Research

Josef Albers was a famous artist who was well known for his intricate and elegant paper sculptures. Albers’ main teachings emphasise material studies. His students were commonly asked to focus on everyday materials such as paper and cardboard.

Josef Albers was an artist and a teacher, creating unique works of art and then sharing his techniques to his students. Albers was especially talented in paper crafts and was able to create amazing sculptures from paper.

His models relate to his own ideas of 3D space as the sculptures he creates are 3D and he also uses lighting and shaping to manipulate the overall shape of his designs. His designs would often be of an already existing 3D space, or how he envisions a space to be taken up with a 3D object.

My model is similar to Albers’ paper models as mine uses the same techniques that he did. The cutting of a 2D shape into a 3D one can be seen by both mine and Albers’ designs. The angles and various amounts of cuts on the material is also similar to Albers’ method of making his sculptures.

For my model, I decided to create an expanding rubbish bin that would be placed on streets and pathways all around Australia. Upon doing primary research around the Darling Harbour and Haymarket areas, I noticed a significant lack of rubbish bins around the area. As it is a popular area, there tend to be more people who throw out their rubbish on foot paths and gutters instead of into the bins. This is mainly caused due to the lack of rubbish bins in the area, causing people to be too lazy to carry their rubbish around for a certain amount of time before finally throwing it out. But a problem with bins is that it can sometimes take up too much space. My proposed solution will help fix this problem as it is a space saving and recycled bin. The bin is able to fold and flatten itself, therefore saving plenty of space. Due to the tension built up when it is folded, it is also able to compress rubbish that is put into it, and therefore saves more space and does not need to be cleaned out as often as other bins. As it gets filled up with more rubbish, it expands until it reaches its peak, when it gets emptied and is ready to be filled up once again. Because the bin will be made of recycled materials, it will also be cheaper to manufacture and therefore would allow more bins to be put in place.

This image shows an area in Darling Square where additional bins would be most suitable. This newly constructed area is a popular destination for workers and tourists as it has a variety of great restaurants and shops to get food. However, Darling Square lacks an adequate amount of bins to cater the needs of the many consumers.

These paper sculptures are models created by Josef Albers. They utilise intricate cutting techniques that require years of practice to get such a high-quality final piece. The hypnotic design of the small lines arranged in a wavy line intrigued me as it was unlike anything I had seen before. In some ways this particular sculpture influenced my design of the rubbish bin.

Model-making process

This is the first iteration of the folding bin that I made. It is a simple design as it was my first attempt at replicating Josef Albers’ design. Upon completion, I realised that I had miscalculated the sizing of the paper structure and it had turned out smaller than I had intended it to be.

To fix the previous mistake, I cut the paper out to be 5x10 cm instead of 5x5 cm as it was before. This resulted in the final dimensions of the model to be 5x5x5 cm which was the parameters I was given.

After I had figured out how the sizing of the model works, I proceeded to create a different design for the bin, the design that I was happy with and chose to advance with.

This following model is a similar design to the previous one but altered slightly to make it bigger and seem more realistic.

This is the final model of the bin that I had created. I was happy with the design of it and the unique shape of the product. The final dimensions of this model were 15x15x15 cm, coinciding with the parameters I was given.

Frederick, A. & Danilowitz, B. 2006, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, Phaidon Press Limited, London.

Rowland, A. 1990, Bauhaus Source Book, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.