Term: SPRING 2017

Location: ALBERTA, CANADA – UO Study Abroad

Course: KINETIC ARCHITECTURE 

Imagine a watchtower in the Canadian Rockies. The tower becomes “winterized” so that you can pull up a chair on the deck without shoveling snow after an dozen km snowshoe to the site. The winterization consists of a carbon fiber hemisphere divided into 8 segments. But wait! Each segment weighs 260lbs, so there is a network of groovy gears and a radial counterweight system to eliminate physical effort. Then there’s the 64:1 gear reduction to time the opening of the segments — a delicate balance between thrill and weariness of cranking which translates to about 16 rotations or 20 seconds of user operation for a 90° segment turn. Anyway, if a picture is worth a thousand words, we put together about 1400 frames for some multiple of that.