BFXlog

Updated Voronoi Attractor

2010-09-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

It’s been a really long time since my previous post here, but I guess I’ve been busy elsewhere. However, some people have asked me about the simple voronoi attractor definition I put up here a while ago so here is an updated version. It’s based on a scrambled hex grid which is distorted by an attractor and fed into a voronoi component. Enjoy.

// download definition file: new-voronoi-attractor.ghx

Box Tree

2009-11-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

A simple play with boxes and the OcTree component which creates boxes around a set of input points. This component creates each box around a specified number of input points, thus resulting in a denser field of smaller boxes where the points have a tighter relationship. To generate the points, I used Rajaa Issa’s Fractal Plant vb-script component. The boxes are then assigned different colours depending on their size and baked on separate layers using Giulio Piacentino’s Bake Attributes C# component.

// download definition file: pxl-tree.ghx

Employed

2009-09-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

Without making any excuses, one reason why I haven’t posted the last month is that I’ve started working for Jonas Lindvall. While this employment surely won’t stop me from posting once in a while, I’ll guess they’ll be less frequent. So please be patient.

Bitmap Terrain

2009-08-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

A quick way to create terrain is to use a heighfield map. With the new bitmap component it’s now very easy to do in grasshopper. Divide the starting surface into points which are fed into the bitmap component. Move these points along the z-axis according to a suitable channel value (brightness, or another colour depending on your image) and then rebuild the surface again. Done

// download definition file: bitmap-heightfield.ghx

Bitmap Colour

2009-08-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

Another use for the bitmap component is to sample colour from an image and then translate onto geometry. Simply select colour in the component preferences and connect it to the shader component which creates a material. This can then be baked for rendering using Giulio Piacentino’s Bake Attributes plugin.

Bitmap Pattern

2009-08-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

Another new feature of the latest versions of Grasshopper is the bitmap component. It’s a component which opens up a lot of new possibilities and it’s really easy to use. You simply load an image, input some points and out comes a value between 0 and 1 responding to the hue, brightness or transparency etc., on that point in the image. You may need a bit of tweaking to get the desired result but it works great. It’s harder to explain how it works than to do it yourself, if you look at the definition it should be very clear.

// download definition file: bitmap-pixel-loft.ghx

Voronoi Attractor

2009-08-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

In the latest release of Grasshopper, David Rutten has incorporated many of his Pointset Reconstrution tools for Rhino. There are, for example, components for voronoi, delaunay, quadtree and convexhull funtions. To have them right there in grasshopper lets you skip the step of calling them from rhino or a script. Great!

To try these new components out, I’ve put together a quick voronoi definition which inputs a surface and an attractor point which influences the sizes of the voronoi cells. The closer to the point, the smaller and tighter the cells.

// download definition file: voronoi-attractor.ghx

A Popular Landscape

2009-07-20T00:34:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s only me, but I think it’s nice to see that someone else intends to put a facetted landscape in Shanghai. Thomas Heatherwick has designed the brittish pavilion which aport from standing in a crystalline terrain, also incorporates fiber-optics for interior lighting. The landscape folds up in the corners, enabling visitors to move in underneath.

Another landscape:

Learning VB-script

2009-07-19T05:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’ve been away a while, sorry about that. Now, for the last couple of days, I’ve read through the VB-scripting section of the grasshopper primer. Hoping to learn how to put together a bit more complex definitions, with the possibility to use recursive and evaluating functions. As a first exercise, I have written a small script which finds, within a set of points, the point furthest away from each point in the set, something a haven’t been able to do without the script.

// download definition file: connect-points-script.ghx

2009-05-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

Boolean Pattern

2009-05-15T06:19:00.001-07:00

A definition which turns a set of closed curves and a polysurface into a structure by a boolean operation. The curves are extruded, scaled and subtracted from the polysurface, leaving two new sets of solids: structure and filling.

