3DD - Building Spanning Structures

(Spanning Structure Design Ideas, Author's Own)

On day three of the 3DD rotation we began to look at the idea of 'spanning structures'. We used the term spanning structures so that it drew us away from simply making an iconic bridge. We were given the opportunity to experiment in our sketch books creating small paper structures that 'spanned' from one side of the page to the other. I experimented with cutting the internal paper of my sketch book and the external paper to create these structures.To start off with these designs i created some crazy ideas that definitely did not represent bridges, but this helped me because my ideas ended up eccentric and non conventional. I discovered when slicing the internal pages of my sketch book that i had almost created pop-up-like-book-structures, this is when my design process took an exciting step. 

(Individual designs, Author's Own)

(Pop-Up Design, Author's Own)

(Pop-Up Design, Author's Own)

When coming across this exciting mistake i used it to my advantage and began to design a pop-up bridge. I created this outside of my sketch book because my sketch book is ring bound and i wasn't sure how to get around that problem. When proceeding with the design i found it really quite difficult to plan out precisely where i had to cut and what areas i had to leave whole so that the cut out stood up. Eventually i completed the design and it actually worked really well, i am really pleased with what i achieved because i have 
never actually created something like this before. When photographing it i made sure that the shadows created were exaggerated, i also desaturated the colour of the image as a whole in Photoshop and i think it gave the final images a Tim Burton feel to them.



When we had finished designing our small spanning structures we were allocated groups to work with and had to start planning to build a bigger version of our bridges using card, duct tape and bamboo sticks. The aim of the task was to create a bridge that a toy car could cross AND have enough space for a "boat" [table on wheels] to pass under. Of course the first problem we came across is that we all had different initial design ideas, to overcome this problem we decided to start fresh and collaborate using all our ideas into one.  We began designing and came up with the idea that we could make a pivoting bridge, that when heavier at one end it would naturally fall down [almost like a see-saw] allowing the toy car to travel from one side to another.

We experienced many problems when building our structure but it was extremely helpful having 6 people on the job to adjust things as they went wrong. We started practically, creating a solid triangular shape using the bamboo, this shape was decided by the whole group something that would best work as a pivotal point for our see-saw-bridge. Moving on we decided to begin building the tracks for the car to travel across, we created a bamboo structure and attached it to several pieces of rectangular cardboard, this structure was perfect when lying on the floor, but then i suggested we lift it up and see how strong it was, and of course it split in multiple places. I then suggested instead of lining the bamboo up, we overlap it so that there are no weak points, this technique worked to our advantage.

 

The time soon came when we had to put our structures to the test [and Geoff's driving skills], as a team we all lifted our tracks off the ground and placed it on to the pivot. Unfortunately the structure was slightly too heavy and the tracks sagged, but this was not all doom and gloom as our bridge still met the criteria to pass. So the games began ! Geoff drove the car up one side and down the other without fail or hesitation. I think what worked to our advantage was the tracks we created, this ensured that the car did not swerve off. I created a film of all the bridges in action which can be seen above. 

(Building Process, Author's Own)