3D DESIGN: Structures

On the first day of our 3D rotation, we were instructed to create a structure capable of supporting a bottle of water out of one A2 piece of paper and 60cm of masking tape. The bottle had to be elevated 20cm above the ground and we were given the measurements of the bottle and told to start. I started with decorating the paper, which I probably spent too much time doing as I then found myself rushing to sort out the actual structure. My structure was fairly simple and was designed to resemble a vase of sorts. Despite being capable of withholding the weight of the bottle, there was an issue of balancing and this seemed to be due to the hollow structure and the crumple of the paper resulting in an uneven setting.

Carrying on with the idea of structure and how form and function are very important elements of 3D design, the next task was to create a structure that could support body weight off the ground using corrugated cardboard and parcel tape. The conditions of this piece was that it had to be 30cm off the ground and each component we made it out of could only be a maximum of 20cm high. 

Knowing that triangles are notoriously strong structural shapes, I decided to use that aspect and create triangular prisms to set up a "house of cards" kind of style, as shown below.

Despite my best efforts, this model failed due to the fact that the body weight on top of it cause the prisms to fold on each side and collapse. Learning from this, I feel it would've been smart to reinforce the sides of each prism.