 Hello My name is Caroline Payson. I'm director of education here at Cooper Hewitt, and I'm really excited to be Welcoming you all here. You are our first public program since we opened on December 12 Since we opened on December 12th. We've had over 30,000 people attend which is thrilling for us and Opportunity to visit all of our exhibitions and play designer and interact with our digital tables and experiences And we've been really excited about how wonderful people have felt about coming and the great press that we've had and The next step of course is to start running programs to support all those wonderful new exhibitions And this is the first one. So thank you all for coming and helping us celebrate our opening for a little bit more than a month One of the things we'd also like you to remember since we're open it We're now open to that will be doing a variety of public programs some about the exhibitions tools Which is featured tonight, but also some will focus on Beautiful users next week. We're also doing a series about Latino designers that begins next week as well So please go to Cooper Hewitt.org There's a probably at least a program a week as well as free Programs for families teens and kids and we would love you to tell everybody You know that we're now open and we're ready to have visitors not only in the museum But for all of our programs It is also my pleasure tonight to introduce our moderator Matilda McQuaid Who is our deputy curatorial director head of textiles and who along with Kara McCarty is one of our two? curators of the the exhibition tools One more thing. Sorry, you can tell we're new. We're not we're not back We're new to this. I'm keep forgetting things for those of you who want to tweet about this Or who have Instagram accounts our? wireless access code is hosted around the room and you can our hashtag is Extending our reach Tools extending sorry hashtag tools extending by the time your programs next week. I'll be much better at all of this Thanks, Caroline and Before we get to the meat of the the night. I wanted to just thank some sponsors for the tools exhibition It was made possible by major support from GE Generous support was also provided by Newell Rubbermaid Dory Duret and Avi Reichenthal and Esme Uzdan and Additional funding was provided by the August Hector Exhibition Fund Facebook the Aaron Crantz Fund and the Smithsonian Institution Funds from the Grand Challenges Consortia, and I also wanted to give a big thank you to Amanda Kessner who has taken over this program seamlessly and Has organized it for everyone. Thank you Amanda and of course Caroline Payson Just a little background on the tools extending our reach exhibition It's a pan Smithsonian Institution show, so it's bringing together Works from 10 Smithsonian Museums and research centers including the Cooper Hewitt as well as Objects from outside lenders There's some 175 objects in the exhibition They span different cultures different time periods different materials and functions and together represent 1.85 million years of human design and That's starting with the earliest tool in the exhibition Which is this wonderful chopper stone from Tanzania to this very contemporary example of Almost live images of the Sun. It's actually this is yesterday's Sun and this underscores We really care and I when we were thinking about the exhibition. We really wanted to underscore the design focus of the show So we decided not to do it chronologically as a history of tools But instead to really celebrate both the similarities and the differences By grouping objects according to function and purpose and so we came up with the categories of work Measure observe survive communicate make and toolboxes so those who haven't seen the show This is how we've begun loosely cataract categorize these objects And when Karen I first started talking about the exhibition We really wanted objects across as many Smithsonian museums and research centers as possible and that means If you had to count them all we would be looking at a hundred and thirty seven million objects, which of course isn't possible but But we still wanted to include as many as possible and also Include objects representing many different scales So in order to really present the enormous range of tools and their applications So our first thought was something really really big Like a satellite or an airplane So we talked with our colleagues at Air and Space Museum like Paul you'll meet in a second But they just some of them wouldn't fit into our freight elevator our new freight elevator So we chose smaller scale ones, but still I think very imposing when you see them Other really large objects like big Bertha who was also in the intro slide Which is the world's largest tunnel boring machine. It's currently underneath the city of Seattle How do you bring that into a museum? How do you we really wanted to represent it as being kind of this ultra Drill if you will and so we have a model of it as you can see this is They have a little car next to it to kind of give you a sense of scale There's also a person here that gives it a sense of scale And in the exhibition we also tried to capture the actual diameter of the cutter head Which is this by actually drawing it on the or at least a portion of it on the wall So it's 57 and a half feet in diameter So it was almost like having big Bertha in the galleries But even the scale of our own planet I think is becoming more and more familiar to us Due to the many images of earth from space that we have seen in all types of media including this example from the cover of the whole earth catalog that's in the exhibition and We are learning very quickly where our place is in this universe And you can see the little dot at the lower left corner. That's earth compared to the sun of two days ago But we also wanted to represent the opposite end of the spectrum So not only things that are huge but something that is really really really small like this TIMU chip Which is stands for a micro-sized timing and inertial measurement unit from the microsystems laboratory of the University of California Irvine which one day might replace our GPS or And this is actually a tool for some of the software engineers to work on these Small chips. This is actually kind of a diagram or a map of of that particular chip Or the world's first Insects scale flying robot called the Robobee Which was conceived by a design team at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the VEAS Institute To combat the depletion of honeybee Colonies so this is all to try to imitate swarming behavior So you can see how extremely small it is using the penny as a measurement of scale But how do you even design on these small scales or these large scales? What kind of tools does one use to go from the micro to the As we see in Charles and Ray Eames powers of 10 where you can see they go from the microscopic to the To the satellite view of earth So this is where our esteemed panel enters the discussion So what I'm going to do I'm asking each of them to make a 10-minute presentation Introducing their own perspective on scale as it relates to their particular Profession whether it's as a curator historian Engineer and inventor and then this will be followed by a Q&A with with me And then we will open it up to the audience for hopefully the last 20 minutes to half an hour So I'm going to introduce our first speaker Paul Serootsie who is chairman of the space history division at the Smithsonian's institutions National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC He received his BA from Yale University in 1970 and a PhD in American studies from the University of Kansas in 1981 and Prior to joining the Smithsonian. He taught history at Clemson University in South Carolina And at the Air and Space Museum now. He's worked on several public exhibitions most recently time and navigation Which covers the art and science of navigation from 18th century seafarers to the current systems of global positioning satellites He is currently working on a major renovation of the Boeing milestones of flight hall the entrance hall to the National Air and Space Museum Which is scheduled to to open the summer of 16 He has written several books on the history of computing and aerospace technology including beyond the limits flight enters the computer age Internet Alley high technology in Tyson's corner and most recently computing a concise history And it's a book that's actually this small so it's very concise a Book-length study of the social and technical history of the global positioning system is forthcoming in 2015 so please welcome Paul. Thanks Thank you very much, and thank you for the introduction and welcome, and it's a great honor for me to be here This is a very exciting opportunity for the Air and Space Museum to participate in this wonderful exhibition which I had a great time looking through and See if I can Somehow bring my perspective to all of this and let's see where we are so as I as She said I'm I'm the chairman of the space history division at the Air and Space