Alison Ledwith

Figured Out Heels

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The high-heeled shoe is ubiquitous despite its hazards and discomforts. Inspired by the figure skating world, Figured Out Heels uses heat-molding technology to create a perfect, individualized fit.

Premise

Women choose high heels for reasons such as fashion and height, and generally not for comfort or health. Our fieldwork indicates that women would prefer shoes that were more comfortable and more stable, but not at the expense of the appearance of the shoe. As a result, shoes that compromise the form of the shoe do not meet a target demand.

While high heels are not designed for stability, figure skates are. Skates are heat-molded at the point of purchase to each athlete’s feet to create a stable fit. Far from the feeling of rental skates, molded figure skates are soft and feel more like a sock than a shoe. The following video shows the sharp contrast between the two experiences exposed in our fieldwork.

Proposal

Figured Out Heels proposes the custom-fit high heel. A 3d-scan of each foot will be taken at an onsite location. This scan will reproduce a 3d-printed sole at the exact contour of the foot. The sole will then be attached to the leather-outer heat-moldable-inner shoe upper. The final process is to heat-mold the final product to the customer’s foot.

Since our research indicates that women like the aesthetic of high heels, this technology will be adopted to an already existing aesthetic – the bootie. Combining fashion and comfort, this shoe will appear from the outside to be a normal designer shoe, while secretly concealing our perfect fit technology.

Documentation

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beeLine

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beeLine is a proposed app platform that provides a social shopping experience with simple, performance-driven navigation tools. The platform seeks to be the Pinterest and Amazon for the online clothing market – combining a social atmosphere with a simple and rapid purchasing environment. Users are encouraged to provide useful content through the eBates monetization model; in other words, the company shares click-through revenue with posters of key content. Involvement with other users, purchases made through the platform, and signal-to-noise are all considered in setting the percentage of compensation to users, incentivizing quality posts over quantity posts.

Field Research

An equal split of online shoppers and brick-and-mortar shoppers were surveyed. Shopping time ranges from between 5 minutes and a week, with all respondents thinking they were average. Observations suggest 10-30 minutes of this time is active shopping, and the rest is deliberation time. Between 3 and 5 stores is considered the maximum number to visit during a shopping experience. More clicks are considered okay for shopping (with one user responding as high as 10), but users want 2-3 click purchasing. Respondents generally do not ask for opinions on public social networks.

None of the respondents shop for clothing on existing mobile phone platforms. The process of tracking down a product is convoluted, requires the ability to obtain and cross-reference data from several sources, and is conducted on sites that do not present the information in a simple-to-use format. All shopping experiences used at least three tabs of information in order to complete a purchase.

The result of this fieldwork is summarized in the graphic and target persona below.

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The Pitch

How many tabs do you open when you shop online? Do you find them frustrating, excessive, and complicated? Does your need to shop online with tabs prevent you from using your phone? You aren’t alone. We have become researchers rather than shoppers, and this fundamentally changes the way we work. Research suggests that we spend 10-30 minutes researching through countless websites, with at least 3-5 tabs open at the same time, even if we know what we want.

What if your research could be all in one place? Introducing beeLine – the mobile app that makes shopping on your phone easier than shopping with your web browser. Go from research to purchase in one unified, streamlined process – a unified browser, a unified product catalog, and a global cart with two click purchasing. We track your accounts and fill out all of your information for you. We offer a substantial tab system to allow you to save all of your product research in the system, whether products from our catalog or URLs.

Filters: some people love them, some people hate them. We offer two options – a human readable interface and a substantial number of filters. And yet, if there is one thing social media has taught us, it is that humans can provide the best recommendations and feedback. Want to contribute to our database? Anyone can post a great find, and as an added bonus, we will share the click-through revenue with our users who break the best products.

beeLine – cut through the hassle straight to your favorite products.

Demo the app here.

Documentation

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Wonderland

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Wonderland is a a combination of theater and gaming, breaking the fourth wall in order to combine the construction of modules for low-income housing.

The Pitch

Fall down the rabbit hole to awaken in a dystopian future. “Wonderland” quickly becomes a psychological horror show, complete with a king, queen, duchess, and hatter ruling their own corners of the domain. Don’t want to hear “Off with her head!” before the end of the first act?

Navigate the game with care if you purchase a bronze ticket; the silver and gold ticket holders might change the rules of the game. And the challenges? Here, you won’t be painting the roses red, but strange toils with shipping palettes, rubber tires, recycled bottles, scrap metal, denim, and cardboard await.

The game operates on two levels — on the surface, players can attend a financially successful and exciting theater event, complete with actors filling modern adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Underneath the surface, the “strange toils” produce the components for prefabricated panels that will complete housing at a fraction of the cost.

