Mistakes and Mashed Potatoes
Lawrence Tech is usually quite good at providing fabrication tools, but it has been lacking a lot of its zest for facilities during this summer. That means limited-to-no access to metal working tools, laser cutters, and wood working tools. This week I was making conceptual models to begin my final design. I needed something easily workable, cheap, capable of different textures, and fragrant. Soap. I'm talking about soap its in the title.
I went out and got 4 brands of soap to try. I decided to try my default method of heating materials up. Blowtorch.
Not exactly what I was looking for. I mean maybe I could seal some letters in an especially fragrant fashion. I'll look into that.
The process of melting this brand of soap with blowtorch was very long and tedious. Even after melting a good amount, only a little trickled out of the bucket before hardening. I decided to try mushing it in while it was semi-melted.
This yielded an unexpected, but wonderful result. The soap blocks produced had a nice granite resemblance; perfect for representing the feeling of "solid" in my concept model.
If I combine this with a carved piece of some ever-so-slightly diffuse soap, I have a decent contrast between "soft" and "solid" spaces.
Now lets convey a layout for diffuse and solid structure in a concept. I needed a solid piece of soap to convey the layout of solid spaces at my base. So, I take soap brand #2, grind it up, microwave it in 7 minute intervals, and forcing it into a chipboard form. The consistency when heated is slightly fluffy, and not unlike mashed potatoes.
From there we can carve it into the rough form of the base, and begin a representation of the "flexible" space." In accordance with my earlier interpretation of "flexible" space, I used a repetitive form, changing slightly as it is repeated to create a changing shape and program. I shaped this out of steel wire and embedded it into the soap. I then set out to represent soft space with my translucent soap by pouring it onto the upper portion of the base. Approximately 7 minutes of microwaving and we have something not unlike consistency of liquid soap. Which, it turns out actually slips pretty well between small cracks in duct tape.
Twice.
Luckily, soap cools down and hardens. That's the whole point.
And so, after try #3 and some carving, I have this result.
An earlier piece was meant for a simple massing. It too was cast in the mashed potato method. It has produced very wonderful textures, colors, and aromas.
I also went back to my modular mold from my first melt, and filled it with microwaved ground soap instead of blowtorch'd soap to create one final model.
I could have talked a lot about what these models mean for my architectural parti moving forward, but instead I wanted to take the time to show the process of making something with an unproven material.
Thanks for reading, here's some bonus banners just because I've been looking at them so much.
