Testing Posts Tagged ‘Cellular’
Sietch Nevada
Sectional perspective of underground city
View of the urban life among the water bank canals
Site plan
Plan, above ground (left) and below ground (right)
Site model
Detail of site model
Year: 2009
Location: 37°46’20.10″N, 117°31’57.38″W
Exhibition: Out of Water | innovative technologies in arid climates at the University of Toronto
Description: In Frank Herbert’s famous1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel” and forecasts a dystopian world without water. The few remaining inhabitants have secluded themselves from their harsh environment in what could be called subterranean oasises. Far from idyllic, these havens, known as sietch, are essentially underground water storage banks. Water is wealth in this alternate reality. It is preciously conserved, rationed with strict authority, and secretly hidden and protected.
Although this science fiction novel sounded alien in 1965, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest. Lured by cheap land and the promise of endless water via the powerful Colorado River, millions have made this area their home. However, the Colorado River has been desiccated by both heavy agricultural use and global warming to the point that it now ends in an intermittent trickle in Baja California. Towns that once relied on the river for water have increasingly begun to create underground water banks for use in emergency drought conditions. However, as droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, these water banks will become more than simply emergency precautions.
Sietch Nevada projects waterbanking as the fundamental factor in future urban infrastructure in the American Southwest. Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life. Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, the Sietch is a dense, underground community. A network of storage canals is covered with undulating residential and commercial structures. These canals connect the city with vast aquifers deep underground and provide transportation as well as agricultural irrigation. The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice. Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture. However, the Sietch is also a bunker-like fortress preparing for the inevitable wars over water in the region.
Credit: Andrew Kudless (Design), Nenad Katic (Visualization), Tan Nguyen, Pia-Jacqlyn Malinis, Jafe Meltesen-Lee, Benjamin Barragan (Model)
S_Window
Year: 2008
Location: London
Description: Matsys was asked to submit quick sketch designs for temporary window installation in a London department store. Several windows were considered with potential designs for each. The design for the corner window explored self-organizing branching structures through the use of elastic cords and free nodes. The structure’s shape would be determined by the location of the upper and lower constraints and the self-organization of the individual members.
The side window builds off of the research in the R_Screen and Sky Rail projects. The bone-like wall opens and closes view into the store according to the direction of travel on the sidewalk.
Sky Rail
Final Prototype (Image by SUM Arch)
Final Design (Image by SUM Arch)
Site Diagram (Image by SUM Arch)
Process: Step 1: Select Guidelines
Process: Step 2: Mesh creation through script
Process: Step 3: Convert to Polysurface
Process: Step 4: Convert to Mesh and Weld Seams
Process: Step 5: Smooth Mesh
View inside the railing of the twisting holes
Prototype image showing the angled aperatures
Year: 2007-2008
Location: San Francisco
Description: Matsys was hired as a computational geometry consultant by SUM Arch on this residential project to help create tools to design a stair railing. Using a series of user-generated guidelines, the script builds a irregular cellular pattern of apertures on the railing. Based on a field of attractors, the apertures rotate in the plane of the railing causing the entire railing to open towards certain views as a person walks up or down the stair. Dozens of script iterations were explored before the final design was achieved.
SmartCloud
Physical prototype by Cook + Fox
Digital prototype: natural light
Digital prototype: artifical light
Digital prototype: night lighting
Labeling system for prototype
Ceiling plan of built prototype
Unrolled cells for laser-cutting
Early design prototypes
Early Design Prototypes: Scripts were created for each scenario for design team exploration and testing
Early Design Prototypes: Fabrication issues
Early Design Prototype: Fabrication diagram
Early Design Prototype: Plan of Scheme 5
Early Design Prototype: Section through Scheme 05
Year: 2007
Location: New York
Description: Matsys provided computational design consulting for Cook + Fox on this project. The project was sited in the lobby of a fashion designer’s studio in a Manhattan tower. The design team needed tools to help them model, visualize, and fabricate their design. Matsys created several rhinoscripts that could be used by the design team to iteratively explore their design concept.
N_Table
N_Table at KSA
N_Table with C_Wall in background
Detail
On site
In use
Ronnie stacking the cells
Year: 2007
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Description: This table was designed for small video installation by Norah Zuniga Shaw. The table is made from roughly 200 individual folded paper cells. Using a variation of the rhino-qhull algorithm, each voronoi cell face is further triangulated to create a more rigid structure. The geometry of cells becomes increasingly irregular from bottom to top. The top of the table is covered with rear-projection fabric while the projection and audio equipment and computer are all contained at the bottom of the table.
