Digital Fabrications in Architecture // Technicolor Bloom

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.