Sunday 9/12 (81 days left)

We all met outside DL1 to flesh out our ideas from Thursday as well as to continue with those that we thought up since we met in class, but soon moved to the third floor architecture studio, where we had chipboard as well as cutting implements (we were as yet unable to access DL1 without an instructor).

Those of us that had sketched/planned/designed in the 3 days since our first class presented the ideas which we had developed. I had developed a concept for a flower-like water and sunlight collector/absorber to be placed in public spaces (sorry it's sideways): 

While this addressed both the idea of orienting towards light and moisture sources, the smart surfaces themselves were unconnected- the concept as a whole was more a robot that "grew" from what looked like a seed than a unified surface.

Patrick presented his idea for an apparatus that took advantage of folding in a similar manner as it had unfurling "petals" with solar panels that also served to direct water to a central conduit. Its ability to orient in several directions to a light or rain source addressed the orientation constraint of our design prompt. We workshopped this concept so as to address the manner in which the unfurling panels would orient and how best to collect the water that the panels would direct. This proved to be our most promising direction, but we decided that we would follow other concepts (mostly involving other geometries than the rectangles that Patrick's idea used) to as high a level of completion as we could in the time before we were next to meet.

Patrick's idea for unfolding flaps. 

Unfolding flaps, supports from legs.

Schema, possible new geometries.