Ephemera

Digital Fabrication is an upper-year technical design course where students are challenged with the creation of a programmable machine designed specifically for the execution of a parametric installation.

Our team began the project with XPS rigid foam as a material—an essential insulator in northern latitudes and a material notorious for producing waste (off-cuts) that are neither recycled nor upcycled—until now. Inspired by the unique airy qualities of the material, we became captured by the idea of making our final installation “fly” throughout space, looking to aviation physics principles to achieve this.

The project was heavily guided by rigorous on-site prototyping and the capacities of our 3D foam-cutting machine, which we were able to build and program using open-source, incorporating designed wood members cut on our school’s 2D laser-cutter.

Our finished installation—Ephemera—demonstrates the power of digital fabrication for designing in situ, and the merit in constantly reconsidering energy and the everyday conventions of how it is used.

Team: Simao DaSilva, Jennie Philipow, Alex Langois, Isaac Edmonds, and Pascal Rocheleau.