Museum I'm feel a little bit of the odd person out in the panel because I don't make things, but I show things to the public We decide sort of what it is that we think the public would be interested in and We are as you probably know one of the most popular museums in the world And I we think about that a lot of times We think well anybody could be a curator there, and you'll bring in the crowds, which May be true. I hope not but we do work very hard to make our exhibits popular And I thought about what is it about them? And I think it is really a matter of the scale that It's the human scale now. We don't have an Airbus a380 in the Museum, but we do have a the nose of a 747 very popular exhibit We also have a Concorde and we have a The original prototype for the Boeing 707 and a space shuttle So those are things that people really they relate to the size of it because it's a human a human scale now You saw that that B that robot B and this is a another example of How small things can get? the human body Really determines a lot about the scale of what we do in aerospace There's a you have certain needs of your your size and weight and your need for air and and Comfort and things like that and when you design machines you have to design to that criteria and Of course when you take the human body out of the equation you can do all kinds of cool things But I don't I don't think this our museum would be so popular if we didn't have the emphasis on the human conquest of air and space I think it's a real human endeavor and It's something that we never forget even though we have a lot of technology and science and other things in that museum I mentioned something called the Reynolds number, which is some of you may know about it It's the property of air and when you have a certain size of Machine that you go into the air with the air has certain properties that allow you to get off the ground When you get small The air feels very different. It feels like you're swimming in molasses So it's a lot easier to do things like that At a small scale, but you can't really make a flying bumblebee at a human scale I don't think we've ever made anything that flaps flapping like a bird That's it may be gotten a few feet off the ground. That's about it, but Practically speaking, it's just not going to happen and it's it's the sort of basic laws of structural weight that you have to sort of keep in mind With spacecraft, it's even more crazy in a way that you have these enormous vehicles that produce a burn through Thousands of gallons of fuel and oxidizer off to get off the ground It just sort of lumbers off the ground. I compare it to a greyhound bus pulling out a port authority And then what do you got at the end? You got this little tiny capsule that John Glenn said You didn't get in the capsule you put it on. He was squeezed in there. We've got we've got it on display and boy I'll tell you it is small We went from there to the space show. This is on exhibit at the air and space museum Seven passengers in cargo about the size of a small aircraft very Obviously the public loves this thing as you might imagine. It's incredibly impressive But it's also pushing it really pushed the state of the art for size and I don't think and I'm not speaking as an engineer here I don't think we're ever going to build anything this big again to go to bring human beings into space and back again I really think that that kind of pushed it a little bit farther than it probably had to go We are going to build shuttles again. There are plenty of them on the drawing board But they're going to be probably smaller. So and there's good reasons for that from an engineering standpoint so another another issue that we we deal with is As you probably know if you've been following the space program, there's all kinds of talk about We've got to go to Mars. We've got to get beyond the moon. What's we've got to extend our species into the entire solar system I Colonize the planets. We may be finding life on the moons of Jupiter and things like that What are the practical issues? We don't have a Saturn 5 in our exhibit Although there are three of them in existence in Huntsville, Alabama, Florida and Houston, but they're 360 feet tall six million pounds and They what did they do? They took two people to the moon for a few hours and then they came back again That's the that was really pushing pushing what we could do with With all of the technology and the massiveness of that vehicle We then scaled back to the shuttle now. There's a plan if we're going we're going to go back to the to the moon We're going to go to Mars. This is what it's going to look like It's a little bit taller Saturn 5 is about this tall It's got solid boosters which are derived from the shuttle. It's got engines which are derived from the shuttle It's called the space launch system, but it's a very it's again pushing the pushing the limits of what we can do so Why are we doing this and you have of course you have These robotic vehicles with the tremendous advances in micro technology that can do all these things But a couple of people have pointed out to me that if you could have gotten you all know about the Curiosity rover which is on Mars and doing all kinds of wonderful things If you could have gotten a human being onto Mars He or she could have done the same kind of science in about a week of walking around That the Curiosity rover has taken a year to do So there's there's you need you want the human being now now You've got to solve all these technical problems to get a human being there, but that's what you that's what you you have to You want to you want human human beings want to explore it's in our nature and we're going to we're going to explore one Way or another we're going to find out a way to do it so again. This is the scale that we have These are the these are the whole the thing of the very popular now Cube Sats about this big that are Built in college campuses can do all kinds of wonderful things using recycled iPhone parts and things like that This is a this is sort of the upper limit called tracking and data relay system Which is up in geostationary orbit which? interesting story there where the early days of the space program you had tracking stations all around The world some of them in politically very sensitive places where people were a little nervous about Americans coming in with Electrical electronic equipment All that has now been replaced by a series of satellites way up in space where you send the data up there And then down to the ground in the United States, and you don't have to worry about that So that's a big big thing. This is a little thing But do we really want to have a whole bunch of these swarming around in low-earth orbit? I'm not so sure about that. It kind of could get a little bit polluted up there So I'm going to conclude just really quick You've got an iPhone upstairs, and you know all about all the things it does our exhibit opened at the air and space museum Last year it shows an inertial navigation system from a submarine There's the gyroscopes accelerometers. There's the computer. There's an IBM typewriter, which is a keyboard. Those are the radios Here it is all in the iPhone got all of that the irony of it though is really weird because This device was used to navigate the submarine so that it wanted to stay Secret that's what a submarine is for and it had to poke a little antenna up every once in a while to take a fix From a satellite to fix it Most of the time it was completely secret Didn't they didn't want to tell you anything about the fact submarine people are the quietest people iPhone Hells the whole world where you are all the time Whether you want it or not they know where you are somebody knows where you are and it's usually a department store or Google or Somebody but or somebody else. I don't even want to go there. But anyway But it's the same technology. It's just shrunk a lot. So With that I guess when you change scale all kinds of interesting things happen, and I think I'll just leave it at that Okay, our next speaker is William Goodrich Who is an executive vice president MTA capital construction MTA CC and the senior program executive for the east side access a 10.2 billion Transportation infrastructure project currently under construction in New York City for the Long Island Railroad Mr. Goodrich is a registered structural professional engineer with over 30 years in the transportation and construction industries East side access is the third MTA CC mega project that mr. Goodrich has worked on and he is a noted expert and seasoned professional with deep an extensive experience on the largest and most complex of infrastructure and building projects Prior to being chosen to lead the east side access project Mr. Goodrich was the program executive in charge of the second Avenue subway project where he oversaw the design and construction of the 4.45 billion dollar first phase of the project on Manhattan's Upper East Side Welcome Bill Thank You Matilda escape out of here. Okay. Just advance. Yeah Okay, thank you