After winning a grant earlier this year from Cornell Council for the Arts, architects Ian Janicki ’12 and Dan Marino ’12 combined forces with mechanical engineer David Kumka ’12, to investigate the malleability of different materials. The exploration culminated in a large, aluminum, dome-like structure, currently on display in Hartell Gallery for the remainder of the week. The Sun caught up with these three gentlemen yesterday, to discuss both the design and engineering processes behind the sculpture.

The Sun: The first question that comes to mind immediately is, what exactly is this giant structure in front of me right now? 

Ian Janicki: That’s the toughest question to answer. It’s a series of experiments that eventually ended up in this form. Initially our project was supposed to be about multiple materials and their capacities, but due to the constraints that we set for ourselves, it eventually became this [motions towards structure]. 

Dan Marino: The major challenge that we set out for when we applied for the grant was looking at the ways in which materials can be folded, to give more structural capacity. You can buy sheet materials all the time, but when they are used in the built world they are often attached to something, to make them structural. There are some materials, like corregated metal, that are structural in themselves, because they have folds. This led us to the question of what else can be folded, and how can it be folded, to gain structure? So Ian, myself and David went into looking at ways that we can make something that starts out flat, and can be folded in a way that can self-support.

David Kumka: The real challenge that we encountered here was the fact that this shape has curved bends. Ordinarily you take a flat pattern and [if] you want to bend a right angle, you can just bend it using a brake — which is a very standard tool — and you can create angled bends, no problem. But a curved bend actually requires material deformation. So we had to do some experimentation with how to flat pattern a curve, which is not a straightforward process at all. We did a number of different computer models and physical prototypes to figure out how to achieve the curved bend. The second challenge is that this entire structure you see uses no fasteners, no screws, nuts, bolts, etc. It’s all just additional folded components. So that was my main design challenge — to design the tabs that would allow the components to attach to each other.

Sun: What was your goal in the beginning?  

D.M.: It started when Ian and I were in Rome. The semester was over and we had four days …

I.J.: We had 36 hours.

D.M.: We had 36 hours before the deadline for submitting a grant was due. We always wanted to collaborate and try to get something made in a gallery, an installation. We had a few glasses of wine and started talking about a few things that we could build. Our proposal was still on the subject of folding materials. We were going to look at wood, plastic and metal, and compare the three in terms of how they can be folded. Based on the budget we had and time constraints, we settled on aluminum, which has the malleability of plastic but also a little more strength. Wood kind of fell out. We ended up being a little more aggressive, then, in terms of its scale.

Sun: So you wanted to go bigger?

D.K.: When we were on the three materials idea, we were going to make a smaller structure out of the three materials and compare them, and then we said, ‘maybe plastic will be tricky,’ ‘wood will be kind of silly,’ and we settled on metal. 

I.J.: Another reason we chose aluminum is because not only is this an experiment structurally, this is an experiment with the new facilities that we got two weeks ago.

D.M.: We got a new machine in the architecture college two weeks ago — a mill — which is basically a router controlled by a computer that can cut shapes.

D.K.: So all of these cut out shapes you see on the floor were laid out in C.A.D. (Computer Aided Design), like a computer drawing. You lay out the path on the computer, and then it goes in and very precisely cuts the shapes. 

D.M.: So what the project became is an interesting collaboration amongst ourselves and between ourselves and the computer world. We were joking all the time that there was this separation and battle between the C.A.D. world and the built world. You have this weird relationship where everything works perfectly in the computer world. And then when you are actually building these things, there are all sorts of pushes and pulls, and back and forths. We’ve always been existing in the computer world, assuming that things are going to work, up until the past week. We also have not been able to prototype, and the fact that we can do this now is a big deal. We went through various prototypes and connections, different scoring, and we have a bunch of different prototypes that we can do ourselves, instead of having to outsource to a manufacturer. The fact that we can have a design discourse and feedback amongst our own work, I think, was really successful in this project; where we could problem solve in real time with the facilities that we have. 

Sun: What were some of the major challenges that you encountered during the last week, when you were finally wrapping up the computer work and trying to set everything up?  

D.K.: Scale. There are over 130 pieces here that were all bent and assembled by hand. 

I.J.: Organization, especially with my lackluster labeling system (laughs).

D.M.: When you build anything there are a ton of parts, and you need space to organize them, and this is something we had not necessarily encountered in school yet, to produce a project and build it. The fact that we are bringing this thing all the way from design into full scale construction was a new challenge for us, but was a blast.

D.K.: We had a lot of hands on deck. Last night we hoisted the middle piece up at 3 a.m. 

D.M.: You are kind of at the mercy of the machine on the one hand, and your own physical limitations on the other. The machine can only cut so fast; it took about  30 hours standing next to the machine.

I.J.: If not more.

D.M.: Yeah, because things broke. That’s a moment where you can’t do anything. But it’s in your hands, once you are past the machine part, to get all the parts, and each piece has seven things you need to do to make a connection. If you multiply all the time, it starts to add up. We’re in the architecture studio at 5 a.m. blasting dubstep and having a ball. We’re all strung out.

D.K.: Tired and sore, our hands are tired and sore.

Sun: So talk a bit more about how you arrived at this particular shape [pointing towards a component piece].

I.J.: So this shape is a tetrahedral shape. So there are three angles that are 109.4 degrees, the tetrahedral angle. So we had that limitation. But we realized when we saw the modeling that it would be much easier to make a flat plane.

D.K.: If you put them together, you can sort of see circles, but that is a closed loop. So if you make them over and over again, it never curves. So we had to design angled bends into this at strategic locations. 

I.J.: At first we were worried that this would only be one directional curvature, like a ribbon, not a sphere. So we put the components into families, using the inherent geometry of the hexagon, and bent the angles. This allowed us to create a two dimensional curvature that we didn’t think we’d be able to.

Sun: So that’s how you ended up with the dome shape?

I.J.: Yes, it’s basically a truncated-isohedron (laughs). 

D.K.: No big deal. (laughs)

Sun: Is this more of an engineering challenge or an architectural challenge? 

I.J.: It was different for different phases. 

D.M.: When you take a project from conception to construction, each phase has its own challenges. We would have dinners at Souvlaki house every Wednesday night, and talk out what needs to be done, throw ideas to the engineers, and they’d come back at us within a couple days.

D.K.: You have Ian approaching me and asking me about a paper model that he made. And I’d give it back, and say ‘maybe we should change this angle’ or ‘I don’t know how we’re gonna make that curvature. So there was a lot of back and forth between their artistic ideas and my engineering intuition.

D.M.: There were definitely moments where I would show them [the engineers] a sketch and they would just laugh at us, and we’d say, ‘no, we’re serious.’ It was fun to come at them with something that was so difficult, that they would want to make it simpler, and we’d say ‘no, let’s problem solve this.’ Because there are always ways to solve things that have been done before, but the question is that if you do something that hasn’t, then how do you look at things that have been done before to solve the new ideas?