Monday, September 15, 2008
Constructing the wizard tower

A total of 3 weeks was taken to build a tower that stands at 2.2m. On top of the rest of the assignments,we were to discuss on the tower selected, generating 3 panels, build a prototype and build the actual tower. It was group work.

Initially, our tower selection ranged between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Mine was for Ravenclaw, portraying a eagle hugging over the inner tower, hence coming out with the concept of "a tower within another tower" (Credits goes to Pastor for inspiring me with this idea). While my group members had their own ideas of what our tower should be, we have finally settled on working with Slytherin, working on my idea of the concept.

When that was settled, churning out 3 different designs for the tower was little difficulty. We allocated each other with job scopes. One of us were to do a panel each and a exploration of the model. Out of the 4 of us, the 1 guy would do our final decision of the tower. Sadly, none of the panels were up to standard for that day's presentation, and I have to admit that it was slightly sloppy and disorganised. The good thing was that we had an ingenious idea of how the tower should look like after the presentation. Credit goes to Farah for constructing a pop out tower with neat folds and joints. It had the gothic and authorative look suitable for the tower. There were other issues at hand, such as how the outer tower should be constructed, and that caused disagreements between the group. On one side of the table, there was talk about how flaps and a straight inner tower should be constructed so as to show the authorative figure of the tower. On the other hand, I was thinking of creating a spiral twirl up to the top of the tower, so as to break the angular shape of the tower and to promote the use of paper.

Although the situation wasn't resolved on the spot, construction of the inner tower began on Wednesday. KC and I spent roughtly about the whole day forming a super big piece of paper. We found most of these paper as scrap paper from Scalebar, the printing shop in SDE. After spray-gluing the papers together, we started measuring the dimensions of the inner tower. One of the problems we faced is the angular shape of the inner tower, and the slanted edge of the tower such that it looked like a pyramid from the Andes. We resolved that easily by folding the paper inside, such that we can achieved a nice smooth line. By the end of the day, we were able to probe it up, such that it was standing by itself. That by itself took a whole lot of effort constructing, studying the nature of the paper, and the pyramid was an achievement.

No work was done for the outer tower though, as the design for the tower was not finalised. This was delayed till Sunday when action finally took place. Sadly, there was little which I could do to help the situation on the weekend. People have their lives and commitment. We just have to make do with the circumstances.

I managed to come back to the studio at 8pm that Sunday night. Things didnt look too good. Apparently, the inner tower had flopped into a deflated piece of paper. What that looked like the construction of the outer tower looked like a wrecked car from an accident. Team members remain demoralised at this point of time, wondering how they could reconstruct the flaps. (In the end, the flaps idea was selected.) What that needed attention was the strengthening of the inner tower. Thank God I had some background in construction due to my involvement in Scouts. In about an hour, I was able to reconstructed a pioneering structure of what we used back in NPC, in a scaled down size. Satisfied with how firm the inner structure stand, we fitted the initial inner tower around the skeleton structure, almost like as if we were adding skin to our tower. With that, the inner tower was completed.

There was another round of discussion on how the flaps can be reconstructed. It was close to impossible for such a construction to be done on a big scale. When all things became desperate, we finally used the "spiral" concept. It isn't really a spiral as there wasnt a continuous chain twirling around the tower. It resembled more of chains, and in a certain way, scales of a snake. Tedious planning, measuring, drawing of circles and cutting was done to the new template. When it was up, however, there were some inaccuracies in the measurement. And since it was 4am, there was no way to redo the piece again.

Sometimes, I feel that more time should have been invested on the execution aspect. Although planning itself is important, if one is unable to understand the nature of the paper and how it would affect the outcome, the design by itself is a failure.

With 2 hours of sleep, we had our crit session with our teacher. While the rest of the group had been commented for their designs and purpose, ours was perhaps heavily criticised for its accuracies and worksmanship. It was pretty sad to see this happening before my eyes. It was afterall a very good concept which no one had ever thought of. However, due to the input of many different ideas, and the lack of foresight, it was not executed to its perfection. The end result was a shoddy piece of work.

I would regard this exercise as a failure. But it is from this failure that lessons can drawn out of this.
1. There must be an ample amount of effort on the execution phase. This is so as to be able to react to unforeseen circumstances that may not be seen during the planning phase, whereby necessary action can take place.
2. There should be a project leader in anything which we do. When 2 people give conflicting ideas of how a design should look, the design itself will lose its efficiency. However, the project leader should also accept feedback from the group members.
3. There should be constructive feedback. This means it should not be a personal attack on the design, but an improvement or a fault to the design aspect.
4. Fighting for your ideas means putting in effort in putting forth what you want to show. Whether if it is to show your idea through a model, or suggesting the change of idea at the right time, if you feel strongly for an idea, knowing that it would work under constrains, then its worth fighting for.

I would glady redo my tower again if given a chance. Sometimes, when things dont go according to plan, you fall from the experience, and you learn how to pick yourself up again.

Labels: Industrial Design