Set in an abandoned grain terminal, the project recoups its investment in three weeks and then raises additional funds for the furthering of the cause. Proceeds benefit a communal living space for New York artists unable to afford market-priced housing.

Documentation

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Spatial Explorations in Computation

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These spatial explorations in computation merge three sequential levels of spatial design into a single proposal for a rational building. The structural frame is a spanning surface set within a dodecahedron. The surface system rationalizes the edges through a system of triangular planes. Finally, the openings are generated using a sphere-packing algorithm.

Sphere-Packing Simulation

Documentation

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Simultaneity and Computational Design

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This theoretical project explores computational design strategies. Here, architecture is imagined in a form more complex than can be readily understood from one vantage point, requiring an understanding of simultaneity in its experience and expression. The result is an inherently disorienting museum space and temporary lodging for scientists visiting CERN.

Simultaneity

Simultaneity is a concept understood both in the science world and in the art world. Since the art definition is lifted from the science, it is important to begin with the theory of relativity. This theory is best explained by Einstein, who aptly understood that a form fixed in position is moving in time with respect to another reference frame. In the converse, events only occur simultaneously from one reference frame. Reference frames, time dilation, and the nature of relativity become apparent at the speeds observed at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the physical reference point for these theories).

Thus, this architecture will focus on the nature of space as perceived by Einstein and epitomized through the following two statements (in Relativity):

  1. “Without compelling necessity, one ought not to ascribe reality to a thing like space, which is not capable of being ‘directly experience.’”
  2. “The concept of space as something existing objectively and independent of things belongs to pre-scientific thought, but not so the idea of the existence of an infinite number of spaces in motion relatively to each other.”

Analytical Cubism arose in nearly the same time and attempted to assign artistic form to the new way of thinking. Paintings as part of this movement deal with the representation of complex spatial conditions as planar elements, resulting in a 2.5 D understanding of the world.

Relationship to Architecture

For all of its complexity, mesh generation (in digital tools used for architecture) creates a system of quads and triangles that ultimately represent the world in the same 2.5 D format that was understood 100 years ago. The benefit of both of these theories is that they have the potential for a level of nihilism unrealistic of the nature of architecture. Through the generation of mesh in a computational environment, a perception of complexity in the midst of planar representation will result. Further, while a mesh-generating program cannot result in infinite architecture, the building can describe the existence of multiple computational organisms simultaneously in the same space, each fixed in time but with the implications of previous and future movement.

Computational Design

The building is generated in Processing using 200 particles arranged in a ring. The particles are given a variable velocity and assigned a trajectory based on attractors (rather than a direct line of motion, this system uses an angular tolerance of trajectories and enforces that tolerance based on a probability factor). The system explores notions of collision detection and bifurcation/topology change. A complex folding behavior is generated through interactions between multiple attractors.

The building itself has an entry through one of the final tendrils, a public museum in the main space with the back-of-house spaces at the start of the mesh-generation algorithm. All private spaces for administration and visiting scientists are found in the tendrils of the building and feature views of Lake Geneva.

Thermal Mass Performance in Residential Construction: An Energy Analysis Using a Cube Model

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Abstract

Given the pervasiveness of energy efficiency concerns in the built environment, this research aims to answer key questions regarding the performance of thermal mass construction. The work presents the Cube Model, a simplified model of the single-family home. The model combines simplified geometry and equivalent envelope parameters with accurate climate data and internal loading assumptions. The model first addresses the notion as to whether building simplification is a valid means of analysis through a calibration and validation study. Then, the model is used to address three research areas on passive thermal mass: (1) the quantification of thermal mass performance with respect to material thermal properties; (2) the optimization of thermal mass performance for given material parameters; and (3) the sensitivity of thermal mass performance to infiltration and geometry effects. The experiments for wall and slab constructions, to address the first research area, demonstrate that the energy savings from thermal mass are both climate and season dependent. Results provide the magnitude of energy savings in fifty climates across the United States. Optimization experiments on the material thickness and conductivity, to address the second research area, show that constructions do not reach peak thermal mass performance at the same thermal properties in all climates. Sensitivity analyses, to address the third research area, indicate that passive thermal mass and tight construction practices can be mutually optimized without a trade-off of energy performance. Geometry effects demonstrate that modifications in building design can either benefit or hinder the performance of passive thermal mass. The combination of the results suggests that optimum design for thermal mass performance and the resulting energy consumption are climate-dependent and sensitive to many factors aside from material thermal properties.

Documentation

The thesis is available for download in full through DSpace at MIT. A summary report is available for download through the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub.