bespoke geometry

 

CITA was invited to the ACADIA 2013 Conference in Cambridge Ontario to hold a design/build workshop. The workshop took its point of departure from CITA’s earlier project “the Rise” and further developed this research in the digital design and fabrication of aggregations of variably sized bundles of fibre material that multiply, bend, branch, and recombine in a distributed assembly that manifests an alternative to traditional structural systems, further exploring the conceptualization, technologies and making of an architecture that is continuously sensing and dynamically adapting to its environment as it grows into form. The workshop participants received insights into the algorithmic basis for the digital model, and both the CNC and physical processes of fabrication in a hands-on way.

 

 

(more…)

 

The Social Weavers is a bending active, non-standard grid shell structure made from fibre composite rods of variable diameter and stiffness. The installation develops aggregate self-forming processes that intersect with the behavioural activation and distribution of fibre-composites under design direction for the production of a novel architecture. The Social Weavers installation is conceptualised as a nest. It is comprised of multiple, actively-bent splines that are articulated through a network of collected, interwoven elements, whose local behaviours aggregate into a globally non-linear structural assembly. The central component of the design model for the Social Weavers is the custom-written, verlet-integrated particle simulation library that is set up specifically to allow for collections of particles to be organized through unfixed and transitional topologies. It allows for the incremental addition of new elements over time, and for existing elements to continuously undergo reassessment of the force relationships in which they participate.

(more…)