March 2007

with Alisa Andrasek, Biothing; Ezio Blasetti, Che Wei Wang, Fabian Evers, Lakhena Raingsan, Jin Pyo Eun, Mark Bearak, Michael Reed

DotNet plugin for Rhinoceros

It is one thing to speak in metaphors of dynamic systems of design, and another thing entirely to build an computational system which produces formally and functionally viable designs. This entry for the Pavilion Seroussi competition began with a metaphor inspired by the forms evoked by electro-magnetic field lines, and developed into a more complete and specific system for producing architectural form. The design metaphor was refined, developed, and coaxed into a working dot-net plugin for Rhinoceros.

Project development began with an interactive electro-magnetic field model, the type that one might use to visualize the behavior of electric forces between charged particles in space. Through extensive experimentation, we found that the actual lines generated by a fully three-dimensional EMF model were too often illogical or undesirable when read architectonically: either flying wildly off into infinity, or collapsing too quickly into negative charges. However, when employed two-dimensionally, we found the suggestion of a plan organization to be evocative and full of potential.

In short, pure EMF lines are evocative, but difficult to control and coax into an architecturally viable form. This led us to a new breed of "corrupted" trajectory, behaving like an electric field line in plan, but adhering to a more directly architectural logic in section. Conceptually, each of these trajectories is something like a structural arch, with one spring point near an electric charge and the other defining boundary of the form. In this way, although twisted by the electromagnetic forces in plan, every trajectory results in an architecturally viable form: both enclosing an occupiable volume of space and describing a structurally viable form.