Within the next two weeks we will build an inflatable pavilion that will showcase a Zoetrope during this years Luminale in Frankfurt, the big event all about light.
The pavillion itself that has to be perfect pitch black inside is a collaboration within two chairs within the TU Darmstadt. While the envelope or facade was designed by students from the faculties of architectures Digital Design Unit under guidance of Oliver Tessmann the structure of the pavilion was developed during a building technology course from the structural engineers faculty under the guidance of Prof. Stefan Schaefer.
Day one was meant to set up the workshop, orientate and prepare the next two weeks. While a third group showed the designs for the Zoetrope design, our teams got started to prepare the welding machines and got their hands dirty.
If everything works according to plan we will build several welding machines that can easily weld together elements of black film to create airtight cushions to clad the frame structure. Next to manual operating welding machines we are also testing Ginger and Fred, DDUs universal robots and one of them already grabbed a manual welding wheel and started to do some tests ...maybe thats the tool to do the more complex geometries needed for our pavilion. But lets have a look at some pictures, for today is enough and we are looking forward towards two weeks of excitement and fun.