Matilda for that kind introduction and Welcome everyone. I'm glad to be here tonight as part of this inaugural presentation. I'm excited about Museum reopening and having having this that's this this exhibit and display as one of its one of its first I'm going to talk a little bit tonight about east side access and That's the current project that I'm working on and obviously one of the questions that some of you may be familiar and Several of you may not be familiar with what what is east side access? And I'm also going to talk in terms of Scale as as Paul Started us off on We're going to talk about tunnel boring machines and some very large construction equipment and construction tools But what's I find fascinating about the construction industry? There's an awful lot of hand tools and awful lot of Innovation that has to go into how you use a whole variety of a scale of tools to do different things As far as trying to construct what the designer has has provided to the contractor East side access is one of the three mega projects under construction by the MTA right now Second Avenue subway is about four and a half billion for phase one that's Scheduled to be completed in December of 2016 the other one a little more near term is the seven line extension to the west side That's about 2.4 billion and that actually is going to be Going to revenue service the second quarter of this year, so they're getting pretty close on that one East side access is our largest Infrastructure project is the happens to be the largest transportation infrastructure project underway today in the United States It's the first expansion of the Long Island Railroad in over a hundred years It's a in the main this is a good diagram It really shows what what we're doing is right now as most of you know The Long Island Railroad comes into Penn Station and Metro North comes into Grand Central and the primary purpose of The project is to bring Long Island Railroad into Grand Central Terminal so we've done tunneling in the In sunny side yard in Queens on the right side of the screen We've made a connection to the 63rd Street tunnel which was built back in the 80s or The New York City transit, but it was also built with a tunnel For a Long Island Railroad with the east side access in mind so this is a project that's been in planning for decades and It and incrementally it's been we've been putting infrastructure in place for it And and then the tunneling I'll talk about in a minute comes down through Manhattan from 63rd Street Underneath the Grand Central down to 37th Street And as you can see there, it's it's about ten point one eight billion is our current budget with a revenue service date of December 2022 This is a rendering of what's being constructed. It's about a 350,000 square foot concourse below Grand Central and it has an eight track a new eight track station. That is beneath Grand Central connected by high-speed escalators From the from the train platforms up to the up to the concourse We're also building new train yards and maintenance facilities in the Bronx and Queens and New modernized ventilation and power facilities both in Queens in Manhattan The main project benefits are shown here What if you look at the ridership coming in from Queens and Long Island The there's about a hundred and sixty thousand passengers per day that come into Penn Station But their destination isn't Penn Station their destination is the Grand Central area in the central business district so for those passengers it'll provide a direct ride into the Grand Central area and It'll save commuters on the order of 30 to 40 minutes per day It's also going to support job growth in the area around Grand Central Terminal where there's a lot of development planned and It's going to improve Our East River tunnel capacity by over 50% because we'll be diverting diverting traffic from Penn Station to Through the 63rd Street tunnel below Grand Central So some of the tools and equipment that we are use on east side access Tunnel boring machines. We've used four tunnel boring machines that I'll talk about. This is a celly TBM celly is the manufacturer. We also had a Robbins Machine. This is a hard rock. Both of these are hard rock tunnel boring machines TBMs And this is a pretty good picture and and they're all pretty similar where they use what we call cutter disk technology that's the Basically have cutter discs that that actually score the rock and it's the pressure of the cutter head on the rock that Cuts the rock and grinds the rock into smaller fragments so you then can remove it This is the Route in Manhattan the dotted line on the right of the screen was these Existing 63rd Street tunnel that came under the East River to 2nd Avenue What's shown in blue is the new tunnels that were excavated We did eight drives in Manhattan with two hard rock TBM machines over about a four-year period Two tunnels go into four go into eight as they come into the terminal You can see where the terminal is is shown In in red and then we have a tail track area that goes all the way down to 37th Street Under Park Avenue, and there's four tail tracks. So we've got the ability. We'll have the ability to store four trains At at the rear of the station This is a picture of one of the tunnel boring machines hauling through which is an exciting part of The because you're at the end of a drive and there's an awful lot of awful lot of work that's gone into getting to that point This is a picture Actually, if you were to go to the very south end of where we were tunneling down 37th Street and Park Avenue. This is the end of the TBM drive and We did We had two two hard rock TBM machines the robins machine was removed by the contractor and dismantled The selling machine actually has been Was backed up from this point and the crew Took a hard right turn and buried the machine in the in the bedrock So we've created a time capsule down around 36th Street and Park Avenue for someone in the future to uncover Quite a quite a quite a surprise when they When they when they excavate or drill in that area These are the soft what we call soft brown Tunnel boring machines that were used over in Queens Underneath the rail yard These are designed differently They they basically have the ability to go through soft brown and they do it under what we call a slurry mix To maintain the stability There were two machines four tunnels And and Four drives were done over about a two-year period Heron connect was the designer and manufacturer German company For these machines And all of our tunnels are 22 foot diameter tunnels. That's the the tunnel size for both the subway in the railroad This is a diagram of Looking this is this is a queen's boulevard at the bottom of the slide And you got northern boulevard just to the left to kind of get you oriented And this is the sunny side yard area in queen. So we had to build a box first to assemble the tbms and launch them which is shown in the lower left And then you can see where we had the four Tunnel drives that went out through the underneath the sunny side yard underneath the active rail lines This is just a shot of the launch tunnels You actually have to cast these in concrete to build a place to like a starter It's like a pilot hole for for if you're doing a trying to drill a hole This is like a pilot hole. You got it. You got to start With the just the launch area This is the part of the machine coming in Give you an example on second avenue subway when we built the launch box at 96th street There that took the contractor They had 35 trailer loads of equipment that came in to assemble one tbm machine to operate on second avenue so You can imagine the amount of time and effort And you know by the by the contractor and the crew to assemble the machine This kind of gives you a sense of the scale of the machine and the hydraulics and the electric as it's going together You can see the the men standing at the at the bottom here And when it's all assembled it's it's ready to go into the launch box Launch launch block And as it completes its drive in in queens It breaks into a a reception pit a receiving pit and you can see in the foreground the Mixture typically a bentonite clay and water Which is what keeps the machine in the soil stable while while we're excavating We also have smaller machines. They're not all 22 foot diameter um We do we have a number of six foot diameter tunnels that Rail yard and uh, you can one of them is pictured here on the on the right hand side And we we call this micro tunneling and these are really for utility crossings for power signal sewer lines various utilities that need to cross the rail yard, so um We we did not have the luxury of shutting down amtrak or along on the railroad for this project We had to maintain an operating rail yard. So Micro tunneling with small boring machines was utilized to cross the rail yard This is the other end And there's a lot of a lot of work to get these machines in and out. So this is the demobilization of the machine A lot of construction challenges and in projects such as this I'm going to