soft house
Context
Soft House is the culmination of a studio-workshop taught at MIT by structural designer Caitlin Mueller, artist Janet Echelman, and software entrepreneur David Feldman in Spring 2017. The class was made up of 12 students with backgrounds in engineering, architecture, and design. Over the course of the semester, we explored options for an installation for Phillip Johnson's Glass House site in New Canaan, CT.
The Soft House is an occupiable soft structure that hovers between the trees surrounding the glass house, providing a new way for visitors to interact with the landscape. In addition to designing the structure and writing a proposal, we fabricated and installed a full scale prototype, suspended between four trees in MIT's East Campus Courtyard.
Structural Analysis
I was part of the engineering team responsible for the analysis of the Soft House structure, which is composed of a hard and soft net. The hard net is held in tension, and supports the loads of the structure, while the soft net is free to flow and move with the wind. We needed to ensure that our hard net structure would support a person without large deformations or failure. We conducted research on tree failure to ensure that we would not harm the trees to which the structure was anchored, made models to simulate the structure's shape and the loads on each member, and minimized deformations.
Fabrication and Installation
I was responsible for the hard net joints and installation process. I chose knotting techniques to join members together that were most structurally reliable and had minimal visual impact. I created instructions for fabrication of the hard net, as well as a plan for its installation.