Arch Project: Interior voids of common objects

[MaverickSimCity 0]

Can anyone think of some really good items that would work well for this project:

In one of my architectural design classes, we have to come up with 3 small common items (small being between the size of a hand and head) that contain void space within them. These three items must be thematically/conceptually related (shallow or deep relationship) and should contain a void space that would yield unexpected or suprising features. (In other words, a water bottle won't cut it cause we basically know the void shape inside) We are going to be casting these items with plaster next week to study their void spaces.

some items i have found are ice cream cones (the more cylindrical kind with the waffle squares at the bottom) a night light, a 90 degree PVC pipe elbow (it has a hard edge on the inside, its not all round)

items some other classmates had thought of were egg cartons, flashlights, a shoe, snow goggles, toothpaste tube, and eyeglass container.

I just want to see what you guys come up with because I've been thinking about this way too hard and its driving me crazy!!!!!!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

wedding rings, nose rings for bulls, belly button rings

[screamingman12 30]

How about a driver?(the vibrating part of a speaker): A golf driver/wood would work also, those are hollow.

[Duke87 1,070]

Aggregate (the rocks used in concrete and asphalt) often contains small impenetrable voids in the middle. This is important because the smaller you grind it down the fewer voids you're going to have, thus slightly increasing the effective density of it, since impenetrable voids will never be filled by moisture or cement, but valleys and cracks on the surface will. When professionally mixing concrete, you actually have to adjust the amount of water you put in the mix depending on how wet the aggregate is, since if it's unsaturated, it will absorb water out of the mix (thus reducing the water to cement ratio, and important property in concrete design), and if it's supersaturated, it will contribute extra water to the mix (increasing the water to cement ratio). This is further complicated by the fact that aggregate is often stored outside in large piles exposed to the sun. As such, the rocks on the surface of the pile will be dryer than those on the interior. On the other hand, sometimes concrete companies will spray water on aggregate stockpiles to keep them from getting too hot. If they do this, then it's wetter on the surface than on the inside. The standard procedure is thus to take five different samples from random locations on the pile (surface and interior) and use the average as your value for the moisture content. Of course, if you start mixing concrete in the morning and then a storm blows through, you have to stop mixing, wait for the storm to pass, and then remeasure your moisture content. This is the largest cause of lost time for concrete companies.

[DuskTrooper 314]

How about a thermos? That has a literal void; a vacuum that allows it to prevent thermal emissivity.

If animal parts are permissible, perhaps you could submit chicken/bird bones. They are hollow, which allows for them to be light weight, among other things. As quoted by Wikipedia...

"Birds have many bones that are hollow with criss-crossing struts or trusses for structural strength. The number of hollow bones varies among species, though large gliding and soaring birds tend to have the most. Respiratory air sacs often form air pockets within the semi-hollow bones of the bird's skeleton.[1] Some flightless birds like penguins and ostriches have only solid bones, further evidencing the link between flight and the adaptation of hollow bones."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeleton_of_birds#Skeletal_system

So, there ya go.

[MaverickSimCity 0]

hmmm....never thought about bones...those would be good, but i dont know where i could really get those from. i'm not going to go kill a bird for a project 

and duke87, thanks for the interesting insight on the storage of aggregate. i know concrete needs water and such for it to cure properly, but i never thought about the effects of it being stored in the sun or sprayed with water. very interesting

speaker driver not a bad idea, but i dont have any spare speakers floating around. i supposed if i found one i could group it together with other sound producing devices

i think the rings are too small. the objects have to be at least the size of ones hand.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Don't forget bucky balls.  Those neat dodecahederon carbon molecules.  Completely void in the center.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Of course, a large seashell is the classic example for surprising voids, but it may be too complicated to cast, and large seashells can get very expensive. I have a few giant Hawaiian cowrie shells worth more than my computer. Perhaps boiling out some poor hpaless nautiluses for the sake of a school project would be too cruel.

A VCR cassette tape could be simple with lots of unusual spaces between the mechanisms, though I don't know how well the miniscule parts would survive the casting process.

It could be interesting to see the mysterious voids inside a plastic Barbie Doll cast inside-out. Uh, just avoid those toxic lead-painted ones. You know, any similar hollow toy could be fun.

Speaking of birds, do you have any elaborate bird feeders lying around. Hummingbird feeders would be even better than gravity seed feeders, as they have to hold a liquid nectar behind open nozzles without too much drippage.

Too bad an old car combustion engine is too large and complex, as there are lots of cool cavities when drained of oil and other fluids. I just don't know how you would fill it with plaster and then break it open without heavy machinery, hehe.

[DanNukesAll 0]

How is this arch, im ive taken those classes, and we use autocad and softplan, what is it intro to arch, creating models?

[MaverickSimCity 0]

hummingbird feeder, thats cool! i'll look for one of those.

this is a second year design class. we are going to be designing a poets retreat and our prof. wants us to find intresting interiors because I believe we are going to be using those in our design. My prof. said too many times we (as students) design thinking of the exterior first, and not give much thought to the "form" contained within the building, so this is an exercise to design from the inside out.

[Duke87 1,070]

Ah, so it's an exercise in alternate design approaches.

As an architecture student, you may already be aware of this, but architects and engineers hate each others guts. The reason for this is that architects generally have little background in engineering, so they all too often come up with designs which look nice but in practice wouldn't be easy to keep standing. The architect is the artist, so he designs the building and then hands it to the engineers for them to figure out how to build. This causes a lot of aggravation on the part of engineers since when an architect proposes something outside of the box (which is all too common these days), it becomes a headache to design the structure for. And the engineer usually isn't permitted to go back to the architect and propose modifications to the design to make it easier.

On the other hand, engineering firms love working for Santiago Calatrava and are always scrambling to get the jobs for his designs... because he has a PhD in structural engineering and won't propose anything problematic in his designs without also coming up with solutions to the problems he creates.

[amal81 3]

Originally posted by: Duke87 Ah, so it's an exercise in alternate design approaches.

As an architecture student, you may already be aware of this, but architects and engineers hate each others guts. The reason for this is that architects generally have little background in engineering, so they all too often come up with designs which look nice but in practice wouldn't be easy to keep standing. The architect is the artist, so he designs the building and then hands it to the engineers for them to figure out how to build. This causes a lot of aggravation on the part of engineers since when an architect proposes something outside of the box (which is all too common these days), it becomes a headache to design the structure for. And the engineer usually isn't permitted to go back to the architect and propose modifications to the design to make it easier.quote>

Very true. Working in an Architect's office, I have seen that happening between Architects and Civil/Structural engineers many times.