we made a hut?!  a hershey’s kiss shaped hut space capsule robohutch.

the goal was to use an inflatable as the structure. air. big area, little material.

david r. had a great source, ant farm’s inflatocookbook, from where he had made a previous structure.

the thing was to big, so big that if made, it could not leave the building. the plastic was too thin and easy to rip, the way it had been stored, made the tape junctures adhere to the structure and rip it.

stubborn with the idea of making an inflatable, we went and started one from scratch.













the hexa pillow from the inflatocookcbook.

we bought painters plastic, 4 mil thick. it worked just fine, taped with duct tape


for fibers we decided to go to the garment district and buy used clothes, a dollar a pound! denim for structure and colorful stuff for experimenting and translucency.












figuring out the measurements to make the height the height we wanted took some rusty sixth grade math. some with numbers, some with paper models, we finally got it figured out.












tracing, cutting, taping. sharpie, cutter, cardboard, L ruler, duct tape, large surface.

inflating: the first inflatable had a fan, which did not give it enough air pressure to work on. we got an air mattress pump, which was great at inflating fast, but was to powerful to keep as a constant stream. finally we tried a hair dryer, which having the high, low, cool and warm air options, proved perfect. we cut a hole on the top to avoid it expanding and ripping the seams. also, having the option of hot air, was great at speeding up the curing process.

i don’t know how many jeans we ripped... many. into stripes that were then covered with

epoxy resin. little rollers, a paint tray, latex gloves, a thick cardboard surface.


things to note:

-being exact with the measuring pumps.

-not mixing large amounts at once: the thing ignites.

-changing gloves periodically.

we then made a frame by reinforcing the joints of the inflatable. the longer the strips the better.

keeping the rhythm was the thing. resin constantly mixed, strips soaked, strips laid.

there were some nice fabrics to play with, the colored tight polyester needed little resin and had great elasticity and translucency.  although not natural, reclaiming and reusing is good practice.