The definition used with a circle-packing script:

// download definition file: boolean-pattern.ghx

Surface Inflation

2009-04-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

This is a definition for creating inflated or bulging surfaces. It works on both trimmed and untrimmed surfaces, and can for example be used together with a hex-script to create ETFE-panels.

The definition first untrims the surface and creates a uv-grid of points. The points within a specified radius from the centre are then moved along the surface normal, in proportion to their distance to the surface midpoint. The modified points are weaved together with the unaffected points and fed into a surface from points-component, which created a new bulging surface. Lastly, this surface is trimmed according to the input surface and the definition is complete.

Two examples of the definition used together with a planar honeycomb pattern and a grid of surface frames:

// download definition file: surface-bulge.ghx

Hex Grid

2009-04-07T08:37:00.001-07:00

A general definition for creating honeycomb patterns on surfaces. The definition is based on Luis E. Fraguada’s (www.livearchitecture.net) VB-script component, which creates the basic honeycomb lines. These lines are joined to form polylines from which a couple of different surfaces can be generated by lofting, extruding, scaling and so forth.

In this second image, the aperture of each cell is set in relation to the distance to a specified point.

// download definition file: honeycomb.ghx

Babushka

2009-03-27T07:29:00.001-07:00

My and my partner in crime, Mikael Ling’s, entry to the Art Fund Pavilion competition. The design is heavily based on the requirements of easy transportation and storage, quick assembly and a digital fabrication process in which each box can be cnc-milled out of standard sized plywood sheets.

Box-morph

2009-03-24T03:10:00.000-07:00

More grasshopping. A general box-to-surface-morph definition. Any object can be spread out over a surface. With its bounding box as a reference, the object is morphed to match the boxes created on the target surface. The object can then also be scaled according to various parameters.

// download definition file: boxmorph.ghx

Grasshopping

2009-03-12T03:17:00.001-07:00

For the last week, I have been trying to get to know Grasshopper a little bit better. Simple operations, which in rhinoscript requires quite a lot of code to accomplish, are set up easily but I haven’t really figured out how to best handle more complex functions yet. Especially how to deal with nested data lists and extracting specific values. But I guess I will get there in time.

Underneath here is a render from my surface-noise definition. An attractor point influence the amplitude of the noise. Additionally, I have revisited my triangulation script and set up a grasshopper variation, also with an attractor point to control the angle of the rotation of the triangles.

// download definition files: surface-noise.ghx and triangulate.ghx

The Presentation

2009-02-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

2009/02/09, 0900
attending jury: Sir Peter Cook, Christer Malmström, Gunnar Sandin, Ricardo de Ostos, Abelardo Gonzales, Morten Lund

Even tough I was quite nervous, the presentation went well. Afterwards, much of the discussion was about how this synthetic forest I have created would be experienced by the visitors. How this abstract version of nature comes alive without the accidents and incidents which form the “real” nature. In my opinion, the random elements introduced by the scripts, along with the noise and the motion brought into the pavilion by the visitors themselves, would make the interior forest feel alive.

A related issue that was discussed was how the box, the perimeter of the site, is experienced from the inside. Would the existence of a boundary ruin this experience? My hope is that the gradual transformation of the ground into the walls, you can’t really get that close before the surface gets to steep, draws attention away from them. This is also an issue about lighting and their importance in creating the desired ambience.

As it’s hard, or almost impossible, to tell how a complex environment like this is experienced beforehand, a bigger model, maybe even a 1:1 model of the foliage, would be very helpful. The jury hoped to see a full scale installation, something I would really like to do, having the sufficient funds and space.

Finally, we talked very briefly about scenography in opposition to architecture. Where lies the border between the two? Unfortunately, we hadn’t time to discuss this issue further, but in my opinion, if I create a pavilion in which the architecture is the exhibition itself, to make the visitors actors, on a stage to be explored, is the very essence of the project.

The other model I made last week, showing the wires and the spaces they create and define.

Since my thesis project now finally is over, the postings here will probably be less frequent. But I’ll continue to put up new scripts and images as projects come and go.

