MINIMAL SURFACES AS ARCHITECTURAL PROTOTYPES 2009
Emerging from the computational research project Minimal Surfaces as Self-Organising Systems, the prototyping phase of this project focused on the architectural applications of the form-finding algorithms, through physical models and development of various modular assembly systems.
*This research project has been awarded a Certificate of Advanced Architectural Research from Bartlett, UCL 2010.
Minimal Complexity SLS 3D Print
Discrete geometry assemblies
All systems and prototypes were designed considering the potential in applying them not only at a building scale as architectural elements, but also at different scales of furniture, object or even fashion design. They consist in modular components built out of planar elements, cut and folded or mechanically fixed.
From the fabrication point of view, the research focused on Schwarz P, a specific triply periodic minimal surface with a crystalline structure - composed of identical reflected fundamental basic regions. According to fabrication constraints, the resulted modular assembly systems are adjustable to a higher or lower resolution in order to achieve a discrete geometry with a feasible balance between the amount of materials used or number of components and the curvature fidelity of the final products.
The beam model test
The beam system was simply derived through adding depth, transforming the faceted geometry into a three-dimensional lattice. Generated by the set of particles, the new planar elements would act as a network of beams made of flat elements, which are easy to cut from available sheet materials and give substantial rigidity to the structure, making it feasible for large scale prototypes. A small scale version was built from only 16 different types of folded paper strips triangular shape.
The conical model test
A second system is based on testing a conical primary component, which was derived from the first system by substituting each triangle with a correspondent cylinder generated by the circles inscribed in each of the triangles of the mesh; the direction of the extrusions is normal to the surface.
The interlocked rings test
The interlocked rings prototype is focusing on defining an architectural fabric, with potential extrapolation to fashion design applications and it is based on having every particle (vertex of the mesh) as the centre of the circle defining the ring. Accordingly, each fundamental region would be composed of 14 rings. Due to the balance of tension and compression in the system’s behaviour, the result behaves like a tensegrity structure with a high degree of flexibility.
Minimal Complexity Prototype
The most developed system within the research consisted in creating a fixed set of 16 components with an outline simply built around the triangular faces of the base geometry mesh. As a very straight forward process, the shape of each component was generated by taking into consideration the fixing mechanisms between them, the flexibility needed and the structural stiffness.
Many thanks to: Professor Stephen Gage, Sean Hanna, Ruairi Glynn, Richard Roberts. Bartlett, UCL.