touch on some of these as I go through some of the other other tools oops so Obviously we need to modify tools and use specialized tools for for different challenges In areas where we really can't use blasting Or a tunnel boring machine. We'll use what's called a road header It's kind of a gnarly looking machine, but These these rotate And you can put them inside of we put them inside the cavern and if you look closely You can see the grinding on the walls. So we'll trim the walls back to do Call it fine fine finer work than the tunnel boring Um I mentioned before we had escalator well ways which we have a we have a total of 17 escalators that Are going to service the new train Station up to the concourse So one of the challenges was how do we excavate these well ways? This is what the escalator is going to look like in the future as you come up But inside of the Terminal Below the terminal. This is what what it looked like when we started We first had to remove columns and do underpinning and and put in these large beams all the way across To create an opening where these well ways were going to go and then you can see that we've started Doing some rock removal here to start the well way Then you get into of course the well way is a steep incline for the escalator and You know, you know, you've got specialized equipment like The men'sy mucker That is quite a piece of equipment. It it has articulating Not only the boom with it with the with the excavating bucket each each of the tires and and the legs of the machine Can be independently operated and adjusted. So this can move up and down Over rough ground as well as up and down an inclined slope And you can see we used a muck car here on the side on on a rail And it comes up and down on a winch system These are some of the tools that are used to to in this type of construction to Excavate rock This one is kind of interesting. This is called a raised bore machine This was down at 37th street We had a need need to put in three vertical vent shafts very close together And you can see we're near the existing park avenue tunnel The lexington avenue subway line and we're in close proximity to the union league club. So lasting was not an option for these This is a picture of the union league club and our work zone out here And you can see the drill drill shaft, which i'm going to explain in a minute This diagram here a raised bore machine if you look over on on on the left Basically you start with with a pilot hole and you drill down to your your tunnel area that you're trying to Sink your shaft to and inside there You then can build And assemble the the raised bore portion of the machine And then you actually excavate it from the bottom up and gravity, of course You drop the rock into the bottom of the tunnel to remove it So this is what it looks like in the in the field You could have to assemble this in the bottom of in the in the tunnel Which is eventually the bottom of the shaft So you can see the crew here a lot of hand work A lot of chain falls and stuff to move these heavy Heads around to get them all aligned. So what it's going to look like it looks like this when it's all assembled and this thing then Is raised by the equipment at the surface and begins to turn slowly and grind the rock And and start excavating the shaft talk about Shaft to actually excavate it, but just like painting. There's a lot of work prep work to get ready to paint Some of the hand tools that I referred to You know You know, this is probably a good example here We place an awful lot of concrete in the caverns and tunnels You got a crew here using a vibrator The man on the left's got a vibrator where we consolidate the concrete. We move the concrete And of course that has to have its own motor and power And that's what the guy on the right is holding is the motor that operates that and You know, then then you get into You got these very large caverns and you have the need to do Shaft Crete work, which is another concrete technique And you got to have articulating hand hand booms Or man lifts rather that get the get the people up High on the wall where they need to be so they can do that the shot on the right is We move an awful lot of material whether it be concrete water air by pipe in in the tunnels And they're all this guy is this crew here is using a drill to tighten a coupling It's all all mechanical coupling for this pipe connections A lot of work goes into placing concrete on the left You can see all of the through bolts and all of the of Braces and stuff that go into form work that you need to put in place in order to place and build Reinforced concrete walls the worker on the right. He's got a hand drill That he's chipping and remove them concrete The yellow material in the background is the waterproofing all of the tunnels are waterproof and as well as the cavern And there's always a lot of drilling of temporary attachments that need to be made This crew here is what we call lathers And it's a little hard to see But what they basically have in their tool belt is a spool of wire And it's just simple steel wire And and they have cutters and they you want the wire to be able to bend but not break It needs to be strong enough that they can tie and make mechanical connections from one piece of reinforcing steel to another To hold the reinforcing steel in place until such time the concrete can be placed around that and You know, that's that's all hand work with with wire and an ingenuity In the rail yard, we've got challenges there because of an operating Operating trains. We don't have a lot of room between rail lines and oftentimes You you got to do an awful lot of hand work, especially when you start excavating at the surface And even some of the larger excavations they're about to they're trying to uncover a A large pipe a utility pipe at the bottom of this excavation And this ends up being hand work You there's a lot of hand shoveling they're shoveling into a skip pan which then comes to the surface to to get loaded out so this is just a simple picture is is Advanced the technology is for a lot of tbm machines and that sort of thing that I've shown there's also an awful lot of hand digging with various types of shovels and pinch bars for various equipment and heavy construction So thank you Okay, our last speaker is um chuck oberman. He's an inventor And he seamlessly fuses the disciplines of art architecture and engineering in his work on transformable structures Through his products patents and structures. Hoberman Demonstrates how objects can be foldable retractable or shape shifting He is the founder of hoberman associates a multidisciplinary practice that utilizes transformable Principles for a wide range of applications including dynamic architecture Transformable stage sets consumer products deployable shelters and structures for aerospace Examples of his commission work to include the transforming video screen that served as the primary stage element for the u2 360 degree world tour in 2009 through 2011 The hoberman arch in salt lake city installed as the centerpiece for the 2002 winter olympics games A retractable dome for the 2000 worlds fair in hanover germany and the expanding geodesic dome at the at the pompadou center In 1997 and he's also been included in some of our exhibitions here at the cooper huet the triennial being won. So chuck Thanks matilda so um When um matilda Told me that i would be on a panel that was titled big and bigger i explained to her that I'm on a panel with bill goodrich Talking about tunnel boring machines. Maybe we should call it small and smaller Um, but uh, we've decided between ourselves that scale is a flexible Metric and we can look at it from a few different ways Um, I have a design and engineering practice hoberman associates and we focus on what I call transformable design Which is basically designing objects and they could be buildings or stage sets or pieces of artwork or toys The change size the change shape i'm a mechanical engineer by training and I make a lot of prototypes But this is really the starting point for me something very small something very tactile That begins to express kind of the relationships that i'm interested in terms of Shape transformation and movement So these are just laser-cut plastic linkages Nowadays we can also make these these types of structures using 3d printing So this in fact is a mechanism that's comprised of hundreds and hundreds of joints that transforms But it's all done from a single 3d print. This is a prototype for a kind of a curtain and then you'll see that a prototype like this This shows the actual physical scale mock-up. It's for a curtain for a residence in japan Which is about 30 feet across being raised up so Building at scale does it tell you that Something is going to work. No, but it can tell you that something may not work But it's a precursor to doing the kind of a testing that a mock-up like this has We do a A fair amount of architectural work for facades that show some manufacturing processes For a technology we call tessellate which are transformable