Credits: Andrew Kudless and Ronnie Parsons
C_Wall
View from outside the gallery door
C_Wall with shadows on floor
The zigzag plan of the wall creates an increased structural stiffness
Dense pattern of shadows
Process diagram
Year: 2006
Location: Banvard Gallery, Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Size: 12′ x 4′ x 8′
Description: This project is the latest development in an ongoing area of research into cellular aggregate structures that has examined honeycomb and voronoi geometries and their ability to produce interesting structural, thermal, and visual performances. The voronoi algorithm is used in a wide range of fields including satellite navigation, animal habitat mapping, and urban planning as it can easily adapt to local contingent conditions. Within our research, it is used as a tool to facilitate the translation and materialization of data from particle-simulations and other point-based data. Through this operation, points are transformed into volumetric cells which can be unfolded, CNC cut, and reassembled into larger aggregates.
Credits: Andrew Kudless and Ivan Vukcevich with Ryan Palider, Zak Snider, Austin Poe, Camie Vacha, Cassie Matthys, Christopher Friend, Nicholas Cesare, Anthony Rodriguez, Mark Wendell, Joel Burke, Brandon Hendrick, Chung-tzu Yeh, Doug Stechschultze, Gene Shevchenko, Kyu Chun, Nick Munoz, and Sabrina Sierawski, and Ronnie Parsons
Tulum Site Museum
Aerial view of museum with Tulum city and ocean in the background
Site location
Site Circulation
Strata
Surface Density
Site Plan
Floor Plan
Aggregate structures
Year: 2005
Location: Tulum Mayan Ruin, Mexico
Description: This competition entry for an archaeological museum outside a Mayan ruin on the Cancun peninsula continues our research into cellular aggregate structures.
Site Location
As an extremely important archeological site, the primary concern at Tulum is the minimization of human impact on the landscape and historical artifacts. This is achieved through the relocation of the museum site to align with the existing flow of movement. This location avoids clearing large areas of forest as well as places the museum between the existing entrance and exit to the ruins.
Program + Circulation
Through the relocation of the museum site, a series of parallel circulation routes are established in relation to the program. The zone closest to the city wall will remain as the main path to the city entrance. The next band out is the museum which is considered as an alternate path to the city. Visitors enter on one end and exit near the entrance to the ruins. The outer band of program contains the offices, toilets, and cafeteria.
Strata
A series of concrete strips are arranged perpendicular to the flow of circulation. These strata are the foundations for the museum above and as retaining walls on the sloped landscape. In addi¬tion they choreograph a spatial rhythm that is experienced as the visitor moves through the site. Visually, they appear as submerged walls, echoing the existing ruins on the site.
Surface Density
In between the strata a paving system is laid whose geometry is based on the density of movement on the landscape. Areas of high density and low density circulation are paved with a differenti¬ated pattern that allows for both small and large size tiles simultaneously.
Aggregate Structures
The museum walls and roofs are composed of a 3D voronoi tile system which explores the nature of aggregate structures through voids rather than mass. The structure relates directly to the stone aggregate walls of the Tulum site: the structure could be considered as the materialization of the voids between the individual stones. Thus, the museum structure refers to the existing tectonic yet renders it lightweight and airy. It is the invisible made visible.
Voronoi Morphologies
Prototype testing algorithm
Prototype detail
2.5D surface voronoi drawings
2.5D surface voronoi FDM model
2.5D surface voronoi FDM model
3D voronoi drawings
3D paper prototype
3D paper prototype detail
Plaster prototype
Plaster prototype
Year: 2005-2006
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Description: Voronoi Morphologies is the latest development in an ongoing area of research into cellular aggregate structures. The voronoi algorithm is used in a wide range of fields including satellite navigation, animal habitat mapping, and urban planning as it can easily adapt to local contingent conditions. Within our research, it is used as a tool to facilitate the translation and materialization of data from particle-simulations and other point-based data into volumetric form. Through this process, it becomes much easier to produce highly differentiated structures that are responsive to local performance criteria.
The project was developed though both 2D and 3D voronoi cellular structures. In both cases, a field of points is used to determine regions of space, or cells, that are closer to a certain point than any other point. As the cells are not constrained by a fixed geometric topology, the cells properties can be tuned in much more specific ways than a tradition rectangular or hexagonal cell arrangement. A custom-designed script was written to connect Rhino with Qhull which did the actual voronoi calculations. The script also digitally unfolds, labels, and prepares the geometry for CNC fabrication.
