Product Design

My four-credit class for the fall semester is Product Design and I chose to enroll in a Biomimicry specific course. Our first project has been very research intensive so far, but I've done a little sketching that I can share. The project we were assigned is about either heat or cold conservation and I was originally planning to apply it to winter survival shelters. In an effort to scale down my project I'm beginning to design some sort of fresh water storage system that melts and filters snow.

"Biomimicry is an emerging discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems" - Biomimicry Guild. I've already done quite a bit of research on some of Earth's best cold weather species and am currently in the process of studying Caribou fur as well as the petal patterns of certain tundra flowers. Here are some of the early sketches I did when I was still focused on the shelter problem:

Animal Update

I've continued work on the bristol board animal studies and have centered my attention on the swordfish for further adaptation. The next step of the project will be focused on finding a new material that allows for mass production to build the final model out of. Sorry for the low quality phone photos:

Back to School

I thought it might be about time for a blog update... I'm just getting back into the Pratt routine after a long summer and already enjoying Junior year. I've had trouble in the past keeping the blog up to date, but I hope to upload my school and personal work more frequently this year.

My 3D class this semester focuses on abstracting the form and persona of animals, so the first few weeks have been fun while we familiarize ourselves with different animals in a number of planar construction studies. Here's a selection of the least abstracted models made of Bristol board