As part of the 4 finalists of the international TEX-FAB Plasticity competition in 2014, we won a budget to manufacture a big Straw-k prototype to be exhibited during ACADIA 2014 in Los Angeles. The Viscoplasty prototype shows exactly what the fabrication process should be for an architectural scale installation. Using digital fabrication tool (CNC milling machine and lasercut), the mold is the base of the prototype and enable a perfect control of the assembling process by giving the shape the robot has to follow to melt the topographic surface. We used small diameter straws and varied the length of the tubes because the scale of the prototype allowed us to. The wavy shape shows how much curvature the assembling process can handle while still holding itself without extra support.

Size: 55 x 75 x 115 cm
Weight: 11 Kg
Number of straws: 15 500
Date: 2014