Screens this is done at the zener company in kansas city and i'll show a brief video of This particular project. So these are it's kind of a mid-scale project for us somewhere between architecture and art it's eight Screens each one about five feet wide by 12 feet high of shifting layers of stainless steel That control the light coming into the space and it's at a It's at a Building called the simon center for geometry and physics So i've had this sort of concept for transformable design for a few decades now And it's been a company that's a little bit unusual and that it is based on more of a kind of a design concept And not on any particular sector But we've applied it in a number of different sectors at a number of different scales And it basically runs the gamut from kind of Miniature medical instruments all the way up to architectural scales so This would show a this is actually more on the research side But some work that i'm doing with with a with a robotics lab up at harvard Which is actually the same lab that did the the robo be the matilda referred to in the exhibit showing a hoberman linkage It's built out of a kind of a carbon laminate Using micro machining techniques You can kind of get the sense of how tiny these little articulated links are And then at the other end of the spectrum We were part of the team that is designing the retractable roof for the new atlanta falcon stadium Which i think is due to be finished in around 2017 So somehow from a design standpoint there is this question of you know In each case from something the size of your thumb to something the size of a football field You're still using the same basic mechanical principles and there is something common in terms of the system So for this particular project for the atlanta falcon stadium We were more involved in kind of the creative concept stage and this is a scale model That uh that my group constructed that's 3d printed panels that are sliding in a linear fashion to create this Oculus And then you can kind of see at scale What it will look at in 360 degree architects Created this and it's a very unique design in that it's a it's an aperture But an aperture that relies on linear motion instead of rotary motion And will be actually quite a quite an unprecedented Configuration for retractable roof at this scale For works for a project like atlanta falcons, we are a very you know, we're just a small Consultant is mechanization specialists on a very large project But for more of typical projects for hoberman, we do everything from design through All the way through the construction process and this is a project Which was at the time the largest we had done to date Which was a curtain for the winter olympics in salt lake city in 2002 And it was a kind of a curtain that was on So-called metals plaza where they gave the metals at every evening and you can see here This is a the size of this is about 72 feet across. These are individual panels. Each one is about four by Feet made of extruded aluminum Connected together in a kind of a truss work and then these were assembled in a horizontal configuration at the At the fabricators called scenic technologies Where it was tested and then ultimately was raised in salt lake city At metals plaza. So I always remember these moments of it being raised. They're you know, the specialized crew running eight different chain you know chain falls That are basically being manually operated to synchronize the raising. It's freezing outside The wind's blowing and you know, you're kind of like putting this thing in place Which ultimately you're told will be seen by billions of people on tv and the thing damn well better work Fortunately it did it did for the 17 nights of the of the olympics So you can see it working here And then how it operated on during the actual performance where it's integrated with lights and music and dance I have always Really loved working on these theatrical projects. They're every industry and I worked in a number of them have different cultures And I always think of sort of the live entertainment industry as one where people tend to say yes a lot more than no Architects are a little bit different, I would say The u2 project, um Atlanta falcons notwithstanding was really has been really the sort of a Peak Of working at scale and we were asked by the by the band and by the creative team around the band to create What they said was a trend what they wanted was a transformable video screen So what the idea was the tour was called 360 because it was basically theater in the round And they had conceived of this idea of making this giant superstructure, which they called the claw which was a um A steel structure spanning about 200 feet, which is actually pretty large And they built three of these which could be set up in different stadia at different venues And then would be Different elements would be added to that So wrapped with a kind of a tensile fabric. There was a stage that actually had these kinetic Bridges that would move around so the band can move from the center out to the sort of horseshoe The speakers themselves which are each about like two stories high and then our piece was was a video screen And the design brief for this was They had built the claw They knew that they wanted to have a very unique screen that somehow incorporated a kind of a hoberman philosophy of design That would physically change its size in addition to having media on it And so with this sort of incredible team who are you know, That for myself were all kind of legends in the in the rock and roll world We started to sketch up designs and quickly came on this idea of using the claw to support an expandable screen That would kind of extend down towards the band The shape of it changed a little bit so that it became kind of an ellipse in plan a conical ellipse And what you're seeing on the left on the blue is representing A high-resolution video about 4,000 square feet of it Which basically acted as a as a funny shape the rather conventional video screen But then midway through the show show it extended downwards On the size of the screen was about 85 feet high about 85 feet across The mechanical moving parts along with the electronics weighed about 30 tons and I mentioned that in relation to the kind of structural analysis that was done by our partners on the job The engineering firm bureau haphold Where we were studying this, you know, unprecedented kinetic piece You know of 30 tons which is all being Basically put over bono's head and there was a lot of concern about was this thing safe? Was it secure? And uh, it actually was it an incredibly tense kind of a situation It is sort of exemplified by these diagrams where um, you know, we used the the structural analysis tool to show Magnified deflections, which means that you're what you're seeing is the screen, which is like a giant Metal net when the wind blows on it It's shape deflects and then the computer would basically predict the Deflected shape but exaggerate it so that you could actually see the pattern And I always remember the one that served in the middle on the bottom Because that was basically the wind was coming from the left But the screen was being sucked in from the right and there was a huge debate Did that make sense sense? Were we really going to see this kind of suction effect? And uh, you know that kind of a debate on a project like this Is where you're really working with the limits of engineering knowledge And a lot of the time I think lay people think that if you're working with all of these great computer programs It somehow it takes the uncertainty out of a project And in certain ways it actually enables more uncertainty to occur because you don't know whether in some way It's kind of a garbage and garbage out situation But ultimately kind of the collective experience said no that did make sense. We could trust the models and we went on This is a movie made by our client Barco who was the led manufacturer of the screen being assembled There's a different of these linkages being put together with High-strength bearings basically 96 units each when weighing about 700 pounds. They invented this kind of robotic forklift to assemble it Although I'll say that the kind of the Incredible most incredible thing about this project is the way that they could assemble this giant screen in about six hours Totally based on this the skills of the roadies who went along with the with the band One thing I learned, you know, I think ended a few of the concerts is don't get in a roadies way because they'll run you over They just don't care about anything except what they're putting together And then the concert itself We're really it all came together and you can see here the screen And this shows a highly sped up version of the transformation of the screen. So again, it's a seven-story high object it it kind of just transforms in a way that really is is kind of Just a very very different experience than really anything I could have imagined although, you know, I sort of designed the thing And then this shows it being