algorithmic journal MITCHELL PREEN 2015 UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
CONSTRUCTING A VASE
1.01
VASE 1
To form this vase I used three basic circles that were stretched in the X or Y direction, with the middle circle/ oval being rotated 90 degrees.
VASE 2
In order to make the above vase I created a closed curve of four points and then made three copies of this shape through the move command and then chamfered the edges of each shape according to how I wanted to make it look.
1.03
Vase 3
For this process I started of with one circle and moved (copied) it up twice. What I found interesting here was that all the circles have the same radius and what has made the vase appear to curve in and out is the rotation and I found this very surprising until I realised that it is tracking the original point of each circle to where it is after the rotation and so the loft also follows this rotation going up the height of the vase.
1.04
Vase 4
To create this vase I started off by creating a number of points and then fitting a spline between them, however it wasnt a closed spline so I followed this by rotating the resulting spline by 180 degrees, effectively creating a mirror. To finish the vase i copied (moved) two circles up from the originial and then lofted the surfaces. The variation of form was created by the vertical displacement of the moved circles, and also from the positioning of each point.
1.05
1.06
Vase 5 This vase was created by following a tutorial online, with some changes to final state and although this wasn’t my own thought process it taught me quite a lot, just in terms of how much variability I can create from simple things, for example a sine equation. And I think not really, knowing what each of the commands were, initially, was a very good learning process because I was constantly trying to understand what the purpose of each one was. I think what also made it a good learning process was that, at times the tutorial was unclear and so I had to fill in the gaps and figure out how I could solve the issue because what I did would often come up with error
creating a pavilion
TEXT TE XT BOX BOX X
2.01
creating a pavilion
2.02
PAVILION 1 In creating the pavilion I started off by making two curves which would act as my base and then from there i created a set of biarcs between the two curves and then varied the point at which the apex between the two biarcs would occur through the use of an attractor. I think something else I should have done is vary the height with which each arc went in the Z-direction in order to make it more obvious, however i still like the subtlety that the attractor has given to the form of the pavilion.
creating a pattern
3.01
PATTERN FROM: IMAGE In order to make this pattern of different sized circles I used an image and according to the image’s black and white values, each according point would have a value between 0 and 1 and therefore affect the radius of each points corresponding circle in the grid.
creating a pattern
3.02
PATTERN FROM: CULL LIST - FLATTENED I started of by making a square grid of 14 x 14 and then mapped all of these points. To create a pattern from this that treated them all as individual points (a list of 196 points instead of 14 rows of 14 points) I used the flatten tree command in order to break up all these rows, or branches, of the ‘tree’. I then proceeded to cull the points according to whichever pattern I liked
creating a pattern
3.03
PATTERN FROM: CULL LIST - NON FLATTENED To create this pattern I started by making a grid full of points and made it a square grid. I then mapped these points and then culled them according to the pattern: 0 true 1 true 2 true 3 false 4 true 5 false 6 false 7 true 8 true This resulted in the pattern as shown to the left becase it was treating the list as a set of numbers with 18 rows.
creating a pattern
3.04
PATTERN FROM: VORONOI To create this pattern I started by creating a plane with a 12 x 12 grid of points. I then flattened the list of points, culled them accordingly and then created a voronoi mapping from those points and then jittered the points to rearrange the orders and then offset the resulting shapes to give it some thickness.
CREATING A WEB
4.01
These definitions were focused on simulating gravity and force on simple objects that everyone knows well - webs. The definitions are formed by creating a series of circles thats spacing is altered by changing the graphs seen above and below, which in this case created circles with spacing that got smaller as they got closer to the centre point. The next part of the definition focuses on creating a web like pattern and so a simple voronoi with a cull pattern is used to remove points and create a quick pattern that resembles a web of a spider.
Here, the definition focuses on creating a web that is influenced only by gravity, or a downwards force, on the horizontal plane. The typical gravity figure for 9.8 ms-2 was used initially however the web structure did not react as expected and underwent large amounts of stretching - suggesting that the patterned web is not very good structurally - and as a result, the downward force was then lowered to provide a visual result similar to real life situations.
This web is essentially the same as above, however, it is created in the vertical plane and numerous forces are applied to the web structure. These forces were created to mimic that of gravity and wind, providing both downward and lateral forces. This definition differs however, in the working of the final pattern. Here, a simple check of the th final lengths of each line in the webs was crea created as there were some undesired lines and this was w used to separate the lines so that they could be b removed.
PART B research field patterning
case study 1.0 SPANISH PAVILION
The case study revolves around simple, slightly altered hexagonal shapes with six unique hexagons. These hexagons are then displaced and rearranged to create the facade and a pattern is used to determine which hexagons are hollowed and which are not.
