Oregon daily emerald., June 11, 2001, Page 13, Image 13

Students design
digital ‘capsule’
■The stainless steel structure
-an exhibition booth -will
be sent to Japan for display
By Kara Cogswell
Oregon Daily Emerald
In front of a crowd gathered in
Lawrence Hall on Thursday, two
University students unveiled a
structure that will soon travel to
the other side of the world.
Designed by architecture stu
dents Omid Naseri and Padru
Kang, and architecture assistant
professor A. Scott Howe, the struc
ture will be shipped to Japan next
week, where a Japanese firm will
use it as an exhibition booth.
Called the Kajima capsule, the
stainless steel structure stands
nine feet tall and three feet in di
ameter when closed.
But as the design trio demon
strated to about 30 awed onlookers
the four panels on each side of the
capsule can expand to nearly eight
feet across within seconds. In the
exhibition, Padru said, each panel
will have a shelf attached to the in
side to be used as a workstation for
a laptop computer.
The two student designers of the
capsule said they became involved
with the project after being ap
proached by Howe, who had a pro
posal from the Japanese high-tech
nology firm Kajima.
While they received a stipend
and University credit in exchange
for their work on the project,
Naseri said the most valuable part
of his involvement was the experi
ence of working for a real corpora
tion on a budget.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for a student,” he said.
Howe, who worked for Kajima
for 10 years before coming to the
University, said the Japanese com
pany hired his firm, Plug-in Cre
ations, to build the booth.
Howe said he “hand picked”
Kang and Naseri to work with him
because of their knowledge of digi
tal design.
While he said the students did
most of the work designing and
building the structure, Howe de
scribed the project as a collabora
tion between the three of them.
“It was genuinely a team effort,”
he said.
The design for the capsule began
as sketches, which were then
transferred into a three-dimension
al computer program, Kang said.
After they had developed the lay
out for the structure on the com
puter, they then flattened the de
sign into a two-dimensional plan
to give to the manufacturers of the
structure’s component parts, he
said.
Three Eugene firms — Nichols
Manufacturing, Coyote Steel, and
Valley Stainless — made the struc
ture’s pieces, and all were stainless
steel and cut with a digitally con
trolled laser, Howe and Kang said.
Once the parts were constructed,
Kang said, they put them all to
gether to create the capsule.
Kajima provided the team with a
$40,000 budget to complete the
project.
Kang described his involvement
in designing the structure as “a
great learning experience” but also
a time-consuming one.
Since the beginning of this term,
he said, he and Naseri have
worked on the structure constant
ly — in addition to taking a full
schedule of classes.
Naseri laughingly described it as
a “24-hour” commitment.
And it’s not over yet, as Kang
said they still must paint the cap
sule, and dismantle it before ship
ping it to Japan.
In July, the two students will
also travel to Japan, where they
will meet with Howe and mem
bers of Kajima to help assemble
the structure before the August ex
position.
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