AIUCK (RISD // 2012)

AIUCK (Architectural Installation using Contours and Kinetics) was a project designed and built as a temporary installation in the lobby of the Rhode Island School of Design’s Bayard Ewing Building. The objective of this project was to provide a transformable place of rest and refuge in the otherwise seat-lacking lobby of the architecture department. To pursue this, kinetic mechanisms were created, and ergonomic seating strategies were explored. Through the use of digital fabrication techniques, mainly laser cutting and 3D printing, the AIUCK team prototyped a number of kinetic mechanisms that enabled rotation, sliding, locking, and attach/detaching. Modeling contours based on the arc of a human’s spine, and fabricating the final product utilizing a CNC-Router to closely match these contours, enabled us to make layers of plywood into a comfortable interactive piece that weary architecture students could utilize.