Fashion Design-Undercover Umbrella

An undercover umbrella!? The umbrella is not my design, that part I bought. But the original case that came with the umbrella was not very well constructed, so after it fell apart I decided to make a sturdier case using leather.

The leather case is quite simple, a leather tube tapered at one end with a drainage hole at the end. An attached shoulder strap so that the umbrella can be easily carried when not in use and the case can be kept over a shoulder when the umbrella is needed. The leather is treated, and natural wear has brought out the natural brown of the material.

Plus, it’s great fun to walk down the street with everyone thinking you have a katana (samurai sword) slung over your shoulder.

Architecture-Twist and Shout

Using the shipping container modules that I designed for use in the building of a student dormitory in the south of Taiwan, I used the simple stacking of the modules to create a design proposal.

The design is very simple, it uses a long spiral ramp as the main walkway to access every dorm room, with stair and elevator cores at diagonal opposite ends of the building, creating open landing areas for circulation and domestic activities. The slant of the ramp creates a unique triangular entrance way into the central courtyard of the building, which has been made as large as possible to allow for the maximum use of the space along with the a high degree of shading from the building itself as the south of Taiwan can get very hot during the summer months. From the exterior the building is quite modest and understated per the requirements of the university, but from inside the spiral nature of the building creates a slightly surreal sensation of the building almost floating above the ground. A sensation that mimics the buildings environmental footprint.

A modest elevation

Large internal courtyard

Triangular entrance and slight floating sensation

Architecture-I'll take mine to go...

I’ve always been interested in pre-fabrication and mass production when it comes to buildings. And over the years there have been many different ways of applying these ideas to the buildings around us.

I also have an interest in using materials at hand, not to recycle them, but use them in their original forms. The idea of doing this interests me and with the forms created from such structures, I would hope, inspires other people to see more than just the face value of an object.

Now we’ve all seen shipping containers, those oversized Lego blocks floating around the world on ships, and it’s not a new idea to use them as a building.

But more recently people have started to look at these items more seriously as building components, I like this idea and think it’s a great one! I remember first playing with the idea back in 2001, and since then, many good examples of this architecture have been proposed and some even built.

One of the concepts I have played with is a modular design that can be literally stacked into a building like Lego blocks. Providing a few different pre-fabricated blocks, gives great flexibility to any designer. That coupled with the shipping containers inherent structural strength and stackable nature, means that building with these steel boxes is incredibly easy.

Here I have included the box modules that I designed for a university dormitory project in the south of Taiwan.

The basic box

A 2x box configuration for a 4x person dorm room

A 1x box single occupancy dorm room

One box of a 3x box configuration for a 4x person dorm room-Living

One box of a 3x box configuration for a 4x person dorm room-Bathroom

1of3 possible configurations for the 3x box 4x person dorm room

A 2x box elevator unit, that can be stacked to create the elevator shaft and landing on each floor of the building

A 1x box staircase unit

All of these components can be carried to the desired building site on a standard container truck, be hoisted into position and then secured in place. Low rise buildings are simple and quick to install on site, and with each unit being pre-fabricated off site, only utility connection have to be made to have the building operational and ready for use. A simple building using a system like this could conceivably be installed on site in a couple of days, drastically reducing the costs to the building contractor and land owner, as well as scoring some decent points from a sustainability standpoint.