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British studio Neon has created a vibrant tent-like installation covered in wind-reactive inflatable pockets in the mountains of France.

Titled Wind Cathedral, the site-specific artwork was created by Mark Nixon’s architecture and design practice for Horizons, an annual open-air exhibition in Massif du Sancy focusing on large installations.

Located on a hill in the countryside of a small French village called Victor-Saint-la Riviere, the installation is intended as a response to the Perdue Cross (or “lost cross”), which was originally placed at the site to mark the death of a woman who went missing and eventually perished during a heavy rainstorm in the area around 200 years ago.

With the tragic history of the site in mind, Neon designed a tent-like shelter around the cross that could potentially act as a protection against bad weather for visitors.

Also inspired by the surrounding volcanos and mountains is the installation’s pointed tripod base, which is held to the ground by 30 tensioned steel rope lines.

The conical form of the exterior features 30 inflatable wind-catching sections, sat in between stabilising ropes. Each section is made up of unique windsocks, all various widths and depths, which continuously fill up with air, altering the appearance of the fabric interior.

Composed from 500 metres of ripstop fabric and 14,000 metres of cotton thread, the surface of the artwork took a team of five people around a month to construct.

Ripstop is a reinforced woven version of nylon, often used for army uniforms and parachutes due to its tear-resistance.

The design utilises the often blustery weather of the location as a means to create a “breathing” movement on the inside of Wind Cathedral, which allows inhabitants to monitor any changes to wind volatility outside.

Neon also intended the vibrant tent to reference the stained glass windows often found adorning traditional cathedrals.

The Horizons exhibition in Massif du Sancy features 11 installations in total and is open from 24 June 2017 to 24 September 2017.

Mark Nixon founded Neon in 2012. His previous public installations include Chimecco, which saw him hang metal pipes on the underside of a bridge in Denmark, turning it into a giant wind chime.

The post Neon constructs a colourful cathedral in France that moves with the wind appeared first on Dezeen.

The top of this faceted private observatory in central New Hampshire, by Anmahian Winton Architects, rotates to provide different views of the night sky.

The Gemma Observatory sits on a remote peak in the northeastern state, at the centre of a “dark” zone with a three-mile radius. Unobstructed by light pollution, the setting is ideal for astronomical observation.

Unlike typically domed observatories, the building has an angular form designed to echo its jagged granite surroundings. Lock-seamed zinc used to clad its exterior references the hues of the rocky landscape.

“[The building’s] dimension, colour, and patina evoke a material relationship to the grey granite outcroppings,” said Anmahian Winton Architects, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The small structure comprises a low portion and an adjoining tower, all wrapped by the faceted metal skin. A terrace of concrete platforms leading to the entrance forms part of the foundations, and also visually mediates the bedrock and the building.

In contrast, the interior is lined with fir plywood to create a cosy escape from the chilly environment outside. The walls are thoroughly insulated to prevent heat exchange between outside and in, which produces heat eddies in the air that can impede the view of the stars.

Designed to accommodate a single occupant, the ground floor has enough space for a research office, a sleeping bunk, and a warming room. A helical staircase leads up to a deck across the top of the single-storey portion, and continues up to the observation platform inside the turret equipped with a large telescope and a camera array.

“A single person can rotate this turret by hand with an assembly typically used in high-precision manufacturing facilities, and a hand-cranked sliding hatch opens the telescope to the sky,” the studio said.

A gap in a corner of the cladding frames Polaris – the North Star – when the tower is locked into its southern cardinal position.

Gemma Observatory was a winner of the AIA Small Projects Awards 2017, along with student-designed cabins in Colorado and a transitional housing facility for pregnant or parenting women in Oregon.

A similarly compact observatory is located in Kielder, Scotland, but features two rotating towers rather than one.

Project credits:

Architect: Anmahian Winton Architects – Alex Anmahian, Nick Winton; project manager – Mazen Sakr; team – Anika Gramsey, Travis Williams
General contractor: Patriots Builders – Scott Estabrooks
Structural engineers: RSE Associates – Sofya Auren P.E.
Technical motion engineers: Gillespie
Rotating rail mechanism: THK
Metal installers: Crocker Architectural Sheet Metal
Steel: Quinn Brothers Iron Works
Structural insulated panels: Foard Panels
Decorative steel: Concentric Fabrication – Rob Lorenson; Tresfort Metal Works – Pierre Tresfort
Solar panel design: SunBug Solar

The post Anmahian Winton’s zinc-clad observatory enables stargazing from a New Hampshire mountain appeared first on Dezeen.

