Digital Form and Fabrication

Project One (Of Two)- Digital Form " Structure Development"
David Hall " Versions" 2007

Brief -

For the first 5 weeks we will be going through the basic methodology's of so called digital architecture. I will be demonstrating how to use Maya as an experimental tool.

Using data from a specified location (each student will have their own co-ordinates) we will use Maya to experiment and generate structures with specific parameters defined by the location. From this point we will produce " versions " of the structures. And by versions I mean groups of objects ( structures ) will be modified and distorted then selected objects will be chosen and sequenced into the next generation of modified structures. After a pre determined level one of these iterations will be used for the next project.

Duration
Six weeks

Final Presentation
Printed out boards of A4 size. Each student will print a series ( at least 30 ) pages of their process and versioning output.

Note
As part of the monitoring process for the output of this class each student MUST create a blog with experiments and entries being made each week.


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Project Two (Of Two) - Digital Fabrication " Structure Output"Brief -

Self-replicating tiling
In geometry a self-replicating tiling is a tiling pattern in which several congruent tiles may be joined together to form a larger tile that is similar to the original. This is an aspect of the field of study known as tessellation. The "sphinx" hexiamond is the only known self-replicating pentagon.[1] For example, four such concave pentagons can be joined together to make one with twice the dimensions.[2] Solomon W. Golomb coined the term Rep-tiles for self-replicating tilings.

Tessellations and computer graphics
In the subject of computer graphics, tessellation techniques are often used to manage datasets of polygons and divide them into suitable structures for rendering. Normally, at least for real-time rendering, the data is tessellated into triangles, which is sometimes referred to as triangulation. In computer-aided design, arbitrary 3D shapes are often too complicated to analyze directly. So they are divided (tessellated) into a mesh of small, easy-to-analyze pieces—usually either irregular tetrahedrons, or irregular hexahedrons. The mesh is used for finite element analysis. Some geodesic domes are designed by tessellating the sphere with triangles that are as close to equilateral triangles as possible.
From wiki

From our initial models we will experiment with development software to export ( print ) the structure ready for assembly.

I expect the structures to increase in complexity and understanding each week.

Duration
Six weeks

Final Presentation
Each student will exhibit five of their best experiments.
These will be shown in a gallery or space will will organise during the semester.

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