Surface Logics is a series of short exercises that instill an ethos of digital craft by establishing interconnected foundations in geometry, parametric design, and digital manufacturing tools. The project asked students to design and fabricate a series of sculptural surfaces using strategically paired surface geometry types and material operations. Beyond the specific techniques used to create each iteration, the only requirements of these surfaces were strength and beauty at three different scales: macro (overall surface form), mezzo (surface texture and patterning, either applied or integral), and micro (tectonic expression and craft). In a typical one-and-a-half-week sequence, students were asked to fabricate a mockup of part of their surface before producing the final artifact, in order to provide time for learning through failure. The artifacts produced during each of these exercises were accompanied by a set of drawings that detailed their parametric generation, visualization, fabrication, and assembly.
Cielo is constructed primarily of custom expanded aluminum, created by cutting slits in a carefully arranged pattern on a flat sheet, then applying force to form it into a three-dimensional volume. When a flat sheet gets expanded, it creates a volumetric lattice consisting of hundreds of tiny folds, which gives the expanded volume great strength in multiple directions. This is a zero waste process in which no material is discarded (in contrast to a perforated sheet, which wastes material and weakens the sheet). Structure, volume, and opening are all interdependent.
From course: ARCH 461: Advanced Computer-Aided Fabrication
Team taught with Profs. Mark Cabrinha, Clare Olsen