kind of painted with this these wonderful lights and images by willy-williams the band So from here, I'm going to be jumping way down in scale and really something that's a little bit It's actually more a little bit more contemporary which actually has to do with it's a little bit off subject but I think it does relate to scale and also Really a lot about the way tools and methods actually come together. So I'm teaching a lot more now I'm teaching a bit a few places, but at the designs The harvard gsd graduate design school And teaching basically Kind of similar structures to what I do and they're building some pretty large things For using using these techniques. This is a wooden expanding dome being tested And here's a here's kind of a different a different one And so it's very interesting to kind of like say, you know, these the work that I do has always been a little bit You know, it's been highly special But we're finding ways to kind of put it in the hands of young generations of designers who are finding ways to extend it So this gives me, you know, some Some hope that these ideas may be kind of extended in the future to make a transformable architecture in all kinds of new ways Last the last semester at harvard I taught a very different kind of course called informal robotics and it's basically Making robots not out of metal and and hard machinery but out of paper and soft gels The idea is can you Fold and motorize a piece of paper and get it to walk across the table And it's pretty cool stuff with very very interesting design methods And I'll just end with this image of this little Walking platform and it just looks like it's kind of like walking at random But here you see it's sensing actually and all of that is done by just a differential flexure Of the paper. So it's an integrated kind of piece of Of this incredibly simple design concept with huge sophistication in terms of how it's actually implemented Thanks We're going to have a little bit of discussion Um, and then we're going to turn it over To the audience for some questions So one of my questions has to do with kind of the process and um Getting from small to big especially Chuck with some of your projects. What are the kinds of Tools that you use to calculate getting from small to big? I mean beside I guess the computer certainly important, but How do you how do you get? If you if you're doing a prototype, how do you then get to that sort of final stage of a big structure Well, uh Somewhere between the prototype and the finished structure is very often than a mock-up So it may be the mock-up would be considered say typically something that's built at scale But it's not the complete structure. It's just kind of a piece of it and that very often gives you this Understanding of manufacturing processes and performance Even though it's not a full system But you can usually use that sort of it's like kind of like Cross-correlating and triangulating between that kind of information and the prototype and the computer analysis Etc as well as the inside of the Is that Bill in terms of how you I mean, where do you even begin to kind of I mean do you do Scale models. Do you how do you begin the process of designing a tunnel? Knowing that you're going to use a tunnel boring machine somewhere along the line, but What are the steps leading up to that? well, I think One there there's several factors that are that kind of kind of are your starting point um, you know, you obviously the geological Conditions that you're dealing with Are a big big part of it. There's an awful lot of Of investigation of the of the soil and the ground conditions and the rock that's done by the engineers to to evaluate Um, you know the the vertical alignment of the tunnel how much how much cover you need to maintain for the required factors of safety Uh, general to give you an idea generally along second avenue They maintain we maintain about 25 feet of rock cover from the crown of the tunnel to the top top of the bedrock Um, and of course building tunnels in any urban area um, you've got The existing tunnels the existing subways that you've got to either go Over or under and and a lot of that dictates your your alignment But you know once the alignment is set The the people that manufacture the machines You know based on the on the technical data of the rock quality Uh, they can design the machine with the the appropriate amount of of force on the cutter head to to Excavate that rock As I mentioned before the idea is you want to You know people have the idea that it's a high speed drill That's you know grinding grinding the rock they the the cutter had it moves actually rather slowly And those and the individual discs are are scoring the rock And it's the pressure of the hydraulics of of the face total face against the rock That's slowly grinding the the rock and uh You know, so that's that's a lot of the The initial technology that goes into the design of the machine and and setting the alignment for the tunnel Um, I wanted to ask paul because you you mentioned it, but you didn't go into any Detail, but if you could talk a little bit more about I'm really interested in the future of the space shuttle and you said now we're going to get smaller And smaller so why is smaller better? Well, again, you have the the limits of the human body which determine sort of a minimum volume and comfort and things like that and I think the the the shuttle program which has just ended combined cargo and and human crew And I think we now realize that you can send up a lot of cargo in an unmanned vehicle You don't have to they call it man rating go through a lot of safety issues to Send up the cargo and then you send up the people in a seven passenger vehicle Let's say that is small and when you scale things down everything gets a lot simpler Geometrically so I think that's the future. There's actually about four or five different competing designs going on for the future Human access to space you all have heard about space x which is going to have a launch very soon There's one called the dream the dream chaser, which is a little it looks like a mini shuttle and That's the one. It's got wings Wings is very controversial lots of people like the idea of landing with like an airplane Astronauts don't like to be fished out of the water. I don't blame them So they however you've got to to carry that weight up into orbit and then back down And you only need the wings at the final stage of the of the voyage. So It's a little bit of a it's a trade-off there But that's a post that's one of the competing designs The other design that space x is working on is to actually come back and land Um, if you ever watched the 1950s science fiction movies, how did they land on planet? They go They they land kind of running the movie in reverse. You go back down. Well, um, it's a great idea It's never really been It's never worked until now because you've got to carry all that fuel and you have this problem of stability It's like balancing a baseball bat on your hand or a broomstick However, our friend Elon Musk thinks he can do it and he's got some great some great ideas about bringing the rocket back So that way you don't need wings. You need extra fuel, but They're all kinds of competing ways of doing this But as I said, uh, initially they all have a certain requirement Of designing around the human body and what's the optimum number? You don't want to send one person up You want to send a crew of about four or five? Let's say That's about right. You can have we've got six people living in space right now on this international space station Obviously if we're going to really get serious about space exploration We want to have hundreds of people up there and that's going to be an interesting challenge Talked initially paul you were you said that you were interested in the idea of talking about sort of Scale in terms of time Which in space is actually interesting, but also when you think of time in terms of Like your projects which can last How many years? Um a long time in terms of creating a tunnel. So, you know, there's those issues of you know Time that also are important in terms of scale and how that comes to play in In the whole sort of design process The voyager spacecraft have Voyager one has now as far as we can say officially left the solar system kind of like elvis leaving the building It's passed through this Phase where the solar pressure is now balanced by interstellar Pressures and we believe that it has crossed that threshold now that vehicle was launched in the 1970s so Many of the scientists who worked on that are obviously some of them passed away. They're retired. They're old They're still excited if they're still involved and it's a it's been a lifetime for them About yeah, I guess you could say And then what I didn't mention is that it takes it takes hours and hours for those signals to come back to earth Days even And traveling at the speed of light. So Uh, this is another thing that bothers me about star trek or star wars movies is that you're talking to people Doesn't work