2015 / SEMESTER 1 / BRADLEY ELIAS PAULINA PYTKA
ALGORITHMIC SKETCHBOOK
CATHEDRAL OF BRASILIA / LÚCIO COSTA & OSCAR NIEMEYER
UPMAGAZINE-TAP.COM, ‘UP MAGAZINE – TAP PORTUGAL » 10 BRASILIA BASICS’, 2015 <HTTP://UPMAGAZINE-TAP.COM/EN/PT_ARTIGOS/10-BRASILIA-BASICS-2/> [ACCESSED 16 MARCH 2015]
Like many of Oscar Niemeyer’s projects, characterised by strong silhouettes, the Cathedral of Brasilia is a striking geometric form. It is highly regular, being a circle of16 curved concrete columns connected with glazing. The structure beacons its stability in the way it sits on its site. The wider end firmly planted with the column elements drawing upwards and into the air as to mimic an explosion. As a public building bearing symbolic value to the city, the Cathedral of Brasilia successfully responds to its design constraints.
A distorted cone like geometry was obtained directly in Rhino by applying the Sweep1 Command to a single NURBS line profile located on the edge of a base circle that acted as a rail for the overall geometry. Essentially, the OcTree function enabled the mapping of the NURBS surface produced by using a series of blocks that correspond to a number of points randomly distributed across it.