Plants for air

Infographic by Jana Flohr

Staircase & potted plant in Roma

Photograph by Helena La Petite

Staircase in Rome, by Helena la Petite.

A clay day

Finally the mold is dry enough to start casting with!

Thomas has spent all day experimenting to determine the ideal thickness of the liquid casting clay, the exact resting time before pouring out the clay again (so it has left a layer exactly as thick as we want it) and how and when to best gently remove the clay shape so that it is still soft enough to be easily post-processed, yet sturdy enough to be able to stand on its own.

A day of trial and error:

finally!

Interior Greenery

Photograph by Matsuki Kousuke

Fig tree - from The Marion House Book

Making the mold

prep of the mold-base + mold being cast with gypsum

A few snapshots of Thomas' affairs at the workshop today: casting the mold for our cone-prototypes.

Mold after the gypsum hardened

This is what it looked like after pealing away the plastic walls.
Now for the next step: taking the original out...

finished mold!

It took Thomas a lot of wriggling with a lot of tools and a few quite nerve-racking moments, but eventually the 3d-printed model came out of the mold in one piece. Luckily.

Annoyingly we have to wait for the mold to dry completely before we can start casting liquid clay in it. D*mn.
We'll put in on a heater then and wait. :-|

advanced model-making

3d-print of the (shape for the) terracotta cone

This is what we received in the mail today: a 3d-printed model of our terracotta cone. - Long live model making in the year 2013!
Next step: a terracotta version of our terracotta cone....

first test-model

First model of the glass reservoir + banana plant

Tataaaaaa!

Here it is, the first test-model of our Waterworks design, shining away in our banana-plant.

We are pretty happy people right now.

First model of the glass reservoir + banana plant

Every five minutes or so we see a little bubble of air come up trough the water.
Lovely.

the glass guys

semifinished products at the glass factory

Near the Dutch Seaside, not so very far away from Zandvoort in fact, is a little factory that specializes in made-to-order laboratory glass.
It's a lovely place: not too big, but spacious enough for large workstations for several glass-blowers, various specialized workshops situated in different corners, a large furnish and plenty of storage- and office space on the first floor (plus a foosball table).
The sympathetic owner of the factory, Geert, told us that the company moved to this location relatively recently, inventory and all. That must have been fun.

one of the glass-blowers at work

Thomas and i went to the factory, of course, to see if they could help us with the prototype of our Waterworks project.
It was great to talk about our plans with Geert, who helped us tremendously and promised he could make us a first prototype within 10 days if we would provide him with a technical drawing later that day.
Needless to say we didn't tarry in the glassworks a lot longer that morning, eager to go home and finish the drawings Geert needed.

glass, glass, glass!

Today we were back at the factory to pick up the first models.
Let me tell you: having a glass piece that you designed yourself in your hand feels so magical.

Picks of the first models will follow soon.