Monster Orator

Concept Section

Partnership with: Nicole Tischler

Professor: Blair Satterfield

Design Completed: December 2016

In Design Media III, a visual communications course at SALA UBC, we were given the opportunity to design pollinator houses in the new pop-up park in Vancouver, located at the southeast corner of 5th Ave. and Pine St. For two years the pollinator park will thrive as a site of increased interaction between the biological pollinator network and the human scale neighbourhood. Our goal through this intervention was to design an installation where bees and butterflies can be housed with auditory equipment that would transmit the sounds of the pollinators to a speaker also located within the park.

The geometry of the monster orator is defined in Grasshopper by a global cylindrical shape that is then subdivided into functional component parts. The defnition begins with a revolved curve that generates the base geometry of a twin wall speaker which is subdivided into hexagonal subdivisions. These subdivisions form the base of individual body parts of the monster that serve different functions for the orator to serve as a house and speaker for bees and butteries.

Definition

The “teeth” and the “mouth” establish the environment for the butterflies - providing enclosure to create openings for butterflies to enter the structure, while keeping birds outside whilst dimples form the tactile surface necessary for butterflies to nest. Teeth are arranged used a cylindrical array around the mouth and reach out to create vertical slots for the butterflies to enter. The mouth is defined by point extrusions away from a hexagonal subdivision.

“Pores” establish the bee habitat, creating individual nesting holes for several bees. Pores are distinguished from the global geometry to face the sides of the monster which reduces water penetration into their nesting environments. The outer holes protrude further away from the monster to create a wind barrier for the majority of the holes. This was generated using a point attractor to displace hole openings as they are further from the centre of the pores subdivision.

“Lungs” serve as the acoustic amplifier for the bees. They define the geometry of the nylon mesh used to funnel sound from individual pores to a microphone in the interior interior of the microphone. A curve is projected around the outer bounds of the pores and is scaled and offset to loft the geometry of the pores around the microphone.

Lastly, the “legs” hold the monster up above the ground. Five cells are selected from the global geometry to define the geometry of a fitting for threaded rods.