petebooth[iaac]

I’m sitting in front of the laptop, with a3 pages spitting out of the printer beside me.  This obviously means 1 thing: The thesis is complete.  All that is left is to bind the document, mount the A1 and present on Friday, so it’s all good.

You can get a sneak peak of my presentation here.

have taken the good photos of the model for the presentation now, enjoy….

haven’t posted for a while as i’ve been super flat out cutting and assembling the model for my thesis project.  happily i can now say that it is complete, taking the better part of a 5 days to complete.

you can see a video of the fabrication process on vimeo here

It has been a while since the last post, but this of course doesn’t mean that i’ve been slacking off! You can check out the progress of the wall project in the images below.

As you can see, it is almost there and ready for fabrication. There are a few edge components missing. Currently the components works like this:

• the aperture at the front is variated through pixel data taken from an image file
• the aperture at the rear is proportional to the relative distance between the two external faces. when the distance is less, the aperture closes to limit view. in the opposite situation, the aperture opens up, as the walls of the view tunnel control the view
• the direction of the tube is controlled by the view target and the overall opening size of the front and rear surfaces
• the front surface is controlled by 2 splines that create the double curved surface, while the rear surface is always planar

The component also does some fancy things like limiting the apertures to ensure it doesn’t break and also automatically unrolls into 3 separate pieces ready for fabrication

One of the biggest problems has to do with the specific desire to make all the pieces quadrilateral planar surfaces. As the front and rear faces are never parallel, the tunnel can never have 4 planar surfaces. Presently I have made 2 of the faces of the view tunnel triangulated, to ensure that the it never cuts into the external face. I think this is a pure geometric limitation. I intend to fabricate with the model that I have presently as time is running out and conduct further investigation while writing the accompanying paper.

Continuing on from the last component test, the series of images shows its development into a 3D element, onto a 3d surface. The first image shows the front view, demonstrating that the aperture size is proportional to the size of the component.

The rear shows a similar relationship, although this time the proportion is different. The rear is also on a planar surface, while the front is on a curved surface.

The axonometric view shows the difference between the front and rear surfaces. The front also has a ‘hood’ that extrudes from the top-right side of the opening.

At present there are numerous problems with this component:

• it is still self referential, as it has no external drivers
• it can not be fabricated, as it consists of twisted surfaces that can not be cut on a 2D machine
• it remains abstract, as it has no environment in which it sits

The next series of test will begin to address these issues, particularly in terms of construction and fabrication.

This test was completed to determine the effect of changing component size and shape in relation to the size of a potential opening. In the first image you can see all components and openings are very similar in size and shape.

The second image below shows the effect when changing the shape of the overall surface. For this test a 2D component was used on a 2D surface. The parameters that control the size of the opening are only internal, meaning that they only reference the single component itself.

After a quick rewrite of my thesis proposal it has been full steam ahead to begin testing different options and techniques for the architectural skin that I’m working on. The initial tests below deal with parametric perforation.

The perforated holes are created by a cylinder component that calculates it’s radius based upon the distance between the two skins. The surface at the rear is controlled by two splines. I wanted to see the effect on a planar surface and a curved surface so the cylinders are subtracted from both.

In order to be selected for our chosen thesis group we had to prepare a statement and proposal outlining our intentions for the 5 week project.  As you would imagine, once we were placed in our groups and met with out supervisor there were changes to be made.

Associative Form Finding and Componentry Definition:
An Investigation into Parametrics and Fabrication.

This was the title that I finally decided upon, but it may well change as the project goes on.  It is basically intended to be a study of parametric and associative software and it’s connection with fabrication.  It will use an Adaptive Architectural Skin as a vehicle for this study and will be accompanied by a support paper that emphasizes the process and provides supporting case studies, etc.  Fingers crossed that it all goes well.

You can download a copy of the proposal here.