POV STATMENT:
The Linked In attendee needs a designed piece to provoke conversation because there will be an influx of people they don’t know in architecture hall.
Joiner Photos
Diagramming
USER PROFILE:
The average user of our design is an attendee of the Linked In event. The extreme user we targeted was someone who has difficulty starting conversations with people they don’t know without being prompted. Our design in this instance is the prompt.
Ideation
We had many different material ideas that would create our installation. We wanted to created something that would represent being "linked in" because that was the theme of the night. Some of our ideas for materials were: Pipe Cleaners, Zip Ties, Locks, Rubber Bands, Shower Curtain Rings, Hoola Hoops, String, Safety Pins, etc.
After trying out those materials, and looking at prices, we decided to just walk through Ace Hardware and see if anything caught our eyes. We came across metal roofing disks that would only cost us $0.75/pound. We bought one pound and started to solidify our design. We drilled different amounts of holes and aligned them differently. We started with four holes and tried two before we settled with the three holes that we used for our design.
Our next problem was how to connect the metal disks. We first tried wire, but that took quite awhile and did not give us the look that we desired. We all went home over the weekend and tried numerous materials to connect the disks. We tried glue, rivets, snaps, string, rubber bands, paper clips, staples, brads, welding and zip ties. When we all met up after we tried different things, we decided that brads was the way to go.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
We wanted to create a conversation piece that would act as a social gathering point enabling strangers to interact with each other. Our installation shows that when objects, or people, come together, they can be linked together to form something spectacular. We wanted to take objects that are normally unseen when used for their “intended” purpose and make them the centerpiece of a design to accentuate their natural beauty. We also wanted to point out that when materials are not used for their original purpose they can be just as effective in a different application, if not more effective.
Building our Project
We started off with one roofing disk and decided to drill three holes into them.
We then connected two more disks using brads to the one disk to create a triangle like shape.
Once we had three of the shapes pictured above, we connected them to create a triangle.
We then connected three of those triangles to create our final triangle.
In the end, we had 80 of the triangles pictured above that we connected all together with brads to create our final project that was a huge triangle in the Link.
Piecing Our Project Together
Once we had all 80 triangles put together, we went down to the first level of the link and started laying our project out. Once we had it all laid out, we connected the corners together using brads once again.
Our next problem we faced was how to hang our project. We wanted it to hang from third floor, to second floor to first floor but we didn't know what material to use. First we thought string, but we soon realized that it would not be strong enough and that the metal would cut the string. We then thought of hanging it by creating a chain of the triangles we had already created. We tried that idea out but did not like the look of it and decided that it would take about a thousand more metal disks to create. We finally decided on hanging our project with picture hanging wire from each corner and also from each side of the triangle.
We finally had our triangle all laid out and we were ready to hoist our project up. When we went to pick the triangle up though, it completely fell apart. The brads were not strong enough to hold the 13 pounds of metal disks together. Our solution to this problem was to cover each and every brad with hot glue. Once we hot glued all the brads, we were able to hang our project up and it did not fall apart.
Our First Trial:
Our Connector Idea:
Our Second Trial:
Our Final Product:
Our final board:
Time Lapse Video of Different Ways Light Affects it:
