Design Studio One: Open Design (Part Two): Fab-Shoes

 

 

For the second half of the Open Design project in our studio one class we as groups exchanged projects. Our group inherited the Open Design shoe file. We decided we wanted to go two different directions with the project, one would be making a 3D printed heel, and the other would be modernizing a traditional Arab mens sandal. We ended up with two files for the heel, an illustrator file for the upper, and a Rhino file for the wedge, both files can be edited and printed at any fab lab in the world. The idea for the second shoe was actually to use an Eskafi (shoe makers) to build a shoe for us, and so we would be considering the labor of one man equivalent to the machines in a fab lab. But they actually didn’t have an Eskafi’s in Qatar (weird?) so we had to modify our idea and use a local shoe factory to assemble our shoe (which kind of makes it not an open design project, but there is nothing we could do about it..). For the sandal we created a basic illustrator upper that can easily be modified and cut.

Design Studio One: Open Design (Part One): PEPACAM

Throughout last semester we worked in groups in our design studio one class to create two open design projects. Open Design is a type of design that is based off of the principles of open source sharing of information, it basically means to create a digital file that people can then use as is, or edit, then print/cut at home or in a fabrication lab. Ronen Kadushin’s name was used a lot in our class

For the first part of the project each group came up with their own idea for an open design product. My group at first was really interested in the theme of travel, after we talked about the concept of travel for a while we deconstructed it into the activities that go on during travel. We ended up discussing photography as a big activity for most travelers, then we decided to examine photography in itself. Noticing that analog photography is actually a big trend right now (Lomography) we decided to build a pinhole camera using the Pepakura folding technique we learned in our fabrication class. The file we created is the most basic shape that we could think of, the idea is to allow users to expand off our simple design and do what ever they want with it. We named it Pepacam.

Though its really simple, this was my favorite project of the semester.

New semester/Letter

I can’t believe its been more than a month since I last posted anything, I have so many photos from the end of last semester than I need to add. I wonder when I’ll get to them?

Last Sunday was the first day of the new semester, and its taken me this long to find a minute to update this page.. I’m actually really excited about this semester, it seems like we will be learning a great deal of new techniques, and new ideas. I can’t wait.

On Sunday I checked my mailbox to find that Ghadahs letter had finally arrived. I hope she doesn’t mind me using the image straight off her blog (Its her photo, not mine!).. Here is a link to her original post.

More coming soon…