07.10.2010 - 09.10.2010 Tamaki Session

Working very hard for the past few days, we are trying to get our tubes done as quickly as possible. We got told on fri that our health and safety officer will be seeing us on monday to see whether we can actually make our structure on the night. If it's too dangerous, they can cancel our participation.


We really need some sponsorship from v's.. going through at least 1 a day for the past week and we think we've grown immune to caffine to fight fatigue.



Our tubes connected in one layer of the net size of the blankets relative to the tubes

testing out against strobe lights

Cameron and Kassidy sewing connections with a pile of tubes caught between their legs

Both layers of tube ready to be sewn on top of each other to form a net

Posting at 2.30 am isn't fun. Need to sleep now. Goodnight.

03.10.2010- 06.10.2010 Tamaki Session

WOAH ~ 10 days left! and our group is starting to get desparate and stressed. Working everyday, sewing, cutting, measuring, thinking, hastily trying to finish in time for the competition.
We cant believe how well we can work under time pressure, no time wasting at all.
Our project is still 2D, flat on the ground so we dont even know if it will work. It should. It has to.
Hopefully it will be done by the end of the week so we have time to fix problems.

Our working bay is becoming a mess.

Close up of the Sewing in the connection. Double sewing to strengthen the connections

Using long strips of wood to measure and tape the triangle size of the blanket. We need to do 48 of these modules.

Laying out our module on the ground. Its actually bigger than we thought.

different piles of tubes- need to cut and sew. need to sew connections. finished sewing.

Hury! 10 days only!

29.09.2010 - 02.10.2010 Tamaki Sessions

For the past week, we've been working at Tamaki every single day. After finishing a 1:1 prototype of the tube structure, as shown from the previous post, we have started on making the final thing.


Sewing Plastic connections from the 1:1 prototype

1:1 prototype inflated with a 1m x 1m x 1m equilateral trianglular base

Size in relation to little small minion

Net showing the structure and names of each parts. This net is the final design of the module. the top 8 levels consists of 6 triangles with base 2m and height 1m. The last level is more complicated to fit into a square base from a triangular prism at the top. This is to make more space to hide our blowers and lighting.
Emergency blankets will be sewn over each of the seams, cladding it and hiding the tubes.

Kas cutting plastic into strips for tubes

All the tubes cut and sorted into piles. We cut strips of wood into 2m long lengths that acted like a ruler

The different connections between each tubes. We made laser cut templates that we traced over.

layout of our module on the ground. It's actually quite big.

Hexagon connection for 6 tubes at a point

Pentagons for 5 tubes at a point

We used masking tape to make a seam line for the sewing to follow.

Watching gossip girl! Finished the first season in 2 days

2 weeks left guys!! Good luck XD

28.09.2010 Tamaki Session

After several days, we finally finished our rough 1:1 tubic form of our structure.

This size of section was originally planned to be placed in the middle, but we realised it will be tough to have a changing module of different triangular shapes. Thus we will be keeping it simple to one isoceles triangle module- 2m base width, 1m height.

18.09.2010 Tamaki Session

Uni started again so we haven't had much time to upload on to our blog.

So just a brief update of what has been happening :

- For the second half of the semeseter our whole design group has moved to Tamaki Campus for more space and room to build our 1:1 skyrise.
- Our group has been looking for more sponsorship and wants to thanks 3M for their generosity and big help with double sided tape.

- We also want to thankyou Flexilight NZ for their generous offer and discounts with our lighting samples.

- Right now we are trying to test out how to make a net for the inflated tubes so the whole design becomes an integral module and not separate.

- Also we sorted out a bouncy castle blower! Yay! a 2 horse power one which is quite strong. Now we need to think about hiring a generator for the night

Tamaki Group spaceMasked Plan Door Masked Table and Toilet PlansLight samples from Flexi LightsAir Blower for Bouncy Castle 2HP3M double sided tapeSewing plastic tubes. Thanks Ming for lending us your sewing machine!

Sequence of blowing up emergency blanket1:1 scale of Inflated tubes and ConnectionLOL- this is what a Buff Cameron looks like Thank you Alex for your support XD Torturing the Dispicable Me toy on the air blower



Thanks for your support @ The Triangle Collective !

08.10.2010 Studio Session

After a week's break from design, we started working on our project again. Through out this period we have been constantly looking for sponsors to help out with the costs for our project.

We made a 1:10 model of our skyrise and used a hair dryer to inflate the model. We found out that unfortunately, even though we had sewn pieces of triangular emergency blankets together, the shaped would not be kept when it is inflated and becomes cylindrical because there isn't a backbone structure for the tensegrity- prism shape.

Also because the blanket material is so light, it cannot stand upright by itself. We might need to slot in sand bags at the bottom to make it more heavier.

Here are some exterior and interior photos of the model with fairy lights inserted inside. The space is not dark enough to create and intensifying effect, but we can still see spots of the LED bulbs like fireflies. So to keep the tensegrity shape we are going to use a structure of continuous inflatable tubes to act as a backbone. The emergency blanket will still be sewn on to each sides so the model still looks similar, except the strips of white fabric will be inflated into tubes instead of the whole volume so that people can still go inside and not let the air leak out.

We need to test out whether we can insert the fairylights or ropelights into the tubes and also have air blown in to inflate. We are looking at Panda Blowers like the ones used for jumpy castles, and also clear polythene plastic for the tubes instead of the white fabric.

We'll have more testing soon once semester break is over.