rfalconvargas · Archive
Industrial Design
Hardware, furniture, instruments, and mechanisms — bio-inspired forms reconciled with real torque, tolerances, and fabrication.
Section
Industrial Design
Works
7 projects
Animatronic · Hardware-softwareIndustrial Design
Maip — Dinosaur Animatronic
Maip is a servo-driven dinosaur animatronic, pairing a sculpted Blender form with a hand-fabricated wooden articulation skeleton. The body was modeled digitally, prototyped as a wire-and-wood armature, then driven by high-torque servos seated in custom-milled wooden cradles for the head and arms — documented from CG render to low-fidelity mechanical mock-up to a wired, moving figure.
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Furniture · Cardboard chaiseIndustrial Design
Isopod Chair
The Isopod Chair is a full-size cardboard chaise lounge whose segmented, curving spine is borrowed directly from the body plan of an isopod. It stacks dozens of layered cardboard ribs into a continuous waved surface that supports the back, seat, and extended legs in one sweep — moving from anatomical concept sketches through a ribbed skeletal build to a finished, sit-tested lounge.
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Carbon-fiber mechanism2026
NASA HERC Rover — Crank Steering System
For the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (RISD team, 2026), I designed and fabricated the rover’s crank-based steering system in carbon fiber. The work spans hand-drawn steering geometry, a SolidWorks crank assembly with exploded views, and the full composite manufacturing chain — cutting carbon, layup, and demolding — culminating in the steering module installed on the competition trike.
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Instrument · Spatial studyIndustrial Design
Parasaurian — Bio-Inspired Wind Instrument
Parasaurian is a brass-family wind instrument whose tubing geometry is reverse-engineered from the hollow cranial crest of the dinosaur Parasaurolophus — “a sound 75 million years in the making.” Built largely from painted PVC and tube, it routes air through crest-derived resonant passages, and is documented through paleontological study, concept sketches, ergonomic mock-ups, painted prototypes, and final renders.
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Sheet-metal kinetic objectIndustrial Design
Creak — Tension-Driven Metal Accordion
Creak is an ergonomic, tension-driven metal accordion fabricated from cut and folded sheet metal. It explores an interlocking system of equally spaced segments held by hems that collapse and extend like a hand-held accordion, controlled by the user’s grip tension — moving from initial tension-driven parts, through a negative-space geometric form, to a refined mechanism.
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Wearable · Cardboard sculptureIndustrial Design
Spatial Dynamics — Avatar Mask
The Avatar Mask is an intricate layered-cardboard headpiece built for a Spatial Dynamics study, with feathered, fanning plumes that radiate from the face like an animal crest. Hundreds of cut cardboard fronds are stacked into a sweeping, lightweight sculptural form worn on the head.
View projectIndustrial Design
Piesehef — Plastic Fan Sculpture
Piesehef is a sculptural study assembled from scrap plastic fan parts, exploring how discarded consumer components can be recomposed into a new object. It survives in the archive as a video draft.
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