STUDIO AIR

Youn Hwa Lee

2013

expression of

interest journal

table of contents

design focus

case study 1.0

case study 1.0 matrix

future development

case study 2.0

case study 2.0 matrix

technique: prototype

technique: proposal

reference

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12

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design focus

Biomimicry is literally mimicing nature. It is design learning from the work of God. It can be brought to design and solve problems in shape, function and system. To illustrate, the university of MAssa-chusetts Institute of Technology have developed how butterfly’s eye have a structure that blocks light reflect on a surface. (Fig. 16) “Biomimetics brings in a whole different set of tools and ideas you wouldn’t otherwise have,” says materials sci-entist Michael Rubner of MIT.16 Michael Rubner Nature has provieded endless influence to human how to express beauty and experience. When we think of organic form, we think of curved from. It is because nature contains lots of complex curve elements, in order to process of continuous move-ments. In the design process of biomimicry, we take the design motif, create a pattern and pro-duce final design. We believe biobibicry can fulfil the needs of Wyndham City Gateway Project.

Coral a great subject for expressing curiosity and creativity as it has interesting structure and beauty. It has an asthetic value of sculpture found in the ocean. There are many types of corals such as brain coral (Fig. 17), tree coral (Fig. 18), star coral (Fig. 19) and many more. As many people including I, thinks corall is a plant but actually coral is an animal. They lay eggs and eat micro-organisms or small fishes with polyps. Coral is formed with several polyps PIC which is Latin word for “many legs”. They are cnidaria where mouths are placed on the centre and surrounded by crown shaped tentacles.17 They flaunt various colours and it is they corals are called flowers of the ocean.

16 “National Geographic, Biomimetics,” Tom Mueller, Last updated April 2008, http://ngm.nationalgeo-graphic.com/2008/04/biomimetics/tom-mueller-text, 17 Yim, Da-Hye, A Study on the Expression of Images of the Sea, Graduate School of Dong-A University, Korea, 2009

Figure 16 microscopic Eye of but-terfly on monitor MIT Laboratory

Figure 17 Brain coral

eye of Butterfly

Figure 20 close up of polyp on coral

various colourful corals Figure 18 tree coral

Figure 19 star coral

The Wyndham City Gateway project is placed on Prices Freeway in Warribee which is going to be a gateway for Wyndham, it is an entrance for the Wyndham. It would be a symbol of Wyndham as it be-comes the gate of the city. The final design need to be something that the locals feel pride in, that can represent themselves, community and dynamic form to keep people’s interest. They are seeking for a exciting, eye catching installation for the local people and travellers going pass. As Wyndham is a small city, unfamiliar to many people, they have a desire to express their presence, expand and grow into a bigger community. It is our task to produce a sensational design to spread the reputation of Wyndham.

The colourful appearance of coral catch people’s eye, people are moved and suprised by the beauty of nature. It became one of the reason why corals are suitable for the Wyndham ciry gateway project requires eye chatching and exciting gateway. As the dynamic curve of the branches that sway through the ocean wave gives us a sense of flexibility and organic form as natural is about how they transform harmoniously together. Our group have decided to focus of tree like corals and use the idea of how corals grow with geometric pattern of polyp. As corals have symbiosis relationship with tidal current as they need sun lights to develop nutritians and grow, it connects with the idea of growth of Wynd-ham city. How corals sprawl toward the light to grow is like how Wyndham city growing to live. In our idea, Melbourne is the sun and Wyndham is the structure of the coral where hundreds of polyps live on. (Fig. 20) The polyps symbolize the residents of Wyndham. Polyps produce calcium for coral to grow and increase of population means growth of city. The city grows toward Melbourne CBD to get bigger and stronger community as Melbourne is city centred. In addition, corals obsorb half of carbondioxide under the sea, which plays an important role of sustaining environment and keeping Earth healthy. It implies a wish for the Wyndham city to become a essential city to Melbourne.

Wyndham City

Melbourne CBD

growing toward CBD

diagram of connection of highways with wyndham and melbourne cbd

princes highway

case study 1.0

Figure 21 process of the morning line

basic geometry

with out pattern

with pattern

structure structure with fractal

fractal skeleton

The precedent for case study 1.0, our group has chosen is The Morning Line by Aranda and Lasch. They are parametric designers, they design furniture, objects and buildings. They use algorithms that grow and develop the structure. In the interviewed of Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, they said “We have a fascination with a systems and particularly fascinated with modular systems.“ They have a cer-tain system that creates a infinite alternatives.

