electrons flying through the mind,
But this
is the seduction of a ritual,
the grip of built relations:
immutable, invisible, complete and indivisible.
Wordless meaning, untouched by symbols
that laughs at human passions
Those efforts of a bean
yearning to understand his branch;
Those wild dreams of fundamental truth
born in the wrinkles of each plant.
Screaming everything
is all there is.
All the wrongs,
all the causes,
all the longings,
and all the losses.
It doesn’t matter
that we can’t see it;
we don’t know it
can’t claim it.
No one can teach it,
write it,
buy it,
or name it.
Because we are it.
We make it.
We play it, we fake it;
we build it and brake it,
we mix it and bake it.
And serve it, with warm coffee,
seven days a week:
reflections and expressions,
perceptions of the deep.

Final Pen Models

Here are (finally!) a couple of photos of my final pen project. The top one is a pen in the style of David Goines, and the bottom one is a pen in the style of Santiago Calatrava.

wooden bowl

I turned this poplar bowl for art studio class. It was more difficult that I thought it would be to make it asymmetric.

Coffee Press from last quarter

Just realized I hadn't posted pictures of my final project for Design and Manufacturing last quarter. I used an existing glass vessel, mesh, and handle from a french press and then manufactured the other components mostly out of aluminum. There are also a couple of vacuum-formed plastic parts.

Motion Project for Art Studio

I designed and made this gizmo to explore the idea of wheels that have no axle and are not circular.

3 Pens in 3 Styles

Our Formgiving assignment (due today) was to come up with 3 pen designs based on the design languages of three different designers (artists, architects, industrial designers, etc.). We have to make our two best designs for a week from this Friday. I choose Joan Miro, David Goines, and Santiago Calatrava. I'm just posting my David Goines design here, because it was my favorite.

Chiaroscuro

This is my first completed project for Art 160. It is a pen drawing based on a photograph I took of a cathedral in Zagreb, Croatia a few years ago.

Design Students in the News

read about some loftees in "print"!

http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=2199

Personal Statements Event

The Personal Statements Party is over! In the end it all worked out fine, even though the postcards didn't ship out on time. I hope I never plan another party ever.

Trip to LA

Pink Foam Models

These are (grayscale) pictures of my pink-foam models for the Opposite Forms assignment. The top one is Sacred and Secular, which I simplified a bit from my original marker rendering, and the bottom one is Open and Closed. For that one I modified my original design so that the pair appears to be two states of the same object, which seems to make the contrast between open and closed much more obvious. During the class critique, there was some concern that the form I chose was not "essential" - that it had extra edges and details that made it into a "product" instead of just a fundamental form. But overall I think the opinion was that it was so nice-looking and clear that it didn't matter so much if it wasn't the most essential form.

First Formgiving Assignment

Our first assignment was to render three pairs of opposite forms in marker. The first one here is Secular vs Sacred - contrasting an earthbound, impure, grid-like form with one that is more aspirational, symmetric, and stellated. Next is Emotional vs Rational, which was my least successful one during the class critique. I saw this pair as demonstrating two ways of approaching the problem of spanning from one spot to another - the rational arch vs an intuitive, expressive, emotional leap. And my last one is Open vs Closed.

bike trip to berkeley

Here's my bike on the way to Berkeley to visit Audrey this past weekend - you can just barely see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

New Year's Resolution

I have decided to continue posting updates on what I am working on into the new year, even though the ME 313 class is over. So to start out, I'm sharing some photos of my Christmastime project (which I gave to my family). I guess it could be called The Wobbler: it's a toy that waddles down a ramp while waving a feather in the air. These guys grew out of an Art 60 assignment to create something that moved in an engaging way.