Students exhibit installations, model wearable architecture

In a room elaborately adorned with student-designed three-dimensional architectural installations, students from Weiling He’s Texas A&M design studio recently donned their own designs — wearable structural forms — to put on a fast-moving fashion show for their peers.

Students in Meg Jackson’s design studio created the 3-D designs that formed the backdrop for the fashion show. The fabricated installations, composed of interlaced module systems that formed structural surfaces, were suspended from the ceiling.

Adding to the design challenge, students not only had to devise a system for hanging their installations that connected at a single point, they also had to be lifted in place intact with a single move.

In the process, the students learned how surfaces define and create space.

A video of the March 4, 2011 fashion show held amid Jackson’s students’ installations is available on the College of Architecture’s [ vimeo website] (http://vimeo.com/20896859) .

The architecturally design costumes featured in the fashion show were initially developed in a joint collaboration that tasked He’s ARCH 206 studio and visualization students to create abstract forms based on verbs. The architecture students built wearable structures represented their assigned verb, while visualization students created abstract animations based on the same word that were projected during another fashion show.

Photos of the resulting integration of light and space through motion can be viewed on the Department of Visualization [website] (http://vvvvvv.viz.tamu.edu/?p=2138) .

Additional photos and details on the built and virtual environment collaboration can be viewed [here] (http://archone.tamu.edu/college/news/newsletters/spring2011/stories/fashionshow.html) .