Off the trailNumber 01Visual design

Pneumatic Lines

An object that goes from solid to void when you touch it.

Kind: Interactive object, kit of parts
Made with: Parametric modeling, 3D-printed nodes, cast silicone, Arduino
Trigger: A copper plate on the podium

$A fractured solid cube on the left, an arrow, and the same form on the right as an open wireframe lattice$

Visual design

Drawings, renderings and stories from architecture school: speculative buildings and the worlds they sit in.

The question was whether an object could change its own density: read as a solid at rest, then open up into a void when someone touches it.

The answer was a kit of parts. Thin pipes join at custom hollow nodes, like a construction set. Each pipe is wrapped in a silicone sleeve, and when air is pumped into the structure the sleeves inflate and the object fills in. Let the air out and it goes back to lines.

Touch the plate, the lines fill in. 25 seconds, no sound.

It started as form-finding with a cube. Split, twist, taper, scale: parametric modeling made it fast to run through variations and keep the ones that still remembered the cube they came from.

A cube drawn as stacked wireframe boxes on a grey ground — The starting cube.

Four columns of small cubes labelled split, twist, taper and scale, each showing the operation step by step — Four operations.

A grid of thirty small rendered variations of the fractured cube, in pale grey and rust — Variations, generated and compared.

Plan view of the chosen form, a red lattice inside a folded white shell, with a small exploded diagram beside it

Close rendering of red pipework threading through a soft white scalloped surface

The resulting form kept the cube's character and its structural pipework. Each pipe meets the next at a 3D-printed node, so the whole thing assembles from a small set of parts.

A white folded paper-like model with a thin lattice inside, on a white podium

The same model from another side, the lattice visible through an opening

A dense wireframe lattice model leaning against a curved white surface

The lattice model seen from the front, filling the opening of the white shell

Mock-ups in paper and wire, to find the ratio of node to pipe before printing anything.

Rendering of a white four-armed node with a translucent sleeve on one arm — The node: 3D-printed, hollow, so air passes through it.

Rendering of a long pipe with an inflated silicone sleeve bulging along it — A sleeve inflated on its pipe.

Dozens of small grey node variations laid out on a dark ground — Node variations.

A cast silicone sleeve slips over each structural tube, and the tubes connect to the hollow joints. A compression ring holds the sleeve at each end. Pump air in and the silicone swells.

The installation had to be activated without instructions. A copper plate on the podium is the conductor: touch it and an Arduino triggers the inflation actuator, which pushes air through the hollow tubes into the sleeves.

An Arduino board wired to relays, pumps and valves on a cardboard sheet — The controller, pumps and valves.

A hand resting on a copper plate beside the wire-and-node model — Touching the plate.