that way. Sorry There's a tremendous delay even three seconds to the moon which meant that when they landed on the moon in the 1960s, they couldn't rely on houston they had to be on their own because that three second delay was too much and mars is You know 10 minutes So 10 minutes is a long long time if you're driving imagine you're driving a car down second avenue or fifth avenue and You got it. You drive and then 10 minutes later you find out. Well, oh, there's something in the way Better turn left. Okay. You turn left wait another 10 minutes. So it does take a while That's why I keep saying that uh, we got to get a human being up there somehow. It's not going to be easy So before I turn it over to the audience, I want to know what is your Most important tool if you had to choose one tool, what is your most important one that you use in your job? Don't all say the same thing I I guess I can I can start. Um I would I would say the most the most important tool for for the mta and in the common tool in these mega projects Is is really the material The primary material we're using and that is Is concrete and and it's the variations of how you use concrete to do different things and it's it's a combination of materials and tools but You can use concrete by changing how much sand is in it and removing the the the rock aggregate You can you can do temporary things where you spray it for Temporary support and then of course you get into your your larger mixes where you're you're pouring slabs and walls building heavy floors and stuff And how to deliver concrete, you know and get it from the surface Down deep into these caverns and down these tunnels for hundreds of feet Is it requires some innovation in and of itself just to deliver the concrete from from Where you want the finished product from where you have the opportunity to park concrete trucks and and utilize concrete pumps so I think the all of the tools involve with The design of concrete and the different types of concrete As well as the delivery of concrete is probably our primary tool I did you probably gave me this question in advance. I don't know why I should be stumped um I guess I I would it's hard to come up with a tool as an external piece um It it probably has to do with uh, I would say More the methods meaning that people Involved with how I mean I'm in I'm in kind of an innovation game where really Partly because of my interest but also because of a certain point I've committed to making inventing and making new stuff and uh, so I More or less when you make new things you're really just reliant on your brain and your the people around you and the sort of ability to engineer and make uh and make this stuff It has to do with collaboration it has to do with um, uh Harnessing the right people in the right mindset to Collaborate and bringing a few different disciplines together. I say that's much more important than any single you know Physical or virtual Again, I feel like the odd person out here and that I'm a museum curator, but uh Uh, I started out with reliance on typical Academic tools of library research and archives and things like that and now I I find myself very heavy user of the internet Um, but it's a obviously we all have the internet But you have to learn sort of how to get in extract the information you need out of it But when you can do that, it's just an incredible resource And I do use it a lot We're working on a new exhibit to redo the central hall of the air and space museum Where million literally millions of people are coming in um every year and uh We're using we're using the internet for the for the research and the photography and all that I just want to tell I want to tell a little story Because this um, you mentioned how you have to be careful about existing infrastructure when you're tunneling And we have a much more modest tunnel in the washington area of the silver line the metro which goes underneath a place called tyson's corner Not too many people realize that the internet is Uh, a big chunk of the internet goes through tyson's corner virginia. It was one of the places where it really began and um You've heard these stories about the internet having this redundancy and robustness about it has Multiple pathways in case something breaks. It goes another way and they talk about its military origins In the cold war and so forth Well, it turns out that they drew these logical diagrams of the internet that showed these redundant pathways separated But the reality was a new uh, when they came to build a new backbone. They said, oh, here's a trench right here Let's put the cable right in there. So you have all this redundancy basically in one trench And sure enough somebody with a tunneling machine or a backhoe comes through bingo out goes all the all all the infrastructure Fast and they realize hey, wait a minute. There is no redundancy after so it was a Funny, I think it's funny, but maybe it wasn't funny at the time that they had to learn that lesson When they were digging this tunnel underneath tyson's corner virginia a very short tunnel by the way, but they learned the lesson Important one Okay, I'd like to turn it over to you if you have questions. So, um, what we're going to do is I'm going We have maria and Amanda will be Um Okay, just you okay So if you could speak in the microphone, there's one way in the back Hi, um, thank you so much for sharing these stories. It's it's fascinating One of the questions I had really you know humans Are not great at really understanding scale and so there's oftentimes Things that we think will work at one scale that don't work or that, you know That's what was amazing to see some of those The the diagram and how things the transformations of some of the hoperman That work But could do you have any stories about how things that you thought you would work that you thought would work at one Scale that didn't work or that there was a consequence that wasn't anticipated and and then how that was solved Wow, these are these are sensitive questions. Um, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um Earlier uh earlier in my career where um, I uh Had a you know, sort of a misplaced confidence that anything I thought of would be if I could imagine it it would it would work um, I built a uh I was commissioned to build a very large exhibit about 50 feet expanding from about 13 feet to 50 feet for the California science center in Los Angeles and uh, I walked in with a um I knew I basically my expanding structures like the sphere. I could build in other shapes and I thought There's a very interesting shape You can make with a soap bubble solution if you dip a curved piece of wire in you get this kind of curvy shape And I walked into my client and dipped the wire in and showed them the shape and said I want to build This is a 50 foot high expanding sculpture and then much to my detriment. They said sure. Let's go ahead and do that Um, I built a scale model and it worked great And I built the full scale one The thing was it was with the resources I had it was too big to kind of build and test in my own facility, which meant that I was doing it effectively on a construction site and We hung the thing and we turned the motor on and nothing happened But um, I mean ultimately it was resolved through kind of a lot of You know sweat and elbow grease and modifications to the system And looking back on it, you know the thing that I always You know what I have been better served By not having proposed this crazy thing at an outrageous scale, uh, you know and All the lessons that I learned from it would not have been learned and that's something that still is a question You know that I have today. I couldn't really answer But I wouldn't do it again I actually have a kind of a war story as well. I'll share Um, and this goes back to second avenue subway and I remember the date. It was august 21st And I believe it was 2012, but we did thousands of blasts for the caverns and tunnels Second avenue and they were all done, you know, and I'm Whole team did them did them safely, but on august 21st 2012 we did have one get away from us and we're this was at um I believe it was 69th street, uh in second avenue if I remember, uh, correctly And it was a similar situation to what I showed here where we had a Escalator well way that we were constructing from the surface down towards the cavern And the contractor was doing the initial blast at the top of the escalator well way Well, they had done all the excavation and all the blasting in that in that area Vertically and everything went off according to plan everything was was Was well under control well No one really took into account the The new orientation that the drilling for this initial blast was on an incline and the result in blast was going to be On an angle from uh from that well way and We and some of you that are local here are probably remember Uh the pictures in the paper where there was a significant plume of Blast and dirt and debris that came up and was all over the street And I remember the fire chief and I always questioned the