Friday, February 26, 2016

Day 10 - Frankfurt here we come

According to plan ( ok we changed it a few times ...) we headed towards Frankfurt today and the city welcomed our team with blue sky and sunny weather.

The assembly of the first section went very well and we are confident to have a great event doing the Luminale.

Its also the last day of Dr. Bucky Lab here in Darmstadt at the DDU but we will continue to keep you updated.

Thats it for the moment, nobody wants to see students drinking beer, having fun and celebrating their enormous effort and dedication for this project ...honestly nobody was willing to take pictures while we started to party ...














Thursday, February 25, 2016

Day 9 - Here we go

After we finished the production of the cushions we made some space to move the structure ( our test fragment ) into our DDUs workshop space and fine-tuned the details of how to add the elements onto the structure.

Under the right light our pavilion already started to shine. Eric stayed overnight and was enthusiastic about the students passion and helped through the day.

Tomorrow we will ship everything to Frankfurt to start preparing the Luminale Venue.









Day 8 - Marcel !!!

One of theses days...short before completion everyone is crazy and it was no wonder that the name of our Dr. Bucky Lab was yelled a couple of times more than usual.

The structural engineers arrived to assemble at least two elements of the supporting structure and we were able to test fit the elements. Everything went smoothly and with a little elbow grease here and there the pavilion was growing.

Actually we were so busy that there was even no time to take pictures therefore only a few ones right now. For tomorrow we promise more pictures.

In the evening we had a nice lecture of Eric Schrijver from architects of air who introduced the wonderful structures of their luminaria.






Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Day 7 - Black Dye

While the cushion or pneu production is running on full throttle we also had to take care of the
wooden structure. These elements were developed by the structural engineering students of Prof. Schaefer and produced by Pit Maier and his team in the woodworking shop of the faculty of architecture.

And to teach the students how much effort it is to make all of these parts he handed over a list of the production details. Quite handy ! Without these two experts down in the shop our entire workshop would have been much more difficult. Its also the first time our Dr. Bucky Lab experienced such a great support.

In order to give the engineers a proper base for their assembling session tomorrow we took the time today and made everything black and of course we did it bucky lab style ...fashionable in an paper apron ..











Monday, February 22, 2016

Day 6 - mass production

And here we go, after the weekend and a night at the museum ...Oliver Tessmann did a lecture and discussion round about robots in the Landesmuseum in Darmstadt and the most of us got a special tour from the friendly staff from the museum ( rumors mentioned our Dr. Bucky Lab has fallen in love for the museums zoologist ...ah he only loves tools ...)

...we are finally back in the faculty of architecture and started the mass production of our pavilion.
While the outer cushions were best produced with tape we were able to fine tune our welding technology to create long and airtight seems for the interior elements ...so splitter into groups we were able to start our production.

What a nice start of the week to see everything coming together.












Sunday, February 21, 2016

Architects of Air - lecture by Eric Schrijver

we are happy to invite you for a lecture about Air and Light from Eric Schrijver here in our Digital Design Unit in Darmstadt.

If you are around on wednesday the 24th join us


Friday, February 19, 2016

Day 5 - FLIR

While our Dr. Buckylab was not available yesterday the students were busy all day long to fine tune and experiment variations of our plastic welding process and today we even tried a sewing machine to get a grip on a foolproof and easy to execute production process...

ok we already thought that a sewing machine and its needle would not be the ideal tool to create an airtight cushion ...so a double adhesive tape was already used to see off the seams. Surprisingly the tape was already the answer to all of our problems with the self made welding equipment ...

So tape it is and we are able to create an airtight pneu that can be produced with less to now problems at all. Next to that our robot welding group also made great steps and we may also use this handy machine next week.

We love to experiment and try to figure out what the problems are we encounter, and our colleagues from the structural engineers department  ( Thanks to Sascha Hickert and Prof. Knaack ) borrowed us their thermal imaging camera. Great Tool we also need one ...

Have a look and stay tuned when we start our production next week.