I’m planning to cover the metal wire construction with a soft white fabric, that has good extension properties. I found three materials which are currently in the competition. From left to right, gaining in opacity: women’s stockings, a body suit and swimming fabric. Lets see which one is going to make it.

After thinking about the first draft a bit longer, I realized that it needs another ring in order to create a nice threedimensional shape. So the top view is based on a hexagon now.
In this draft, the steel wires are unrolled to both sides. This should work better for the symmetric change.

After I stopped researching for small helicopters, I went back to my first idea of shapeshifting. Ball-like-shaped objects are supposed to be able to change their size in all three dimensions. I want to avoid the use of pneumatics, so i’m going about a mechanical construction.

The construction is a simple wireframe model of a ball, to be covered with a soft extensible cloth. This is the first attempt for the underlying mechanics.

I took this picture a few days ago from the window of my appartment in Berlin. It’s not a fake. These bird seems to be able to do quite fancy things. Have a close look or click the picture to open the highres version.
This is one image i had in mind when i fixed the theme of my degree: “The iconic potential of computative design”. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Thought i’m not sure, if the birds are aware of that.