This technique was developed in collaboration with Jelle Feringa of EZCT Architecture and Design Research in Paris.
For more information about computing convex hulls, voronoi diagrams, and other triangulations, check out the qhull website. Qhull is used in Matlab and many other computational geometry applications.
Suture Chair
strong>Date: 2005
Description: An extension of the Honeycomb Morphologies/Manifold research project, the Suture Chair project uses a double-layer honeycomb system to provide both strength and flexibility to the chair. The shape of the chair itself is developed through multiple sources. The chair is designed to enable rocking and also multiple seating configurations. The outside boundary of the chair is in the shape of a suture curve, the same curve used to stitch tennis balls and baseballs together. This ring provides a boundary on which a mathematically defined minimal surface known as a Enneper surface spans. Through an iterative process whereby different variables were used within the equation, a design was established which had a desired maximum thickness at the edges and a minimum thickness at the center. Thus, where the honeycomb is the least dense, its cell depth is greatest. Likewise, the center of the chair has the highest density of honeycomb members and thus requires the least amount of structural depth in the cell.
Honeycomb Morphologies
Manifold Installation at the AA Projects Review 2004, Photo: Francis Ware
Variable transparency of the wall
Detail of Manifold
Floor detail of Manifold Installation
Manifold Installation
Manifold Installation rendering
Cut files for Manifold
Manifold Installation process
Honeycomb prototypes
Honeycomb Prototype detail
Honeycomb Prototype exploring cell depth and curvature parametric link
Plaster form-finding model
Plaster form-finding model
Date: 2004
Location: London, UK
Description: This research was pursued as part of a MA dissertation in Emergent Technologies and Design at the Architectural Association. The central aim of the research is the development of a material system with a high degree of integration between its design and performance. This integration is inherent to natural material systems for they have been developed through evolutionary means which intricately tie together the form, growth, and behavior of the organism. In industrial material systems, the level of integration is far lower resulting in wide and potentially problematic gaps between its means of production, its geometric and material definition, and its environmental performance. This research explores integration strategies for a particular industrially produced material system for use in architectural applications.
This research develops a honeycomb system that is able to adapt to diverse performance requirements through the modulation of the system’s inherent geometric and material parameters while remaining within the limits of available production technologies. The Honeycomb Morphologies Project is based on the desire to form an integrated and generative design strategy using a biomimetic approach to architectural design and fabrication.
The system developed in this research presents an open framework through which the designer can work, enabling a more integral relationship between the various conflicting and overlapping issues in the development of an architectural project. The research represents a tool, waiting to be actively used with specific project data and embedded in a built artifact.
The Manifold installation was a large scale prototype constructed for the AA 2004 Projects Review. The installation explored the research developed in the Honeycomb Morphologies Project and extended it to a more architectural scale.
Credits: Andrew Kudless with help from Jayendra Sha, Nikolaos Stathopoulos, Giorgos Kailis, Matthew Johnson, Ranidia Lemon, Muchuan Xu, Grace Li, Scott Cahill, and Wongpat Suetrong.
C_Tower
C_Tower Elevation
C_Tower Plans: Plan ocillates between 3 sides and 12 sides
Year: 2004
Location: London
Description: This short (1-day) research project explores the use of large scale cellular structures in the design of towers. The tower is built up from a series of cells, each spanning 15 floors. The nature of each cell is to expand horizontally as load is applied. This force is countered by tension in the floor plates. The facade is composed of two types of cells, one of no curvature and one of single curvature. A parametric model was produced to explore the rotation, height, and size of floors.
Cellular Form-Finding
Plaster form-finding model
Plaster form-finding model
Analysis of prototype
Plaster prototype 2
Plaster prototype 2 detail
Various plaster prototypes using balloons withing balloons
Plaster prototype
Plaster prototype
Year: 2004-2009
Location: London
Description: Inspired by the work of scientists William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Joseph Plateau, and D’Arcy Thompspn as well as the designer Frei Otto on the geometry of cellular bodies, this ongoing project explores physical form-finding techniques and aggregate structures. In an attempt to embody the knowledge gained through an investigation of the physics and mathematics of minimal surfaces, surface tension, and cellular aggregates by Kelvin, Plateau, and Thompson, the project looked to physical experiments that would reveal the basic laws of aggregation. Cellular bodies (water filled balloons) were allowed to self-organize into packed clusters. By casting the negative space around the cellular aggregates, it was possible to easily fabrication what are called cellular solids (solid foams). The research began in London while at the Architectural Association and has continued over the years, informing many other projects such as C_Wall, Voronoi Morphologies, and P_Wall.