You’ve created a seamless design—structurally sound, sufficiently thick, and mindful of overhangs. However, you get your part back to find out that it’s not printable!

Many of the errors we see stem from how the digital model was created and often the main problems come down to whether the design was modeled using solid bodies or surfaces.

If you’re using a program like SketchUp that uses surface modeling, it can be tricky to make your 3D model printable, so I’m going to walk you through a few of the most common errors and show you how to fix them.

How to Check Your Models

First download netfabb Basic, a free program you can use to quickly verify designs.

In netfabb, you can identify watertightness issues, spot surface tessellation, and apply auto-repair, so this is an excellent tool to help you check your models for any errors.

3 Common Issues + Solutions

Issue #1: Zero Wall Thickness

With surface modeling, parts sometimes have walls that are infinitesimally thin. While they appear in the digital rendering, they can’t actually be printed and would not be present in the physical model.

Solution: Make sure every surface is enclosed so that the part is “watertight,” meaning the part won’t leak if theoretically filled with water. Also make sure the edges of each surface are connected—each edge should have 2 adjacent surfaces, no more, no less.

It’s best to go back to your CAD model and remove any free ends or extend it so that it connects with another free end.

You can also do this automatically in netfabb by clicking on the red plus-sign at the top to extend some ends for you. Then follow the steps to repair.

For more detailed instructions, here’s a video that goes through the common watertightness issues and shows you how to fix them:

The key takeaway here is to make sure all the surfaces are closed. And even if the surfaces appear closed and you are still having issues, go back through the design flow to double check!

Issue #2: Tessellation

While a contour may appear smooth in the CAD, depending on approximation settings, the surface might actually be approximated.

Let’s compare two designs side by side in netfabb:

The cylinder on the left has some tessellation, so during print the surface might not appear as smooth. The cylinder on the right is much smoother.

(Note that for actual printing, make sure to separate the parts into different files. These two files are combined just for side-by-side comparison!)

Solution: In SketchUp, if you select then check , you can see the approximation occurring for the curve. Change the number of segments on the curved surface to better approximate the contours.

Going back to SketchUp, we can see how these cylinders were designed:

The cylinder on the left has 12 segments, while that on the right has 24.

In SketchUp, you will need to change the number of segments on a surface before any extruding or push/pull. To do so, draw the curve, then type “24s” for 24 segments, or “20s” for 20 segments.

When printing in lower resolution FDM, the surfacing issues might not be as apparent and thus might not matter as much. It will matter however when printing in high resolution materials such as VeroWhite, where the tessellations are something you should be aware of!

Issue #3: Scaling

Many architects or industrial designers working on larger products design life-size models but wish to scale down their parts for a scaled-model. It’s a great idea not only for proof of concept, but also for lower material costs or high resolution showcase work.

However, in scaling down, some features become too thin and are no longer printable.

Solution: Make sure to calculate required thicknesses for scaling! Thicken your features by such amount that once the part is scaled down, the walls meet our Minimum Wall Thickness criteria.

You can easily scale in netfabb by going to the toolbar at the top and selecting , then entering the desired scaling. Once scaled, you can double check that there are no file errors due to scaling.

Use the measure tool to take another look at wall thicknesses if scaling down. If scaling up, just make sure that the dimensions fit on our build beds!

Here’s a video that walks you through the steps in more detail:

Main Takeaways

If you ever upload a file on Fictiv and we ask you to clean it up for printability, check one of these issues, as they are the most common in surface modeling.

The designs in most cases can definitely be printed, it’s just a matter of making sure each facet is completely defined so that going the design undergoes a seamless transformation from digital to physical.

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This post is provided by Fictiv, the most efficient manufacturing platform for fabricating parts. Powered by a distributed network of highly vetted vendors, the online interface makes it easy for customers to get instant quotes, review manufacturing feedback, and manage orders—all through a single service.