RAUM INDUSTRIES
SXSW ART PROGRAM - 2017
Optic Obscura is an interactive installation comprised of fiber optic strands and projected light. one end of each strand terminates in a precision surface interface. Here each strand end matches the x-y coordinates of it’s other end in the larger cloud of points. At this location a visitor can manipulate the light entering the optics using a smartphone, tablet, or other devices. Videos, photos, camera light, or various other apps can be projected into the fiber ends. This light travels through the fibers, dynamically illuminating the far ends of the strands which are suspended as an amorphous cloud. The strands make their way from interface to cloud in a series of draped paths that flicker and glow - subtly partitioning the space and suggesting paths through the work.
Legge Lewis Legge + Cookshop
Completed - 2017
Client - City of San Antonio
BOZEMAN, MONTANA
RAUM INDUSTRIES IN COLLABORATION WITH MOUNTAIN TIME ARTS
SUMMER - 2017
As part of a summer-long series of installations, performances and art happenings produced by Mountain Time Arts, Raum set about to illuminate a large swath of historic irrigation canals on a homestead on the Gallatin River. Utilizing off-the-shelf solar strand lights - over 80,000 individual leds - we inlaid more than a mile of these sinuous veins - the life blood of the valley - with an otherworldly glow. The piece is self-powered and self-activating - soaking in the sun each day, and bubbling to life each dusk.
DESIGN TEAM: Legge Lewis Legge (Murray Legge, FAIA, Deb Lewis, Andrea Legge), Travis Cook
MY ROLE: Project Manager, Fabricator
CLIENT: Waller Creek Conservancy
COMPLETED: 2014
Waller Creek Conservancy hosted Creek Show Light Night 2014 in order to showcase the unique and under-utilized urban riparian landscape along Waller Creek in Austin, TX. Five local design teams, including Legge Lewis Legge, were asked to design and construct temporary, light-themed installations for the event, which attracted thousands of Austin visitors and residents to the spectacle of a transformed urban place.
The piece is constructed with Electro-luminescent Wire (EL Wire) and 22 gauge speaker wire, suspended on a grid shelf and weighted with bank sinkers. The first design task was to develop digital tools to output data about the form. Using Rhino 3D and Grasshopper, real-time data was output to Excel, which calculated lengths, amounts, and costs associated with various schemes. This allowed accurate budgetary considerations to inform the design.
The next design task was to generate full-scale templates that reduced dependency on traditional annotation and measurement. These templates allowed for continual organization and tracking of the various parts throughout the fabrication process. The tape measure was put away - every necessary piece of information existed on the work surface itself. Even with all this help from our friend technology, over 1,600 individual solders were made as the EL wire was spliced into the speaker wire, which is in-turn soldered to connectors at the main wiring banks on the shelf above.
The form responds to the numerous riparian typologies surrounding the site, and manifests as an eerie, glowing bridge, swaying and pulsing with the breezes that are concentrated within the narrow channel. The pure circular form of the arch flinches and distorts, all the while betraying it's compressional origins.
Client: Waller Creek Conservancy - Creek Show 2016
Design Team: Cookshop and Westshop
CONTEXT:
Austin, Texas, was settled and built around rivers and creeks. Today, it is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. The resulting tension between the built and natural environment is epitomized by Waller Creek, which fl ows through downtown Austin and eventually drains into Lady Bird Lake. Through the construction of the new storm water bypass tunnel, potential floodwaters will be diverted underground which will allow for the enhancement of both human and ecological communities. The tunnel will allow for the formation of a riparian park that will allow for passive and active recreation as well as create a series of rain gardens and biofiltration devices that treat pollutants.
CONCEPT:
Our vision for the Waller Creek Creekshow 2016 (Phantom Diversion) is an analysis and interpretation of the intersection between the natural and built environment. It intends to expose and celebrate the idea of diversion. Currently there are a series of exposed above grade diversion pipes that will later be tied to the intake station at 4th Street and disappear. These
diversion pipes are approximately 18” in diameter and are held in place by a series of caliche packed mounds that anchor and direct the pipe and fl ow. Our design intends to bring to attention these diversion pipes and reveal their mundane beauty through a linear series of glowing circular sections and bring to mind these drain pipes that will later disappear below the creek. These sections will undulate with the water level and serve as a linking agent between the additional Creekshow exhibits and the overhead streets of Red River between 7th and 8th Street. Our hope is to divert the passing by walker, jogger, biker or driver to take a moment to come down to the creek to experience its natural beauty.
DESIGN TEAM: Legge Lewis Legge
MY ROLE: Design Development, Fabrication Management
CLIENT: Dallas Arboretum Children's Garden
Completion - August, 2015
This entry structure commissioned by the Dallas Arboretum offered up an amazing opportunity to explore the nature of the production process and construction documentation - that is - the translation of a design from conception through realization. Given the complex form, as well as the digital nature of it's existence and development, traditional fabrication methods had to be paired with elements of digital fabrication and production - elements that are received with some friction by much of the current industry. Additionally, the process requires the 'designer' to learn and understand the tolerances, capabilities, and limitations of the processes of construction and workflow.
It should be noted that the form itself is not where the parametric adventure begins. Rather, it is in the output of data from the model directly to a digital tool. The data, in the case of Leaf, contains information transcribed directly onto the parts - information that will allow a human at the other end to assemble the whole without referring to annotated drawings. The drawings provided are actually maps - keys to where the precise and self-contained part goes, in relation to the whole.
This is a highly idealized way of describing the actual process. Reality required numerous as-built drawings, micro-adjustments to the digital model, and custom parts. Annotated plans were key to assembling the superstructure and will be crucial to the site installation. Still, the small success of streamlining aspects of the process, and demonstrating the human efficiency that is achievable through thoughtful implementation of technology merits no small amount of pride.
Solo Exhibition - University of Texas School of Architecture - Univsersity CO-OP Materials Lab - 2017
Group Exhibition - Secret Object Series - Lighting 2017
Originally designed and built for SXSW - 2016
