EMERGENT TECHNOLOGIES AND DESIGN, BOOTCAMP 2019 - 2020 Course Director Dr. Elif Erdine Founding Director Dr. Michael Weinstock Studio Tutors Alican Sungur Eleana Polychronaki Abhinav Chaudhary Lorenzo Santelli
GROUP 7 Debolina Ray Devaiah Ponnimada
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
ABSTRACT The motive of this project was to initiate a thought process based on the basic principles of algorithmic thinking and an iterative design process, with the initial constraints being a type of surface and two different material systems. The process of iteration would therefore help us understand methods of testing and prototyping, The surface assigned to us was an articulated surface and the materials assigned were paper and veneer. The project was divided into two phases: In phase 1, we had to develop an articulated surface using paper as our material.The prototypes and material tests were conducted keeping in mind the nature of the material. We explored the properties of paper; its strengths and drawbacks, both individually and as a conglomerate system. Observations from different articulated surfaces existing in nature were also used to generate guidelines based on which we generated our final articulated surface design. After we progressed with tests on paper, we analysed the failures of kerfing and joinery techniques. In phase 2, we critically reflected on the failures in phase 1 and further modified our approach to working with veneer. We further developed our local geometry by modifying our module with 3 vertices to a module with 4 vertices thereby changing our regional geometry. This in turn helped us achieve our global geometry.
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Abstract
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Index
INDEX 1. Introduction 2. Computational Logic a. Logic b. Pseudo code c. Prototyping 3. Phase 1 a. Material tests b. Kerfing tests c. Prototype layering tests 4. Phase 2 a. Material tests b. Joinery tests c. Global geometry 5. Conclusion
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
INTRODUCTION We started by understanding the meaning of articulated surfaces. An articulated surface can be defined as a surface comprising of a number of elements joined together. The articulated surface may or may or may not have a seamless joinery system. Also, we were assigned the final material as Veneer. The initial goal was to understand the geometry and its implication on paper as a material, which we could carry on keeping in mind our final material. Hence, making a structurally stable and logical sytem was kept in mind from the start. Our approach was set by observing a few articulated surfaces that already exist in nature and understanding the system on a holistic level. We began by generating our shape from a gridded structure, then extracting hexagons, further joining the circles along the vertices to achieve our triangular prototype. Further we researched on layering of materials to achieve an articulated surface.
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Introduction
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Courtesy: Flickr.com
Introduction
White royal butterfly egg
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Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Computational Logic
LOGIC From our observations based on the various articulated surfaces existing in nature, we tried to sum up a few guidelines based on which our articulated surface would be structured. Hence, we took into consideration the following points: a. The most commonly found geometry on articulated surfaces. b. Layering techniques and how it affects in naturally existing articulated surfaces in carbon compounds. c. Joinery systems that exist within the structure of articulated surfaces.
Joinery system between components
Component from geometry analysis
Layering
ARTICULATED SURFACE
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Computational Logic
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
PSEUDO - CODE
Step 1
Generate a developable surface.
Step 2
Divide the surface into a hexagonal grid and find the vertices.
Step 3
Find the centroid of the hexagons.
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Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Step 4
Inscribe circles using the centroids.
Step 5
Develop a surface in the region difference between the hexagons and the circles.
Step 6
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Computational Logic
Extrude the vertices with respect to their normals. Amplitude of vector based on physical tests.
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Computational Logic
Creating a double gridded membrane
Step 1
Insertion of hexagons along the grid
Step 2
Populating with hexagons to understand the global relationship
Step 3 8
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
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Computational Logic
Generation of circles with center points as the vertices of the hexagons
Step 4
Collation of points generated from the center of the circles and generating a relation between ach other.
Step 5
Computational Logic
Step 6
Step 7
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Generating the bounds for our module.
Collation of points generated from the center of the circles and generating a relation between ach other.
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Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Computational Logic
PROTOTYPING
Module generation sketch
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Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Phase 1
PHASE 1 Material and kerfing tests Component optimisation using kerfing techniques.
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Offsetting layers for strengthening the weaker joints. 13
Phase 1
Phase 1
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Layering the multiple components using joints.
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PHASE 1 Prototyping tests
Observation: 1. Layering improved strength of the regional geometry. 2. No global geometry achieved. 3. Kerfing pattern led to loss of the paper’s strength but at the same time helped ending evenly along all 3 vertices.. 15
Phase 1
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Phase 2
PHASE 2 Material tests - Veneer
Observation: 1. Veneer bends easily along the grain. 2. Cracks emerge after a point of compression. 3. The bending quality along the grain improves with span. 4. The bending quality against the grain improves with increase in span along the grain.
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Bending techniques to achieve a global geometry
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Phase 2
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Phase 2
PHASE 2 Joinery tests
Images showing the re-orientation of layers by moving the joint holes on the bottom layer inwards to induce curvature into our local geometry. 18
Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
Images showing the stiffness, strength and curvature gained by the improved joinery system and kerfing techniques, post phase 1; into our regional geometry. 19
Phase 2
Phase 2
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Images showing the state of transient equilibrium the regional geometry achieved after 6 modules were joined to each other. To achieve global geometry, the system was changed to accomodate 5 joints instead of 6. 20
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Local Geometry
Regional Geometry
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Phase 2
Phase 2
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Global Geometry
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Emergent Technologies and design | AA School of Architecture
CONCLUSION 1. Transitioning from paper to veneer, demanded the need to modify the geometry of the module in order to achieve desired results. 2. Changing the geometry of the module affected the strength of the overall surface and inturn the global geometry. 3. Having been made aware of alternate methods of generating the vertices of the hexagonal grid, we relooked at the computational logic.
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Conclusion
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