L'Alpi

On Monday we did a day trip to the Alps. For 10 Euro round-trip, we took a train to Bardonecchia (an hour and a half away from Torino; it was the venue of the snowboarding and cross-country skiing events in the 2006 Olympics). It was such an incredible experience. I could go on and on about how much I loved it, but pictures are worth 1000 words:

My camera died after the first half hour, so thanks to my friend Rebecca for letting me have/use some of her pictures.

ARCHITorino

Its been a while since I have posted anything here. In part it’s because there hasn’t been anything more interesting than my daily activities, and partially because I have been working on the final for the Torino portion of this program, which was on Friday. It has been such an excellent experience. Since I am here to study (despite the fact that I have not shared anything about school on this blog yet) I thought I would tell you a little bit about what we are doing here. For starters, here is a video to introduce our project:

Some background info:

We started off the project by coming up with a system that could create a partially enclosed space (such as a pavilion) that could respond to environmental and social factors. We then developed a module that could be manipulated by computer chips that would be programmed to respond to the factors we picked out.

After designing the module, we went to FabLab to build it.

Lab #5: where all of our equipment was located

Fablab is inside of OGR (Officine Grande Riparazione), a temporary museum exhibit that celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the unification of Italy. 

outside the main entrance of OGR

The portion of the exhibit we worked in focuses on the future of Italy and technology. It was so strange working in an exhibition space. It was also really frustrating not being able to answer passersby’s questions. But overall it was a very good experience. We definitely had fun there. 

me and Aviel

They had some pretty cool equipment. We used the Maker-bot Thing-o-matic (yes, that is its real name) to 3d print the first pass at our module. 

It was a nifty machine, but it was not precise enough for our needs, so we ended up printing the modules on the z-corp printer, and then coating them in resin for more strength.

excavating the pieces from the 3d printer

coating them in resin

We then assembled the finished pieces the motor, the arduino chip (arduino is the type of software/hardware we used to control the prototype), the sensors, and the base. And Voile! Our architecture robot was born. 

Our system is sort of like a spine with wings. The different components interlock, and the geometry of the connection allows for bending and rotation.

the maximum rotation between each module is 9 degrees

the components have a maximum bend of 6 degrees

By lining up these spines in a series, they can be individually controlled to create a varied surface to cover the space.

Our prototype was designed with the idea in mind that the rotation would be based on the position of the sun, and the height/curvature of each of the spines could be altered to respond to how the different areas were being used. But there are a plethora of possibilities in how it could be used to respond to different environmental and social factors.

I am pretty proud of how this project turned out, considering we had only 4 weeks to design a prototype, build it, program it, figure out how the system works architecturally, and create a presentation for it. I lucked out and had a wonderful group. I feel like our project reflects all of the unique talents we brought to the table…and we all got along, which helps. 

Me, Katie, and Max

Venaria Reale and Alba

I had a fantastic weekend. On Saturday, we had a class trip to Venaria Reale. Venaria was the hunting lodge of the Savoy family, the ruling family of Italy. After the Savoy’s were exiled, the palace was repossessed by the state and turned into a museum. They had a very interesting exhibit in honor of the 150^th anniversary of Italy’s unification, called La Bella Italia. Italy’s best art historian curated it, and he gathered famous works from around the time of the unification, and grouped them accordin to city. It was very interesting to see how the art work differed from region to region. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited for most of the exhibits, but here are a few photos:

 

On Sunday, I finally got to go for a wine tasting. My Italian studio partner lives in Alba. In the afternoon, his girlfriend, Denise, picked up a few friends and I to go and meet him at the Ceretto Winery. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Firstly, Alba is absolutely beautiful.

And the view from inside the cantina was incredible.

We tried 3 wines: Blange, Barolo, and Moscato. They were all so good!

I am so grateful for Denise and Max bringing us there.

max, me, aviel, rebecca

aviel even got to go for a ride on the ducati

After the wine tasting we went to the historic center of Alba.

denise, rebecca, and I

It is a very small medieval town, which is home to wine, truffles, Ferrero Rocher, and of course, Nutella. 

vendor selling truffle oil and jarred truffles in the street... too bad truffle season starts in 2 months

After visiting the center, we stoped by Max’s house before heading to one of the hills overlooking the valley, where his mom gave us each 5 jars of nutella.

Denise and Rebecca

We finished off the evening by grabbing dinner in Alba. All in all it was an excellent day. By far it was my favorite day in Italy.

How did I get lucky enough to have such awesome and generous Italian friends?

As a side note, if you are interested in seeing what I have been up to in school, here are 2 links:

This  blog is administered by our professors and tracks our progress as a class

And this video was made by one of my group mates. It shows our progress last week in constructing our prototype.