Re-imagining the factory

me again!

Just wanna share with you guys what i'm doing in studio...i've had 4 studio sessions so far and we're gonna be, at the end of the day, designing a factory of any program you wish...we haven't been handed the detailed brief yet so will fill you guys in at a later date.

my studio is given access to a program called surface evolver that is in its simpliest explanation a study of surfaces shaped by surface tension and/or constraints and takes into account volumes instead of scales of objects. "the evolver evolves surfaces toward minimal energy". basically, you can input controlled volumes varying in the types of surfaces (like fixed points, volume 1, volume 10, tension 1, constraint 1 etc) done in the sister program rhino and type in commands like jiggle, equiangulate, vertex averaging, refine and what not and just sit back and watch ur volumes evolve. its pretty cool cos its set in the DOS based interface and you feel like a complete cool nerd. my tutor made us practice in groups saying "don't evolve alone, evolve with a friend; it can get quite frustrating". we got an intro lesson at the SIAL labs (each terminal's got 2 screens). to start off we had to purchase lego cubes to play around (these will be the "volumes").

for the first esquisse, repetition and inflection, we were to produce a market hall composed of a series of portal frames and a cladding system. for a brief moment i was tempted to just cut and paste TIAC but i held back...hehe. anyway, here's what i did. they call it the purple spider.


Esquisse 2, a good staircase loves a void. Mutating a truss from the first esquisse (my mutation was inspired by the decay of nature vs the reformation of the human grid), we were to design a walkway across the site with 2 voids/ staircase though that links into other levels of the complex. a.k.a time to evolve! yum..mindless fun!


We are in the midst of esquisse 3, rethinking the blob which is due next week. If you guys haven't heard of Greg Lynn, check him out..the idea of 'performace envelopes' in response to the demands of contemporary living is pretty interesting. its not just about seductive images guys..anyway, we are to design a small farm, food processing plant (plant and produce), and restaurant facilites (eat, drink, dance) within a single 'blob' structure. We are doing this in pairs but for today's studio we presented our own initial sketches. i wasn't really happy with the outcome of my initial form but i was too tired to give a **.