SINE CITY
Sine City, was a semester long project, inspired by the San Marcos Creekside District Project. The San Marcos Creekside Project was proposed in hopes to create a downtown district for the city of San Marcos, while providing space for more housing and local business, and creating a place for the community to gather. The purpose of the project was to learn how math concepts, specifically trigonometry, are used in surveying, urban planning, architecture, and engineering. As an entire 11th grade, we create our own scale models of our visions and designs for the future downtown district.
First, each team of four, were were assigned a plot of land. We actually were able to visit our plots of land and survey, or measure them. Many students who had privately owned land, and had to use triangulation to get measurements of their land area, or any obstacles or existing buildings. Luckily my group's land was just a giant field of dirt and weeds, so we were able to just measure out the area of our plot. Then we researched all the restrictions and zoning requirements of our specific piece of land. Once we had become familiar with the city's visions for the project and the needs of our plot, we designed our own buildings based on these. We did multiple hand drawn sketches from multiple views, such as plan view which is an aerial perspective of the entire land, the elevation view which is what it looks like when you're standing outside of a building, and the floor plan which is the view when you chop the roof off a building. Once we had revised and finalized the design as a group, we proceeded to convert our measurements from feet to meters. Later we input the measurements of the building pieces we wanted to get cut by the laser cutter in Adobe Illustrator, a common CAD (computer aided design) software, used in many fields of design and engineering. After our design had been laser cut from wood, we assembled the pieces and glued it together.
We were able to explore and learn many different types of applications of trigonometry and math during our project. Once thing we discovered was the golden ration, which is an irrational number that, when used as a ratio, creates aesthetically pleasing figures. We learned how architects use this to make their designs look well structured. I also learned how to read sun path diagrams, which use polar coordinates to chart the location of the sun and angle of the sun in the sky throughout the day. Since the sun is at different heights and angles in the summer than in the winter, we got to learn why and how architects designed their buildings around this knowledge to make it more efficient. Architects keep the path of the sun in mind when they design windows and awnings. They make it so that more light is let in during the winter than in the summer, and also block harsher noon to afternoon light with specific lengths of awnings.
One extra thing I designed for my plot of land, was a solar powered over head parking roof. I chose to design this because I wanted my building to have a more energy efficient element in it. Since I had learned that the sun in our area mostly hits the south west for most of the day, I placed two parking roof structures on the south and west side of our building. My favorite part of designing this piece was because I had to use trigonometry functions to help me find the measurements of the roofing that I was missing, based on the information of the measurements I knew. I was able to calculate how much the roof would tilt, where the post would be placed, the difference in the lowest and highest point of the roofing, and much more.
My biggest takeaway from this project, was being able to explore something I was passionate about. I've always loved math and had an interest in architecture and engineering, but this was the first time I was able to actually further my knowledge in it. I loved how relevant the project was to me and my community, and it was very obvious to see how math concepts are applied and translated into real-world work. It's was especially exciting to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator, because it is actually very commonly used in the professional field. Learning skills like this, and knowing the project had value was special. It felt good to have an input on real world problems. I also had the unique opportunity to present our grade's work at the city of San Marcos' Youth Commisions Committee meeting. We were so grateful for their response, and have even been invited to attend a city council meeting. Not only that, but I also was also able to help coordinate an exhibition event at our school where we showcased our own redesigned scale model.
Overall this project has been a completely eye opening and positive experience. It has bridged the gap for students by making it feel like a more tangible than foreign field to pursue. I am extremely proud of the entire grade's final product, as it was extremely polished and professional. Finishing with a proud mindset in this project, has almost made me forget most of the challenges. Most of the challenges I faced had to do with coming to agreement with my group, but I think the two other things that made it difficult were being able to understand the zoning requirements of our land because they are written in such high detailed protocol and also getting the computer to do what I wanted it to do in Adobe Illustrator. If I were able to redo this project, I probably would've spend more time on the hand drawn design phase. I would've made something more intricate and detail, and then put it into the computer. When we made ours, were were still designing it as we were creating it on the computer, and all our measurements were jumbled. This project just required a lot of patience, precision, and attention to detail. And I think it has really helped me to develop those skills better. I hope that I get to do something like this again in the near future, because it has really ignited my interest in design.
We were able to explore and learn many different types of applications of trigonometry and math during our project. Once thing we discovered was the golden ration, which is an irrational number that, when used as a ratio, creates aesthetically pleasing figures. We learned how architects use this to make their designs look well structured. I also learned how to read sun path diagrams, which use polar coordinates to chart the location of the sun and angle of the sun in the sky throughout the day. Since the sun is at different heights and angles in the summer than in the winter, we got to learn why and how architects designed their buildings around this knowledge to make it more efficient. Architects keep the path of the sun in mind when they design windows and awnings. They make it so that more light is let in during the winter than in the summer, and also block harsher noon to afternoon light with specific lengths of awnings.
One extra thing I designed for my plot of land, was a solar powered over head parking roof. I chose to design this because I wanted my building to have a more energy efficient element in it. Since I had learned that the sun in our area mostly hits the south west for most of the day, I placed two parking roof structures on the south and west side of our building. My favorite part of designing this piece was because I had to use trigonometry functions to help me find the measurements of the roofing that I was missing, based on the information of the measurements I knew. I was able to calculate how much the roof would tilt, where the post would be placed, the difference in the lowest and highest point of the roofing, and much more.
My biggest takeaway from this project, was being able to explore something I was passionate about. I've always loved math and had an interest in architecture and engineering, but this was the first time I was able to actually further my knowledge in it. I loved how relevant the project was to me and my community, and it was very obvious to see how math concepts are applied and translated into real-world work. It's was especially exciting to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator, because it is actually very commonly used in the professional field. Learning skills like this, and knowing the project had value was special. It felt good to have an input on real world problems. I also had the unique opportunity to present our grade's work at the city of San Marcos' Youth Commisions Committee meeting. We were so grateful for their response, and have even been invited to attend a city council meeting. Not only that, but I also was also able to help coordinate an exhibition event at our school where we showcased our own redesigned scale model.
Overall this project has been a completely eye opening and positive experience. It has bridged the gap for students by making it feel like a more tangible than foreign field to pursue. I am extremely proud of the entire grade's final product, as it was extremely polished and professional. Finishing with a proud mindset in this project, has almost made me forget most of the challenges. Most of the challenges I faced had to do with coming to agreement with my group, but I think the two other things that made it difficult were being able to understand the zoning requirements of our land because they are written in such high detailed protocol and also getting the computer to do what I wanted it to do in Adobe Illustrator. If I were able to redo this project, I probably would've spend more time on the hand drawn design phase. I would've made something more intricate and detail, and then put it into the computer. When we made ours, were were still designing it as we were creating it on the computer, and all our measurements were jumbled. This project just required a lot of patience, precision, and attention to detail. And I think it has really helped me to develop those skills better. I hope that I get to do something like this again in the near future, because it has really ignited my interest in design.