Friday, 22 June 2012

Assessment 3: a sense of place, attempt 2






The Coogee sway Chair has been designed specifically for the board walk area of Coogee beach, although that’s what its specific designed for it is catered for all foot path area’s located near water. The idea came across when people walk past the beach, would want to relax at the beach, but was not prepared to go in the sand, some people simply having a lunch break from work or just going for a brisk walk. Having this sway chair allows the individual to lie down comfortably, enjoy the beach, enjoy the sun, enjoy the beach breeze without getting sand on you or wet.
The design of this chair was made so that the individual is not entirely in a horizontal position yet not sitting upright; this allows the person to be highly comfortable in a relaxing position, yet still having the safety of being aware of their surroundings. Something that had to be taken into consideration for this chair was the safety, especially for some things such as ergonomics, and UV radiation. Because of this the chair has been designed to have a UV tinted Perspex sunshade, this allows it to protect you from the sun, especially seeing as majority of people just “walking by” will not have appropriate sun protection. The ergonomics of this design has been made to suite the human spine without warping or distortion to keep the person as comfortable and as safe as possible.

Matthew Patane
3377299


Monday, 28 May 2012

Street wise L chair


Rationale
The street wise train station chair was made to suit the needs of summer hill train station. After observing summer hill train station some things I understood were that there was limited seating undercover, it was primarily an outdoor area, generally quiet area, there was next to no privacy in the station itself, a lot of empty not used space, and along with that it was not a common train station, meaning some trains skip that stop so they can go to more important busier stations. Because of this I designed a new form of furniture to suite summer hill’s train station’s needs.
My chair I have designed provides an adequate number of available seating, by having enough room for 8 people to sit comfortably, meanwhile it has an acrylic shelter to protect from the sun and rain and give it the advantage of being undercover.
The chairs are also divided up into their own cubicles, this allows people to have improved privacy when waiting for their trains, less people will be able to listen to their personal conversations and along with that they will feel more comfortable being in their own privatized area. To mix with this trend I have allowed the dividers to be part acrylic/glass, this allows it to be private, but still with the acknowledgement of what is going on around them. The zig zag like nature of these chairs allows multiple of these chairs to be bought, and connected up to each other to fill up more space and cater for more seats.
After doing some research on the general demographic of the summer hill area I noticed it is a rather wealthy, sophisticated and quite suburb in nature, I also noticed that crime in summer hill is very low compared to the NSW average. Because of this I chose to make the chair out of oak, being oiled and varnished. The fact that it’s oak caters for this wealthy and sophisticated group of people, along with the matureness of the average age in the suburb. This being said I also had the understanding the crime rates were low in summer hill so this should be rewarded with acknowledging that this public furniture does not need to be made out of a cheap plastic in case it gets vandalized, instead it is made of a rather expensive wood for the suburb to enjoy.

Matthew Patane
3377299


Saturday, 28 April 2012

video review. who killed the electric car?

who killed the electric car?, a film released in 2006 by chris payne. This film goes on to explain why the electric car did not become a success, despite all its very positive qualities in comparison to petrol cars. The main car they target and look at is the EV-1 but this video goes onto explain how despite something being a great design it can still be highly disapproved due to consumers AND mostly what the big companies already want.
The key factor in this is how the electric car will essentially save the environment but how this was not accepted due to the big companies wanting to keep profits up. Some of the kye issues to why the electric car did not go ahead with was because of consumer acceptance, skeptics, oil industry funding media to go against electric vehicles, advertising from competition, supply and demand, limitations of the product, too difficult to kick start the category of cars, federal government lack of support and most of all it being a threat to the oil companies resulting in a provoked war of david vs golliath.
Alot of the american consumers were worried about the risk. Some companies like General motors would only talk about the limitations of the car....for example it can only do between 60 and 80 miles on one charge.....most consumers dont realise that this is more than enough for what somebody needs for one day, but because they realise that is less than a petrol car it already inspires people more to get the petrol, this resulted in less people wanting the car and hence resulting in a lower supply and demand.
When the supply and demand was low it resulted in less funding for the vehicle, meaning the vehicle would cost more, this resulted in another key factor to why people did not want the vehicle.
The other largest downside is that for the electric car to go ahead it would be going against competition much bigger than it can handle, the competition would be throwing an endless amount of money into proving that petrol is the way to go.
Of all the video's i have watched for the duration of this course i have actually admired this single one the most, it covers a topic that i admire, but more importantly it targets the reality of design, in the fact that just because a design is good and better than the rest, does not mean it will be more successful than the rest, it has the big key issue that it is up against forces much stronger than it, along with that it is the whole factor of "change" that makes it more difficult, the good side is that because of this technology and its ability we know that eventually the design WILL go ahead, maybe by a different company but eventually it will be accepted as we can not constantly rely on petrol and non renewable resources. In the end it all comes down to where the big companies can earn the most money from.

Sunday, 15 April 2012

Video blog B

Giving packaging new life
Very straight forward to the point, although in today's day in age majority of designers and even the average joe already know these recycling facts. that being said there are some things said such as the methods used to recycle them that people to not know about, if these were described in more detail it would be better. It is VERY good how they have the video following the process of what is happening, when these methods are just verbally said to somebody they do not understand them, but when a video of the process is shown it makes it much easier to understand.
i did find the recycling of plastics the most interesting video as there is a different method of recycling for each individual plastic.
the statistical fact at the end also comes in useful as it gives the viewer a vivid understanding of how good or bad this technique is as it usually explains how commonly it is done.

How its made
Cardboard boxes: did not mind the video, already know most of it, all except for how the "flute" was made, along with that i was not aware of some of the terminology. I was also incredibly impressed at what rate they all shoot out at.

packaging tubes: was interested about the "aluminum slugs" i always thought it was fed in at a pellet or grain like form, melted, and then molded.  i am truely amazed by forcing the tube out into that shape. I would think that it would require too much energy to push it out like that, but now that i think about it i suppose it would use more energy than having to melt the thing. i really liked this video, i learnt alot

aluminium cans: was and have been for a long time highly aware of this method. i have always found it most interesting how the machine will do its job of punching it, then all the excess material is sent back to the melting factory, ints just interesting how this material is always being sent too and from just to save money, that being said it VERY good that the material is not simply being thrown out. most implressed by the rate of whiche the cans are made, 1800 hundred cans per minute, amazing.

plastic bottles: i have known this method for a long time, and knowing that PET bottles are used very commonly in this world it is a reality that this method is very commonly used. i learnt MORE about this method in my materials and tech C class. what i find most interesting is the size of the preforms before they are blown out. again impressed by the rate they are made. Something else i like most about this is that we can not actually think of another method that can make these as cheap, as strong, and as recycleable and yet staying at the same production rate, clearly one of the most reputable production methods

glass bottles: my MOST favourable factor of this is that glass can be recycled infinite times, it makes this a truelly renewable resource. the way how the hot globs of glass are thrown through so quickly is amazing, although glass is a great RENEWABLE material, and it has its many positive properties when manufacturing, i can already tell that making plastic bottles would be significantly cheaper, i can tell first just by how hot the flobs get, that is alot of energy that needs to be used, resulting in a very high cost.

tetrapak: i have not known much about tetrapak as i never really had an interest in them. i always thought they were not ENTIRELY reusable, but when i found out that the entire tetrapak is made from recyclable materials i found interesting. It does look like a very costly method of manufacturing, i also found it od how there was more hands on labour intensive work rather than having the entire system automated. i always thought the layers get melted together but when i saw that they just get forced together by rollers i found significantly interesting. not my favourite production method but still very interesting