Daniel Gehr

Inspiration for this three legged arch derived from explorations with catenary curves.  Each leg has a plywood gridwork between vertically oriented plywood sides, held together with rotating locking discs.  A high risk aesthetic design decision to remove some of the catenary shaped side pieces to reveal the interior gridwork compromised the structure and the bases of each leg needed to be tied together and plywood strips added along the legs. We really tested the physical limitations to build our understanding. The legs are not of uniform thickness and the catenary curve is not maintained along the length of two of the legs.  The structure is CNC milled from 4'x8' sheets of 3/4" plywood and the locking discs are laser cut from 1/8" and 1/4" acrylic.

I worked with Marco Gonzalez-Bode.

This is a collaborative project involving experimenting with expanding sheet metal.  The installation location along is the upper section of walls of a windowless stairway, and the primary aesthetic objective is to artificially light the surface from behind and in front.

I worked with Gabe Vidal-Hallett, Marcos Gonzalez-Bode, Andrew Vinny, and Leah Wulfman.  Funding was provided by the Alcoa Foundation.

This is a collaborative project for building a temporary shelter for overnight and daytime use in sunny weather on the Carnegie Mellon University campus.  Using only 8' 2x4's, 4'x8' 3/4" plywood, and 4' wide canvas we designed and built an iconic structure with seating and sleeping arrangements.  The canvas roof performs as a writing surface for activism during day.

I worked with Matt Dawson, Ellie Hopen, Chris Chan, and Richard May.

I built scale models of two Felix Candela projects, the Chapel Lomas in Cuernavaca and the Los Manantiales Restaurant in Xochimilco.  I highlighted the ruled surface geometry in the casts themselves.  I cast the structures by splatter casting which lets specs of plaster dry quickly as they buildup.  Using ultracal 30 plaster I made each structure as thin as possible, between four and ten times too thick to be appropriately scaled to the feats of engineering by Candela and his team.

I enjoy experimenting with steam bending and making useful things to have fun with in the snow.  The extreme form of the ski is designed for cross-country adventures in all types of snow conditions.

I needed to make a tool for the robotic arm to apply high amounts pressure and expand sheets of steel with directional capabilities of at least 2π steradians.  I experimented forming over two slightly differently curved surfaces for testing the ability to form a sheet over it on the wood lathe and for testing how in turn it applies even or uneven pressure when used by the robotic arm.

I tested different gauges of stainless steel, cold rolled steel, aluminum, and perforated aluminum.  22 gauge col rolled steel worked the best.

This was a technical challenge in testing the limits of this high density polyurethane foam.  I hypothesized the key factor to be relieving pressure off the thin sections of foam while milling.  It turned out the limiting factor was the tolerances, specifically the squareness and repositioning of the stock material.