Objective

Our goal with this project was to create an environment that responds to the needs of those within it. We wanted to create a foldable structure that shrinks to let light in from the ceiling based on the presence of someone below it. A glass ceiling would be a tessellated grid of these foldable units, and their movement would be triggered by the presence of a person below them. They don’t expand too fast, so if someone is in a rush, then they will miss what is happening right above their heads. We hope that this structure prompts people to take the time to slow down, look up, and observe what is going on around them. For our project we created one unit of the ideal system of many. Unfortunately it was out the scope of this class for us to make it to scale, but our prototype is sufficient enough to demonstrate what we envisioned for its appearance and motion.

Execution

Our final implementation was a 12” x 12” implementation of the square twist that expanded up to 18” x 18” and was actuated by two gearhead motors in response to presence as detected by an infrared proximity detector. Alone and on the table, our single unit does not do much to provide the experience we had in mind, but it does express a great understanding of the mechanism and how it might play out in a larger scale. It moves at almost the correct pace, only limited by the maximum speed of the gearhead motors. The shapes and patterns of the origami and its changing shadows play into the overarching feeling of wonder we hope to instill in those who pass under it. The proximity detector includes the people under it in the form of the space they occupy, as their presence is reflected in the motion of these ceiling tiles.

Reflection

While, in the end, the mechanism and code were able to work together, the infrared sensor was very unreliable, and would work only once in every few tries. In terms of the product, the single unit was successful in expressing the function single unit, but not in expressing the wavelike behavior we would expect of many units together.