CONCEPT

MECA Cultural Centre by BIG

MECA Cultural Centre by BIG

This project demonstrates the final study outcome of the MAA01 program (2021-2022)’s Computational Design seminar, using the façade of the MECA Cultural Centre by Bjarke Ingels Group. The concept of the parametric design is to diminish the noise pollution near the building which is mostly caused by traffic. The parametric panels which are set as the window openings change the width based on the distance between the noise and the façade. As the noise gets closer to the building the panels get bigger so the window opening become smaller, less noise enters the building.

GRASSHOPPER SCRIPT

PSEUDOCODE 

  1. Choose the surfaces from the rhino file and put them in the  grasshopper file 
  2. Merge the surfaces so that they can be controlled together
  3. Use the “Isotrim” command to create the grids on the surfaces
  4. Use the “Divide Domain2” command to determine how many  segments should be created in the U and V direction 
  5. Use the “Partition List” command to create branches for each  column 
  6. “Cull Index” to exclude the first and last column from each of the  surfaces. 
  7. To determine the last column, we include the expression “x-1” – if  we manually enter 9 the code is not parametric & to include the  first, we input “0” as a panel 
  8. Using the chessboard code select every alternating rectangle  vertically and horizontally which will be the window openings we  will be adjusting depending on the attractor point. 
  9. Using the “Tree Statistics” command find the paths of the  branches 
  10. “Dispatch” the paths to select the alternating columns
  11. Retrieve the branches from List A and B 
  12. “Dispatch” again to select the alternating rows for both lists from  branches 
  13. Merge the data from the final dispatch to create a chessboard  module 
  14. One of the merged data from here becomes the solid surface  which we will only extrude perpendicular to the surface
  15. The other one is the window panel which is reacting to the  attractor point 
  16. The window panels will be scaled by keeping the height same  and only changing the width of the segments 
  17. To be able to scale the segments we have to evaluate surface and  find the frames which becomes the plane we are scaling
  18. In order to set the scale factor as a parametric value we set an  attractor point and we will amplitude the width depending on  the attractor point. 
  19. To find the vector value for the amplitude we use “Vector 2PT” to  find the vector between the centre of each rectangle and the  attractor point.
  20. For the “Amplitude” which is the scale factor we first make the  “Distance” between the attractor point and the centre of each  square. As the value here is too high we have to remap the values so we “Bound” to find min and max value as the source and  “Construct Domain” for our target value.
  21. The “Amplitude” command is used as the scale factor on the “X  axis”
  22. We need to extrude the rectangle so they become a solid surface.  To extrude perpendicularly we have to “Evaluate Surface”
  23. The “Evaluate Surface” command requires a “UV Point” input  which is found using the “Surface Closest Point” in which the  centre of each rectangle is used as the point.
  24. To “Extrude” we use the data from the “Scale NU” as the geometry  and for the direction we use “Amplitude” in order to set a value  with a vector.
  25. We build the solid facades on grasshopper (extruding the  surfaces) too so that it will be easier. We internalised the data so  the model can be opened with the grasshopper script only. The facades don’t require any parametric features.

 

ANIMATION