The fractal geometries are created through subdivision then use them to design a continuous fractal pattern across the structure.. The Morning Line was installed outside the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Con-temporary. (Fig.22) Built by Mattew Ritchie, Aranda, Lasch and Arup AGU. It is a public art structure 8 meters high and 20 meters long constructed with black-coated aluminium. Interesting exploration they did was installing 50 speakers playing interactive ambisonic sound system conceived by Music Re-search Centre of York University

The design process of The Morning Line seemed like a difficult process, however it is an interesting proj-ect.(Fig.21) The dynamic work of the curves and basic structure. With the basic geometry bezier span splines imprinted on each faces., They formed a structure where the geometries mirror themselves the create circular shapes. Fractal geometries were added to the corners of the geometries. Finally, Aranda and Lasch took out the geometry structure, which only leaves pattern planes which creates an interest-ing effect of tangled complex installation.

18 “Building Awe-Inducing Crystalline Structures”, TheCreatorsProject, Youtube, last modified14 March 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6KoTNt2_W]Y19 “The Morning Line Launches in Istanbul” ARTPULSE, , last modified 22 May 2010, http://artpulsemag-azine.com/the-morning-line-launches-in-istanbul

Aranda and Lasch- The Morning Line

figure 22 the morning line, mattew ritchie, aranda, lasch and arup agu, Österreich , 2007 benjamin aranda and chris lasch

Top view Fractal Tetrahedral Bezier Span Two Bezier Span Three Bezier Span

Case study 1.0 MAtrix

Offsetting bezier span

lofted but failed

Our group have explored the fractal geometry, bezier span and face to face structure. We used tetrahedron. Just with one tetrahedron, I have explored the continuous patterning with bezier spans on the face. By setting the vector, bezier span to towards the center of the face and connects to other points. Used jitter component which shuffles the seed to generate a random values of list to create different shapes of the span.

I have picked 4 shapes that I like and successful. Because of the random shuffle of list by jitter, it is hard to control the bezier span. Some of them are not successful as some curves are not connected to the point. Also by having two and three spans generated on each edges.

In order to make the bezier spans in planar surface, I have tried trim, boolean, trace and others. However none of them were successful. Later, I lofted them manually which did not really work and not a very efficient way to process.

Have not figured not yet to create the structure having basic geometries mir-rored on faces by using algorithms. Therefore we mirrored them manually on Rhino.

Case study 1.0 MAtrix result

further developement

tetrahedron

scale trimmed tetrahedron

In intending to create more interesting geometries for the base, I have ran the fractal algorithm in the tetrahe-dron that has developed in case study 2.0. The framed tetrahedron created some interesting geometries. We both agreed that the bottom three tetrahe-drons on the image on the right, is very interesting. However it needs more development of clearing out weather it is going to be able to fabricate or not.

hoopsnake

error

Using a grasshopper plug-in hoopsnake, we were able to generate the geometries along a curve. As we are going to have larger structure in the future, it certainly is more logical to an algorithm.

Further development of creating a surface of bezier spans on the faces, I have tried to trans-form them into pipes rather than making them into plane surfaces.

It worked in a way that the curves are now pipes, nonetheless the ends of curves were not connected which intercepted each other and not smooth generated pipes.

It could possibly develop into working pipes or find other ways to make it into planar surfaces.

bezier span on structure

bezier span only

curves to pipe

Figure 23 Window installation, lava, 2009

LAVA - Window installation

Case study 2.0

The variation of sizes give a sense of organic growth instead of having uniform geometries. It adds more dynamic overall form which is what we need for the Wyndham city Gate-way project. And the chuck of units and decreasing the ‘chunkness’ would be suitable for branches that are going to be reaching out towards Melbourne on the final design. As nature, sizes are never the same, non-linear and nonuniform describes what organ-isms are. As our idea is about ‘growth’, our intend for the whole structure is going to be like have a trunk on Wyndham city side and gradually decrease in size and density of the basic components. to give the drivers a sense of spreading out towards to north. In oppo-site, the drivers on Princes highway, who are coming from Melbourne CBD and towards Wyndham, experience where the diffused little branches connect into one strong trunk. It would give impressions of one community, family, unite and more. In addition, use of the lights could create interesting effects on the gateway project. As the holes will intriguing shadows, we explored how to punch patterns on the polygon surface.

