Digital Architecture

Huyghe + Le Corbusier Puppet Theater
MOS, 2004

To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University—his only North American project—this theater was constructed within the site’s sunken exterior courtyard specifically for a puppet performance by the conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe.

The organic form of the theater was built with five hundred unique white polycarbonate panels, diamond-shaped and interlocking to create a rigid structure; because they are simply bolted together, they are easily assembled and disassembled. Forces dissipate across the assembled surface, which encloses the theater space, and the modulated ceiling panels are turned inside out to create skylights and, like keystones, structural stability. 

Interior view.

CATIA model. Photo: MOS

The panels are three inches in depth and span more than fifteen feet at the center of the theater. Foam inserts placed in the panels stiffen the plastic shell. An exterior layer of moss covers the plastic panels, so at night, when light permeates the edges of the diagonal plastic panels, the moss appears suspended.


Entering the theater from Quincy Street through a soft, flexible opening focused around a tree, the space bulges to form an interior of reflective, glossy, white plastic walls. Undulating white foam seating repeats the patterning and dimension of the plastic panels, creating a uniform vessel.

The interior compresses, looking toward the stage opening. When the puppet performance isn’t playing, there is a view into the Carpenter Center, while the soft entrance frames a single tree as one exits. The theater collapses the synthetic and organic into a single structural surface.

Unfolded panels.

Formed plastic panels and assembly.

Formed plastic panels and assembly.

Moss-filled panel. Photo: Michael Vahrenwald

Assembly. Photo: MOS

 

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u

Technicolor Bloom

Brennan Buck, 2007

Technicolor Bloom is a full-scale prototype that produces doubly curved, digitally designed geometry, using completely standard, scalable fabrication technology. It proposes a method and a set of aesthetic principles that extend the architectural potential of topological form by incorporating such architectural systems as structure, aperture, fenestration, and construction directly into the project’s geometry.

Built from fourteen hundred uniquely cut, flat plywood panels, the installation favors intense detail over seamless elegance.

At the same time, it proliferates continuity: continuity of surface morphology, continuity of the structural patterns across those surfaces, and varied interrelationships of depth and color from one surface to the next. 

Laser-cut panels

test mock-up

installation.

The result is a kaleidoscopic study of the literal and phenomenal effects of three-dimensional pattern. These patterns reinforce the geometry they define in one moment and cloud it the next. Finally, the installation proposes a variation of architectural figure that evokes loose, variable associations while remaining in the realm of affect.

Technologically, the project is comparable to the Technicolor film process, which multiplies the visual intensity of film through the superimposition of three primary colors. Technicolor Bloom embraces the geometry of subdivision surfaces and techniques of computation but treats them as a given rather than as motivation.

While adaptive tessellation algorithms were used to produce the initial patterns, parametric design, with its associated discourses of efficiency and automated authorship, was suppressed in favor of specific design intention and the precise control of visual effects. In addition to pattern variations, a series of techniques were used to multiply the affective qualities of the patterned surface.

Surfaces were layered at various depths to produce moirés and other effects, while individual structural members were thickened or trimmed down to emphasize a network of figures that materialize and fade away within the overall pattern.

Panel-cutting templates.

Details showing converging pattern.

Details showing converging pattern.

Tessellation studies. Photo: Brennan Buck

View from above.

View from inside.

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u

“Dark Places”

servo, 2006

Detail showing image scrape.

Diagram of image scrape.

Detail of touch-screen interface.

Production of canopy units during installation.

Section drawings.

Completed project at Santa Monica Museum of Art. Photo: Erdman Photography

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u

Tool-Hide
Ruy Klein, 2006

This project manipulates the technical limitations of CNC milling to produce ornamentation, using animal hides as a conceptual starting point. A set of four oversize closet doors were fabricated and then staggered in an overlapping pattern.

The fabrication technique carefully managed the size of the router bit with a corresponding network of manipulated tooling paths to produce a cellular pattern of “scallops”— artifacts of a crude pass over the digitally formed surface geometry.

Left unsanded, the tactile surface bore a texture akin to an elephant or iguana skin.

Concept related to iguana skin.

Tool paths.

Surface sample tests

Surface sample tests

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u

Gradient Scale
SPAN, 2005

Gradient Scale was conceived and built for the group exhibition “AustriArchitecture.” The project explores issues of nonsequential scalar growth, surface articulation, and the panelization of a continuous nonrepeating surface using CNC fabrication methods. The design challenges the concept of scale in architecture and establishes a conceptual “digitalscape” as a testing ground for leaping scalar associations in viewing the exhibition.

To achieve a continuously growing scalar model, the architects developed an MEL script that repeated a series of five curves along the predefined length of the exhibition object. These curves were connected in Maya, creating a “bi-rail” surface.

Through several iterations of forces influencing the surface, different degrees of articulations of the final element were created. The undulating surface can be read as a repetition of the one-to-one detail: the greater the frequency of the curves grows, the flatter the amplitude of the curves gets, resulting in a pattern that can be read as a texture in an urban scale.


Issues connected to digital production methods were explored using a three-axis milling machine. Using the milling software, SPAN calculated the tool paths to examine different surface patterns. These patterns emerged from the isoparms derived from the computational model.

The final milled result was informed by consciously manipulating the isoparms, as well as by choosing different mill bits and varying the step sizes of the milling path. The jagging and rippling of the surface created reinforcement ribs in the panel’s structure.

 The problem of panelization was also explored in the production of Gradient Scale. The object, twenty feet long and five feet wide, was produced in three segments. Instead of forming straight, rectangular pieces, the cuts follow the model’s isoparms, creating puzzle-like joints. Because the joints follow the NURBS’s geometry, their formal appearance matches the entire project’s language.

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u

Digital Origami
University of Technology, Sydney/Chris Bosse, 2007

Exterior rendering of design

Rendering showing nesting of two module types

Interior rendering

Unfolded modules

Individual modules waiting for assembly on-site

Module, second type

Assembly

laser-cut modules from recycled cardboard.

Completed installation.

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u

“Housing in Vienna”

SPAN, 2007–8

This “pod family” was designed for the traveling exhibition “Housing in Vienna.” It demonstrates a clear evolution of the pod as it includes the creation of limbs evolving out of the shell-shaped system. Just three surfaces build up one pod.

The pod form is derived from the Cairo tessellation, whose inherent geometry allows it to repeat in multiple ways, thus creating manifold possibilities for assembling the exhibition in various given environments without compromising the overall appearance of the design.

Three shells form single pod.

Mobile-exhibition “colony of pods.”

Illumination tests with vacuum-formed prototype.

Illumination tests with vacuum-formed prototype.

Book Reference:

Digital Fabrications Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto 
https://amzn.to/3Gt0s2u