Glass by Amelia O'Brien

Glass

We each got assigned a materiel e.g. wood, fibreglass, and silicone. I got Glass. So I had to create a new innovative way to design and prototype this material.

When I thought about the glass as a material I was really positive but then quickly realised how hard it would be to create an innovative design and way of prototyping as most things are made out of glass: - marbles, jugs, windows etc

I wanted to use it in an everyday use but also stylish and clever. So I looked at different ways that are still commercially used in house design is coming up as quite a common one.

85 Swains Lane, Highgate.

This house has a glass roof that slides so the top floor can become completely open.

Designer: John Winter

Within art it has been used for very different ways mostly large scale sculptures. One I particularly liked: The Sun By Dale Chihuly 2007 displayed at Kew gardens

15 ft tall, bright coloured hand blown glass sticking out from a steel core.

My IDEAS.

The Fireplace

I liked the idea of a “glass” fireplace with chimney so that you could see all the smoke going up I thought that might be quite cool an also to prototype it out of ice would be kind of ironic.

My first plan with my fireplace was to prototype it out of ice. Simple enough tray of ice and cut out the shape

It didn’t really work. CRACK.

Round 2                   Made a frame for the ice out of card and tinfoil inside a sandwich box,

  

Forgot to put a hole in the middle

CRACK!

Right ROUND 3

Made the whole shape out of tinfoil and paper again out of a sandwich box.

And again CRACK!

After all this I was sick of the sight of it and decided to move on to my second idea hopefully with more luck this time.

Idea #2

The Bar

I know that a see-through bar has been done before and its not that original. But I thought what if the ENTIRE bar is made out of glass. Now me being an engineer I don’t know haw plausible this just could be but imagine if it could work. Look pretty good.

So what I mean by the whole bar the entireity of it is that even the beer taps. So as the beer is fed up through the cellar through the lines you can see it go through the bar out the taps and into the glass

I thought id make this out of acrylic. Easy just to glue together and give a nice look of glass.

this was the hardest bit (the curve of the bar). Bcuase it was quite thick acrylic whenever I tried to stick it down it would ping back. I what I did was just wrap sellotape around it and put my pencil case ontop of it.

For the taps I just drew them on to the acrylic and then cut them out with a knife and scissors.

I stuck that on with superglue and there we go the final prototype.