Recursive Folding

This study is an attempt to capture the spatial aspirations embedded in an earlier physical construct/model by translanting the intrinsic rules of the physical model into grasshopper operations. Rather than attempting to build the digital model in a single grasshopper sequence, I decided to establish a recursive process in which every step was baked into rhino and used to determine the outcome of the next step. The operation started by randomly selecting 4 points from an square XY grid that has been jittered in the Z direction. These 4 points are then connected to form 2 (or 3) triangular surfaces adjoined along a single side. These surfaces are then rotated along the other surfaces' centroid by an angle equilivent to the original fold. (This probably sounds more complex than it really is - essentially each new surface is created based on the values of the original surface).

After this operation (Series_1 below) the surfaces began to add together through a recursive process. The recursive process involves step 'A' being baked into rhino and brought back into grasshopper as a rotation about the surfaces in step 'B'. This process continues through step 'E'. Since the series is not completely automated (which would have required a VBscript) it allowed an opportunity to control some of the parameters like surface selection and line of rotation. Any non-contiguous surfaces were eleminated in each step.

For a clear example of the recursive effect compare series_1 and series_3 (below).

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Planar Deformation

This iterative excersize in Grasshopper involved using several attractor points with varying meta-data (influence) to push/pull a surface in the Z direction. This dynamic operation was performed on 2 surfaces simultaneously, causing them to intersect with one another. In addition to just studying the spatial propositions on this system, a dispatch was established to measure the reaction of surface areas against the original flat surface (noted as a change in color). Due to the coinstraints of the regularly established X,Y grid, the increase in surface area is directly related to the movement in the Z direction (larger surfaces have a greater degree of tilt with respect to the X,Y plane).


Following variables applied to series:
Srf_1: bottom default surface (grid spacing, #grid X, #grid Y)
Srf_2: top default surface (grid spacing, #grid X, #grid Y)
P: influence value of (5) attractor points for each surface
A: area percentage above flat surface

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Structural Systems

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