Can we envision a way of design with home fabrication using everyday material?

As COVID hit, our access to campus, studio space and fabrication facilities were completely eliminated. This project explores small-scale domestic fabrication and spatial installation with the constraints of minimizing fabrication noise to the neighbours and damage to a rented apartment. A desktop CNC machine, “Tiny Z”, was assembled from scratch. I chose to work with wax as it is easily reusable therefore will not produce waste. It is also light, soft, amorphous, and easily transformable by heat, which is the inspiration for customising the machine using heat. With an off-the-shelf pyrography pen, customised 3D printed hardwares, and G-code programming, Tiny Z is hacked into a wax sculptor that takes advantage of the accuracy of this petite machinery to conduct intricate shaping and surface patterning. A workflow of “melt-remelt” is developed to fabricate tiny doubly-curved wax bricks with unique texture, which eventually form a home intervention that transforms the experience of passing by a spatial threshold domestic space.

https://daisyz.one

Poster

Details

Team members : Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Supervisor : Zain Karsan, Catie Newell, Virginia San Fratello

Institution : Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Descriptions

Credits

Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Daisy Ziyan Zhang

Daisy Ziyan Zhang