2017 ACADIA Project
Spring 2017 | Iowa State University | College of Design
Professor: Shelby Doyle
Spring 2017 | Iowa State University | College of Design
Professor: Shelby Doyle
IM_RU was designed and built by fifteen students majoring in architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design as part of an interdisciplinary undergraduate studio at Iowa State University. Constructed from low-cost 3D printed joints, mirrored acrylic, 1/8” steel wires, and LEDs, the pavilion was designed using computational methods to be structurally flexible, simple to assemble, and lightweight for transport. The project was constructed in the ISU Computation and Construction Lab, deconstructed, and then transported 130 miles and reassembled at the 2017 Flyover Fashion Festival.
The project is an inhabited passageway of 500 mirrored surfaces arranged in a dissolving, voxel grid. The IM_RU Pavilion’s name is shorthand for the dialogue users unconsciously encounter between their perception of reality and others reality: “I am... are you?” An individual’s reality is inescapably subjective and is therefore embedded with “I am” statements. In this way, we utilize ourselves as reference points. Ultimately, the IM_RU Pavilion presents architecture and public space where an individual is simultaneously confronted with a multiplicity of individual and collective perceptions. By exploding and scattering what is seen, IM_RU prevents the passerby from using him or herself as a reference point.
Manufacturing relied almost entirely upon 3,200 low cost ($0.18 each) 3D printed PLA joints fabricated with four Dremel 3D20 Printers ($800).
Top, The mirrored acrylic slid into pockets in the 3D printed joints. The LEDs and 3 volt batteries were placed into a 3D printed holster the domed light was protruded through a hole drilled into the top of each mirror. Middle, The wires snapped into the 3D printed connections to hold the boxes together and in place. Bottom, Concrete block foundations had opens for pug lights. Wires were connected with 3D printed joints and placed into the concrete to connect to the wire boxes that composed the pavilion.
IM_RU at the Flyover Fashion Festival in Iowa City, Iowa.