Reverse-Morphometric Process (Unfolding Complex Geometries)

This exercise involved a serial exploration of the base geometry used in the Recursive Folding process (see previous entry). Rather than utilizing a lo-res base geometry to build spatial complexity, this exploration used a lo-res base geometry and worked backwards to strategically unfold the complex spatial-form into a developable plane. The purpose of the new trajectory is to understand how a project state can be assumed and then used to reverse engineer the process into a more tangible starting point. These simplified forms also contain the a greater potiental to be aggregated into a single larger structure that would be defined by its enclosure (as opposed to its mass).

The first step involved generating (25) 5-sided triangulated shapes. The surfaces all share corner points and edges with adjacent surfaces. These 25 possibilities were analyzed to determine if any planes intersected one another (which many did). Five forms were chosen to be studied through the reverse-morphometric process.

click image for larger view


The chosen forms each went through a 4 step iterative process. At each step there were several options for the form: rotation of a surface about an adjacent edge, re-triangulation of a surface based on corner points of other surfaces, and deletion of non-confoming surfaces.

click image for larger view

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

click image for larger view.