20“LAVA’s Digital Origami at La Rinascente in Milan“ Admin eVolo, Last updated 23 Novem-ber 2010 http://www.evolo.us/architecture/lava%E2%80%99s-digital-origami-at-la-rina-scente-in-milan/

The precedent for case study 2.0 is the window installation for a department store of la Rinascente’s Piazza Duomo in Milan.(Fig. 23 and 24) It is a para-metric installation project by Chris Bosse of Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, LAVA. LAVA used interesting work of light use. The purple and pink color gives a mystic feeling for people to dream. Like us, he used coral but coral reef as his biomimicry subject. It is made out of 1500 modules made out of cardboards that are recycled and recyclable. 20

Bosse used dodecahedron for the basic geometry of the structure as coral polyps of coral are pentagon or hexagon shaped. Different to Aranda Lasch’s Morn-ing Line, he off set the face and trim them off. It gives a simple and coral like shape. The structure is form in big chunks rather than in strips. To give diversity, every

Figure 25 close up of window installation

Figure 24 Window installation, lava, 2009

LAVA - Window installation

tetrahedron octahedron dodecahedron icosahedron

Case study 2.0 matrix

Experimenting offsetting and trimming the polygon surfaces was successful. Explode the faces of each form and scale them down toward the centre of the face. Then get rid of the scaled part so we can create an opening. We have tried on various mul-tiple sided polygons such as dodecahedron, icosahedron and octahedron. Created a matrix of different size of the frame of every 3 dimentional polygons mentioned above by expanding the size of the hole in 10%, 30%, 50% 70% and 90% of the size of the face. We have ranged the proportion of the hollow in 20% to show the clear difference.

From the earlier experimentations, we have decided that pyramid shapes are not as interesting as dodecahedron or icosahedron. Since the how each units of coral are shaped in neither pentagon or hexagon. Also to proceed the process of hoop-snake, those two polyhedron

technique: developmentpattern developement

Using the idea of punching out patterns from LAVA’s window installation, we have developed 3 patterns to try out to see how custom made holes would look like. Based on the geometry of coral polyps and applying a rule of fractal, those three patterns were created. By orienting the pattern on every each surfaces and trimming them out, made interesting. As coral polyps have multiple tentacles surrounding the mouth in the centre, the patterns we created could be interest-ing when it comes to using the effect of the shadow, and recreation of pattern due to the overlap of the holes. Yet, it had organic sense but not really look like corals and became too geometric.

algorithms used in grasshopper

technique: prototype

To make physical models, it required the 3 dimensional model to be in 2 dimensional. And since it is face to face, we have decided to glue one dodecahedron by one. By using unroll command, unrolled one dodecahedron and separated the strips so we could create tabs. Afterward, the files were sent to fablab using card cutter on 1mm cardboard. We have chosen to use cardboard because we need to fold them.

After cut them on to cardboards, our group made it by cutting out the pattern and fold and glue the tabs together to make the polyhedron.

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technique: proposal

As our design is motion based, we wanted to have more flexibility in our model as well as in 3D model software. As we use grasshopper, the structure can change and adapt in infinite variation. However we used glue to fix the structure, then we came up with the idea of using magnet power. Cause of the expense, we have only created two prototype dodecahedron but if we have more and get stron-ger magnet, it can lead to self generating structure as the magnets attract each other edge to edge automatically as we have them close enough. As it is a motion base, it would be interesting to process of attaching such as throwing, rolling, dropping and more.

magnets

The the Gateway project is on Prince highway the road, to Wyndham, the only people will see and experience will be the people in the car mov-ing 80 kilometers per hour. We want them to feel the atmosphere of drawing them into a new world. The users would see the structure in distance and would be amazed with the shadows shown on them as they enter under the gate. We are thinking of having almost surface like form toward Wyndham and grow out in fractal toward the city. As Wyndham city is a growing city, we adapted the idea of growth using coral as biomimicry. The change in scale, size and density will indicate the sense of grow in our design.

photomontage

National Geographic, Biomimetics, Tom Mueller, 2007, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/biomimet-ics/tom-mueller-text, accessed 5 May 2013

Yim, Da-Hye, A Study on the Expression of Images of the Sea, Graduate School of Dong-A University, Korea, 2009

“Building Awe-Inducing Crystalline Structures”, TheCreatorsProject, Youtube, last modified14 March 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6KoTNt2_W]Y

“The Morning Line Launches in Istanbul” ARTPULSE, , last modified 22 May 2010, http://artpulsemaga-zine.com/the-morning-line-launches-in-istanbul

LAVA’s Digital Origami at La Rinascente in Milan“ Admin eVolo, Last updated 23 November 2010 http://www.evolo.us/architecture/lava%E2%80%99s-digital-origami-at-la-rinascente-in-milan/

reference