Pod House Design for Venturing Beyond Earth

The idea of my project is to create an easy to transport and easy to assemble housing unit that can be adjustable to fit additional units. The design consists of a panel that would wrap around a frame, creating a pod. While this housing design can be used for a broad range of environments and habitats (including the ability to provide affordable yet modern housing in denser areas), the one I want to focus on is on space exploration on other planets (especially Mars) which would require quick assembly of new housing. Of course sealed doors would be needed but I wanted the pod design to be the main focus of this project. The bottom floor includes an area to park a rover/vehicle and the inside of it allows for storage space. The second floor is similar to a communal living room and third floor is for the bedroom. But the idea of this is to mix and match the pods whichever way you want, and instead of 3 pods you can put it to 2 pod or maybe even 6 pods. I designed the initial part of my project using Revit. For the physical model of this project I have created the pod house design using bendable wood. I found a pattern online that could allow wood to bend and implemented that into AutoCAD to create my design in real life. Luckily I had access to a laser cutting machine in my school which would make this project possible. I would also 3D print some other parts and designed them using Inventor. Before this, I have never worked with bendable wood, and neither has anyone else in my CAD class or classes previously, so this was a great learning experience for me. I hope you enjoy looking through my project.

Softwares: AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor

Materials: 11in x 11in Wood Panels, Laser Cutter Machine, 3D printer, hot glue, and a lot of patience

When I was first trying to figure out what to do for my project, I was thinking about doing a module/pod style building since it seems to be adjustable. (Inspiration photo to show what I was going for). I got onto Revit, put a plain topography and tried to start off very simple. I started off with three 24ft (length)x 20ft (width)x 10ft (height) boxes (using the in place massing command) stacked on top off each other and after this I would start detailing the boxes more.

I continued working on my Revit design and added rooms space (hollowing out the boxes) as well as filleting the corners to make them rounder. I painted the walls white (to create a more modern setting) and added pillars in order to support the pods. I also created door ways (so people can enter the pods of course) as well as stairs in order to go to higher levels. I put in glass However, I wanted to make this project more aesthetically pleasing. This can help people living on these pods thrive rather than just remain living.

After that I created the Revit model, I had to figure out how I would create the fillet (round) corners of the design. After discussing with my teacher with this problem she redirected me to the Instructables article that showed numerous patterns that would allow the wood to bend. After reviewing through patterns, and even laser cutting some samples, I found the best pattern and decided to go through with it.

Reference: https://www.instructables.com/Curved-laser-bent-wood/

Now that I had a Revit Model to base this off of and a pattern to use, I started creating the one panel that I would need to wrap around the frame (which I also designed). I scaled down the pod size to inches then multiply that value down by 2.4 so now the pod dimensions would be 10in(length) x 8.333in (width) x 4.167in (height). However, while designing this my teacher told me a restriction that would make this process slightly more difficult. The only wood panels available were 11inx11in so I would have to separate my one large panel across 3 different wood panels then glue them back together. I also had to keep in the mind the doorways and the stairway openings so that that could also be cut out with the laser cutter.

After putting my AutoCAD design onto the laser cutting software, I laser cut the panels pod by pod, so that if any mistakes arose the AutoCAD design for the other pods could be adjusted so it would look better. Apparently, this would be the case as the first pod didn't come out to my expectations, so I made some changes such as cutting up the panels further and strategically so that it would bend on the corners better. This would make the 2nd and 3rd level pod look much better.

Once I laser cutted all the panels I assembled the panels onto the frame using hot glue. For the first pod it was quite a struggle as I had to apply glue in awkward angles and the wooden panels were quite weak so some parts of the cutted pattern would start to tear. However, after some many adjustments for the 2nd pod and with added experience, this one came out much better and was easier to do. In real life, when one would construct this some sort of training would likely be required to construct this efficiently. In terms of the slits created by the pattern, there may be concern on the insulation of the design, however, a sealing product could be used to close up the slits on the flat parts. On the corners, though, sealing might not even be necessary as the pattern slits that allow the wood to bend would close up once the bended corners have been made.

At first I was going to create the stairs using wood and the laser cutter but decided that would be too time consuming so I designed the stairs on inventor and 3d printed them. The stairs themselves were quite straightforward to do, even if I didn't have much experience on Inventor, however, once I reached the bended columns (as shown in the two images) I struggled heavily when making these. The columns didn't go straight forward and bended a little inwards, which meant I couldn't use the basic sweep command and had to think of something else. I made a bunch of little points then put them in the path I wanted the bended column to be in. Next I put circles and then connected them all to create the column. The next step was to created holes to pass string through it.

After I received all the materials and I already assembled each pod I now had to put together the pods and the 3D printed objects. Using hot glue, I first glued the pillars to the pods then stacked them like the Revit model. Next I got the bended column and put string through the holes. After that I attached the bended columns to the stacked pods and attached each string onto the pod. This makes the bended column more stable. This bended column can be used to mount solar panels which provides it a function while also being aesthetically pleasing.

Thank you for looking over my project. I have learned so much during the building of this model and used many different techniques, software, and materials to get this design done. This project took quite some commitment and time to do and I had a great time creating this project so I hope you enjoyed reviewing it.