BASE DEFINITION
This section of the definition is focused on creating the base hexagonal shapes so that they can be displaced so that the entire facade is created
This part of the d shapes using mat from these 6 hex
The last portion of the definition is where the patterning of the hollowed out sections are determined and this is done through the use of an image to determine a pattern, basically true or false, to decide which hexagons on the facade will become hollowed out.
definition displaced the original 6 hexagonal thematical formulae to create the facade xagons
species 1 CHANGING HEXAGONAL FRAMES
SPECIES 2 CULL PATTERN
SPECIES 3 CHANGING INTERNAL GEOMETRY
SPECIES 4 EXTRUDE POINT GEOMETRY
CASE STUDY 2.0 GALLERIA CENTERCITY
This design, by UNStudio, is based around creating an interesting facade with which is ever changing depending on the angle from which you look at it. The facade is created using contours and is made more difficult as it bends around the corner, resulting in a much more complex definition.
Reverse engineering galleria centercity
create the base curves.
draw vertical lines between these curves and then divide their length to give a set of points.
project these points onto flat xy plane so that the image sample can displace these points.
With these points, create a surface for which to project the original vertical lines onto (step 2)
Project vertical lines onto surface.
create bottom detailing for ground level entry.
loft surfaces for each component to finsh the facade.
The overall creation of the facade was more difficult than anticipated because initially created a curve that was displaced only in the x and z axes was used (the case study bends around at a right angle and so is displaced at x, y and z axes) and then points were divide among the vertical chords and then finished off with an image sampler. In order to get the facade to work when turning around the corner, projection of these points onto a flat plane was used.
PART c
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Shading panels Fixing the displacment
The problem is that when trying to move the panels onto the correct positions vertically - some were now above and below - and because previously a simple distance calculation was done to move them to the correct positions, this caused some panels to be floating because a distance cannot be negative.
The solution was made by constructing a vector from one point to the other and then only the vertical displacement component is used to correctly position the panels so that they connect correctly. This solved a hole in the definition, which was previously unknown, as the values had either been all positive or all negative and so through altering the design so that the shading panels covered across the whole length of the rest area, a potential problem was solved. The result of this was a greater flexibility of the definition for further work
Technique solar radiation analysis Solar radiation analysis was used by inputting data from a local Melbourne weather hub and then using this data on solar radiation and sun path, the design of the shading panels were influenced and its form was given entirely by trying to minimise the amount of incoming solar radiation that would hit the seat between the summer period for Melbourne. This was done so that the occupants would want to use the area for its intended purpose.
The purpose of this was to make sure that the design could respond to its surrounds in order to create a design that is truly beneficial for its occupants and the result was a 23% reduction in the amount of incoming solar radiation on the seat during the period of summer for the local area of Melbourne.
Technique Evolutionary simulator An evolutionary simulator that runs through every single possible outcome for any given number of parameters attempts to minimise the or maximise a given variable. For this analysis the variable that was trying to be minimised was the amount of solar radiation that was hitting the surface of the seating area. The parameters that were used, influenced the form of the above shading panels through a series of attractor points, and through these variations in the placement of the attractor points, the solar radiation was decreased by 23%.
The interesting thing about using this tool is that as a designer, creating the most optimally performing structure isn’t always the most important thing - there needs to be a degree of beauty or visual interest. In the context of the design, the most optimally performing parameters were not used as they were not visually appealing and so the right of the designer was exercised in order to make a decision on the visual performance of the structure as well. (minimal changes to the performance were also made, less than 0.8%).
Technique comfort level The design takes the data from Australian climate - precise to the nearest local weather station within the state - in order to determine the solar radiation and UV effect of solar rays on a particular person. A 3D person is placed within a certain area of the design - for this analysis the person was placed within the zone at which the solar shading gives most shade, as is intended by the shading panels - and calculates the amount of solar radiation hitting that person in order to calculate the amount of comfort that person would feel whilst staying / resting within the design as is the intended purpose.
The plugin compiles the actual data for every hour of each day, however, it only lists it as sequential numbers and so the whole definition extracts this data for analysis to find the percentage of people that are under each category. The categories are; and given by the following indices: Cool = -1 Comfortable = 0 Warm = 1 Hot = 2 Very Hot = 3 The total number of occurrences of a particular number are divided by the total number of hours that are analysed to give the percentage of how much time the occupant is spent in each state. The percentage of time spent in each state is given below: *Very cold (-2) is excluded because it is not relevant during summer* Cool = 22.6% Comfortable = 65.4% Warm = 3.3% Hot = 4.9% Very Hot = 3.8% This was used to assess the success of the rest area as a whole, and also to understand whether or not the shading is adequate and successful.