fire chief that was in charge of the explosives Unit because he had us always stop traffic a block away from where we were blasting It didn't matter how deeply we were he always had to stop traffic Both foot traffic and vehicle traffic a block away And I thank my lucky stars that day that he had that requirement because We we no one got hurt which was the good news Uh, there was some windows that were broken across the street in one of the buildings Which were easily repaired. We had cleanup on the street to do but all in all Um, you know the but that that changed our procedures and our process as far as how we approach some of our blasting and some of the atypical areas Thank you This is a question for mr. Hoberman any of the transformative structures Are or could be applied to space exploration uh I should I should let paul Give his opinion. I have done some work for the space agency and for the Naval research laboratories, which is also a satellite maker. So, uh, they're very interested in deployable structures We've never I've never actually flown one of uh any of the particular structures that I make but um It expandable structures in space have an inherent logic precisely for the reasons you've been mentioning Which is that you want to have the most concentrated kind of payload On the ground and then sometimes you want big structures. I don't know if you have any I'm really enjoying this. Thank you very much But I'm struck by the fact that all of you are working with tools that really integrate with three-dimensional space and three-dimensional thinking And I'm wondering if any of you has an opinion about this next generation Who has a very different attachment to three-dimensional space and mostly understands it through a screen based kind of module And if you have any thoughts about education or about the This how this may impact the kind of innovation that all of you are engaged in in the future I'll just respond briefly. Um I think I was more That's it's been a concern of mine because I my career grew up with computers But they were not the capabilities were basically you use them as a programming tool for very specialized tasks So you weren't able to kind of interact with them so fluidly And it wasn't an alternative to three-dimensional space And I was kind of pessimistic for a period of time that maybe we were really losing that But I think actually there's an interesting counter trend now where You know the maker movement and 3d printing and di y and all of that is almost Kind of a renaissance of physical making as enabled by Digital tools and maybe in some ways, you know, the solution is kind of the problem is kind of Being solved from the same source that the You know the solution to the problem are coming from that same source As far as infrastructure and and actually What's what's refreshing to see is some of the young engineers that are coming out of school now Who have Certainly have a lot more Computer expertise with analysis and design and they've they've grown up with the the tools of 3d printing and and and CAD modeling so What i'm seeing in in our projects We've got a great team on e-side access Who is doing bim bim modeling building information modeling and we're they are doing 3d 3d printing as We're looking at design drawings and they're they're they're looking They're putting it into a 3d model and they're actually These elements of the structures that we're getting ready to build and they're they're Producing a 3d model Through 3d printing that we can use as a tool To talk with the contractors the other engineers the designers to plan the work and and and it's been Invaluable to the to the whole team and and it's really The new generation of engineers and And designers that are that are that are bringing that expertise to to the team Near the end now of This panel talk. I was hoping we might get back to the original image of big bertha I am a docent here and anticipating Doing lecture tourists of the tools exhibition and we feature big bertha 57 plus feet wide is the largest tunnel boring machine and We also feature it as dual functioning that is that it not only Bores tunnels, but lays tiles on the walls And we have also just learned that in 2013 it hit an impediment And it's no longer operational So can you speak to that a bit? I know it's canadian. So I don't know how familiar you are, but I'd like to hear from you uh Yeah, the tunneling industries are relatively Small industry. So when something goes wrong Everybody knows about it um but Yet the big bertha is the largest uh, uh tbm at 57 and a half feet in in diameter um, it got about a thousand feet into its run Of 9,000 9,000 feet for the alaskan way viaduct in seattle And it did hit a eight inch diameter steel pipe that was vertically in the ground And as big and as massive as these machines are They're designed to cut and and grind rock and cut and remove soil They're not designed to cut steel And steel is one of the worst things that you could you could contact you could hit timber timber piles It will grind through timber piles But when you get to And even concrete it'll grind through concrete. But once you get to steel It's problematic the main bearing Failed on that machine When they hit it in december 2013 um Of course the machine I think is about 50 to 60 feet below the street They had no way they knew they had a main bearing failure and a fail failure on the seal And now they're faced with how do we change the cutter head? Uh and and change the main bearing So they basically Had backed up the machine slightly and they're sinking a shaft they for a year year plus now They've been sinking a shaft in the middle of the street Uh and and excavating down to the front of the tbm machine Once they get to that point they then will be able to put men and equipment In in the in the shaft at the front of the machine And they can disassemble the damaged portion of the cutter head Remove the main bearing With cranes they'll lower in the new Of replacement parts Reassemble everything and then they can go back to go back to work But that's going to represent probably about a year and a half delay In total on that on that contract Well, actually I believe right now As they're excavating down the shaft They're they're they're they're removing the steel pipes, you know as they encounter them Because apparently there's more than one I think we have time for one more question Thank you. This is for mr. Holman I was wondering what in the early part of your career what what inspired you to You know go with these geometric shapes from You know changer Changed their size and what's and what's uh now in your career now currently what is What are you looking for inspiration as far as you know things you have not have not done and what what could be And and also are you involved at all with a new u2 Tour coming up Last one is straightforward. No, no, I'm not uh, I'm not not involved with a new u2 tour Inspiration man background is originally as a artist Sculptor and then went on to uh go to mechanics study mechanical engineering So the combination of art and science has always been Really the hallmark of of what I was interested in and still still am The theme of transformation, it's a little bit hard to place I mean, I was a mech. I had a mechanism specialty when I studied engineering. I was fascinated by movement and basically was working at a um small robotics firm and Thought maybe it would be fun in my spare time and I had enough energy that spare time could be in the middle of the night if if necessary to Make some origami pop-up structures and um and kind of basically Started knocking on a door and it I went through it and sort of never never came back. I mean it really just had its own creative logic In terms of what inspires me now Uh, you know, it's at this point. It's really very much about uh collaborative opportunities. Um When I started my career, I felt kind of like I was in a bubble making my own Way in a way not exactly in isolation, but without really Peers who are interested in the same thing. It doesn't feel like that now. It seems that the concept of A transformable design is kind of spilled over It's just become, you know Uh the lecturers of architects of engineers and um right now I um I work in terms of my academic research with scientists and biologists People making dna structures and you can have these fascinating conversations about whether, you know, how these Principles of transformation, which I've sort of interpreted as a mechanical function How they may relate to a systems level thinking and that in fact you can find all of these analogies of how this occurs in nature as well so I've always been inspired by nature, but now I have the opportunity to work with the people who really You know go to a deeper level All right. Well, thank you paul chuck and bill very much for um your participation in this panel Let's give them a round of applause And thank you all for coming and just be sure you log onto our website So you can find we'll have other lots of other programs offered so Thank you for coming