STUDIO ARC300: THIRD YEAR DESIGN
University of Kansas, School of Architecture and Urban Design
Nils Gore, Assistant Professor

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Kristin Winters

CHARACTER
Cardboard is a material that everyone is familiar with. We all know that it is stiff and sturdy. We know that it does not bend easily and it is difficult to cut with precision, especially thin or small pieces. When asked to make a cardboard box, I wanted to entirely subvert the obvious characteristics of cardboard as we all know it and use it in an entirely different way. I wanted to character of my cardboard to be, in essence, the opposite of how we normally see it. I wanted my cardboard to be light and flimsy. I wanted it to be easily bended and molded in to round, curvy shapes. I wanted my cardboard to be easily cut, even into extremely thin pieces. And, the fact is, that prior to the little bit of glue is places between the three component layers of cardboard, it is all of those things. Cardboard is simply three layers of paper bent and glued together in such an ingenious way that those originally flimsy members gain significant strength from each other. And, to achieve my goal of giving an entirely new character to the material of cardboard, all I had to do was separate those three layers.
Therefore, I chose to decompose my cardboard into its three integral parts. By this simple step, stiff, sturdy cardboard become flimsy and pliable and loses all structural ability. It is still, in essence cardboard, but rather than view this change as a disadvantage, I decided to develop a construction method that utilizes the qualities of the “new” cardboard. I chose to create a box by weaving thin, flimsy pieces of the separated layers of cardboard. I chose to do this because weaving was one of only a few construction methods that benefited from and even required that its original materials be pliable and flimsy. And, by weaving, I recomposed, in a different way, what I had decomposed.

ARTICULATION
To articulate the material and the surface of the box, instead of just using a conventional solid, static weave, I found that a combination of wrapping and weaving allowed the pieces to not just be vertical or horizontal, but at slight angles. I built a frame around which the weaving and wrapping could take place, so each wrapped piece is not in a completely fixed position. Each piece can move about relatively freely around the frame. To me, this further broke away from the “rigid” nature of cardboard by not even using a rigid format for my construction. To articulate the material, I used all the layers of the cardboard in their respective ratios of 2 paper to 1 corrugation. By exposing the inner corrugation of cardboard, you expose the essence of cardboard and clarify to the viewer that the box is made out of cardboard rather than just brown paper. The added texture also activated the surface of the weave by adding an extra layer of interest. Again, to articulate the material and its rarely seen components, instead of a solid weave from top to bottom, I graduated to thickness of the weave form one end of the box to the next. This gradually exposed more of the material and more of the supporting frame to the viewer and again released the box from the typical rigidity and formality of a conventional weaving pattern. Also by wrapping around the frame in this manner, I created internal spaces between the layers of the weave. I created what seem to be hovering planes inside the frame of the box and tend to give the box three dimensions rather that just a wrapped surface.

PRODUCTION
For the production of all of this I followed a few simple steps. First, I built the frame around which all of the wrapping would occur. I spaced the internal supports so that the started out far apart and gradually got closer together where I planned my weave would get tighter. I wrapped thinner pieces first and left a lot of space in between them. Just enough pieces to define the space, but leave plenty of void. Then on the next layer I wrapped a little thicker pieces. By combining this layer with the previous layer of thinner strips, it creates more mass and less void. I continued in this manner all the way thru to the final thickest almost solid layer--although you could still see peeks of all of the previous layers. It was helpful to step back and see if the wrapping looked like a gradual transition. If it didn’t I added or took away strips. In the final stage, the box will have a thin, airy, web-like quality at the top and a thick, solid, massive quality at the bottom. The byproduct of hovering layers of wrapped cardboard allows for interest on all sides of the box and even inside.
Ultimately, I took these particular steps because I wanted to get to the essence of the material of cardboard by decomposing it many times over. First, by peeling it apart, second by cutting it apart, and finally by recomposing it in a method that gradually reveals more or less of the material to the viewer.

The entire process of building a whirligig was a learning experience. It was entirely new to me to have to build something that actually physically worked. Therefore, throughout my entire project, there was an element of risk.

Being both the designer and the workman has benefits and problems. Since I designed my whirligig, I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve and I knew when I had achieved it. At any point in the project, I could reevaluate my plans and ideas based on my progress and take my project where I felt it need to go next. At the beginning of the project, being first the designer, I had a hard time deciding on the proportions of my whirligig. If I had only been the designer, and not the workman, I would have had to decide ahead of time and stick with my decision. But since I was also the workman, I could keep reevaluating the proportions throughout the entire process until it looked how I had wanted it to look. All of these are benefits to being both the workman and the designer, but it also had a downside to it. Having never built a whirligig before, I wouldn’t even want to call myself a workman of it, because that seems to call to mind a certain level of skill in regards to the task at hand. Because I was completely inexperienced, I think I designed things blindly at times, not knowing what I was capable of, or how materials would work, or how to put it together, or how it would work, or IF it would work. Therefore, there was a lot of risk involved at every step in the project as to whether or not I could actually complete the step. In nearly each step, however, due to my lack of skill, I had to make changes and compromises and change my design slightly so that I could actually build my ideas.

Therefore, since I had to be the workman for my whirligig, it was almost completely handmade. That is again partly due to my lack of experience, especially in regards to tools. However, since I was the workman from the initial design stages, I really only designed things that could be handmade, because I didn’t even know what was out there that could help me in its production. I believe that being entirely hand made gives my whirligig a unique character. There is no other whirligig in the world that it like mine, and even if I were to build another on the same design, it would turn out differently. There is no standardization in the over 500 connections, yet the all work the same way and serve there purpose properly. It shows all of the time that went in to the project. It is clearly not perfect, yet it does not look awkward or disproportionate and still functions properly for the most part. Therefore, it is good workmanship even if it is imprecise at times. Even in the imperfect nature of my connections, that were originally risk-based, by doing them over and over, I developed certainty. Clear progress is shown in my work form one end of the whirligig to the next, and as I worked, I began to know exactly how all of my materials would react to my manipulations of them. This improvement not only improved the appearance, but it also improved the function of my project. Each connection got smoother and allowed easier movement along it if necessary.

Although I consider my rough workmanship still “good workmanship” there are improvements that could be made to my whirligig. For the most part, my whirligig functions, regardless of whether or not it functions in the exact manner I believed it would at the beginning of my design process. When it does not, I think it is mainly due to the lightness of the material I used. The whirligig seems to interfere with itself if the wind is too strong. Therefore, if I were to rebuild it, I would try to find a way to make it still function even if I used heavier, sturdier materials. Also if I could find a way to make all of my wires bend more consistently, my whirligig would probably move more smoothly and I would have ended up saving me time in the end fixing them.

Through the production of my whirligig, I worked mainly based on my own discoveries of how I could get something to function in the wind. I designed things I understood and was required to build them in a manner that I understood also. I would consider my project to comprise mainly of the workmanship of risk for those reasons. Despite my having to rework my project slightly many times throughout its production, the resulting whirligig performs similarly to how I had envisioned it, and even when it does not, it does not necessarily fail in my opinion, it is just does extra things I did not predict.