New Photography Site

I’m launching another new site on celloexpressions.com this summer. Cello Expressions Photography could be considered a photo blog in many ways, but its primary purpose is to serve as a collection of visually stimulating and contextually significant imagery. Bringing my academic/professional interests to Cello Expressions for the first time, this site focuses on architecture, landscape architecture, and construction. Given my current internship at the USC Village project, expect a particular construction emphasis right now. Visually interesting textures and natural landscapes are also featured.

Check it out at http://celloexpressions.com/photography.

The site is using my Lucidus WordPress theme, resulting in a major focus on images and minimal UI. The theme will be publicly available soon, likely as a premium theme but possibly for free on WordPress.org depending on time. Note that due to the heavy use of images, it may take some time for the content to load, but once it does, it’s pretty cool!

village-overview

USC Village Live Webcam

I’m working at the USC Village jobsite this summer as an intern for Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co. This is a huge project – 15 acre site, 6 buildings, over 1 million square feet – and USC has set up the usual webcams to monitor the construction progress. Unfortunately, theirs uses painfully outdated software that won’t even work in IE in compatibility mode unless you get really lucky. So I set up a page that pulls in the latest image from the camera and displays it full-screen, updating the image every second or as your connection allows so that you can see the progress.

View the full-sized live webcam stream here.

Building Science Historical Precedent World's Fairs

Architecture Precedent: Dutch Pavilion, Hanover World Expo 2000

I did a precedent project on the Dutch Pavilion at the Hanover World Expo 2000.

Here’s a PDF of my full display board, which prints out at 30×40″:

Dutch-Pavilion-Board-Preview

The colors are inspired by the building and the general aura of world fairs. All of the images are heavily edited, particularly for color (I used the built-in photo editor in Windows 8.1, with much success). It’s amazing how much the building has deteriorated, it’s hard to believe it opened just thirteen years ago.

My favorite part of the board is the sequence of images going up, and then back down, the building, starting with the expo and ending with the currect state of the building. Here it is again:

Dutch-Pavilion-Sequence

cardboard-chair-featured

Cardboard Chair

Cardboard ChairFull size chair designed to hold at least a 200-pound person.

Materials: recycled (salvaged) cardboard (primarily 40×40″ sheets extracted from industrial light fixture boxes from a campus construction project). No other materials or connectors, only cardboard.

Cardboard Chair Main Structural SectionThe primary structure is formed by two interlocking equilateral triangular prisms (yes, I know, this happens to also be the shape of the Jewish star). Three of these units are strapped together with long strips of cardboard to form the base of the chair. The back is one additional unit, with one point of the star removed for the back rest.

Cardboard Chair Visual Detail and Seat CoonnectionThe seat is formed with a solid sheet of cardboard, a layer of shredded cardboard and a layer of quilted cardboard that extends around the edge of the solid sheet to form tabs that lock onto the chair base. The seat back is also formed with a sheet of quilted cardboard.

The quilting effect is pretty cool and, though time-intensive, straightforward. To match the angles of the equilateral triangles in the base, I used 60o angles for my quilting, in opposite directions, measured from the edge of the sheet. Once I drew out a grid of evenly spaced lines at the 60o angles, I scored the cardboard along each line.

Cardboard Quilting Technique: Grid Layout to sccore

It’s important to understand the scoring technique. You need to cut all the way through the cardboard, except for the last flat layer. Typically, this means cutting through the top outer layer and all of the inner structure. Just don’t cut too far, because that final layer is what holds the sheet together. It works best to go over each line several times with a box cutter, cutting through a small layer of corrugation each time. After all of the lines are cust in both directions, fold the cardboard along each cut sequentially. After this step, the cardboard will naturally want to curl, and will behave similarly to fabric.

Cardboard Chair Quilting: After Scoring

When assembled, the chair is quite sturdy and visually appealing. I used a seat height of 21″,which is quite comfortable. The back is not particularly sturdy, but it does work, and you can lean back safely. The issue is that it’ll just keep leaning back further and further.

Cardboard Chair