The Model

2009-02-03T05:15:00.000-08:00

Finally, the model is finished. These photos are quite poor, but better than nothing. This week will be focused on putting together the slideshow and presentation, but hopefully I can put together another model as well, showing the space-creating properties of the suspended wire.

// UPDATE: I replaced the photos with some higher quality ones, enjoy.

By the way, the report has now been handed in to the critics, it can be found here and here.

2009-01-31T01:58:00.000-08:00

Writing the Report

2009-01-27T11:30:00.000-08:00

I’m sorry to report that I can’t show the model just yet. The sections are ready and looks very good but the bottom plate got messed up in the laser cutter. The tight grill supporting the sections was unfortunately a bit too tight for the laser cutter to handle in a single run, the heat made the perspex move. I will try again as soon as possible, hopefully tomorrow. Meanwhile I’m putting together the written report, it needs to be handed in this Monday. Which is when I’m sending the posters for printing as well. Not much time left now.

Rendering

2009-01-22T02:41:00.000-08:00

Finally, the renderings are getting finished. Some images need a bit more of work, but they are almost done! The image of the forest will be the centrepiece in the presentation with the other renderings at half the size. All the images are built up in the same way, with a lot of layers stacked on top of each other. The bottom layer is much like an oil painting, while the top layers add more detailing, shadows and light. This way of working has allowed me to adding a bit of texture and colour to the surfaces which otherwise would have been done with complicated maps and materials before rendering.

Tomorrow I have booked the laser cutter to cut out perspex sections for my final model. I’ll be back soon with the images.

Finishing Up

2009-01-18T03:54:00.000-08:00

Two weeks left until the report needs to be handed in to the critics. Sounds longer than that it is. With the drawings almost finished, I’ll focus on the renderings during next week before putting the layout together. Here’s an early low-res render of the forest, showing what kind of atmosphere I’m after in the finished images. Hopefully I can show you the result next week.

Manufacturing Genesis

2009-01-12T02:55:00.000-08:00

After a weeks of pondering over possible titles for my project is the deadline finally over today. I eventually decided on the title above, Manufacturing Genesis. Not perfect, but still something I can live with. The image and text for the presentation advertisement here below:

Abstracting Nature with Generative Code, a proposal for the Swedish Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai

Professor: Abelardo Gonzalez
Tutor: Morten Lund

The Swedish participation in the World Expo in Shanghai 2010 has been a subject of much debate among Swedish architects over the course of the last year. A questionable procurement put Tengbom Arkitekter in charge of the pavilion but they soon resigned. Sweco took over the project a month later while Tengbom will focus on the exhibition within the building.

Instead of treating the pavilion and the exhibition as separate entities, the intention of my proposal for the Swedish pavilion is to deliver a unified experience. An experience that encourages visitors to seek out the Swedish wilderness, emphasising the mysterious qualities of the untouched nature. A pavilion in which visitors can experience the dark and subtle natural qualities of the Swedish forests, as well as understand our historical relationship with nature. The exhibition will be the pavilion itself, an experience for all the senses, no objects are displayed. The goal is rather to emphasise the close relationship between the mind and the senses and how this effect our understanding of nature.

The most challenging aspect of the project has been to find a representational model of nature. How do you recreate a forest? An abstraction is of course necessary, but which properties are necessary in order to find the essence of an environment? What kind of tree density, trunk variety, leaf work or branching is needed to produce the atmosphere of a forest? To create this abstraction of nature, I have used the same method as nature itself, generative code. In nature’s case DNA, in my project, rhinoscript. By writing algorithms for the terrain, the trees, the foliage, and so forth, I have been able to set up rules in which the building components then are generated randomly within predefined limits.

Tools

2008-12-25T05:14:00.000-08:00

While developing the scripts that I have used to create the different elements of the pavilion, I have sometimes found myself in need of one or two general functions, not found among those included in rhino. Somehow, these functions seemed to have a tendency to find their way into many of the scripts I’ve written and published on this page. So, in time for Christmas, I’ve collected these functions in a single file, so they are easy to find and use when needed.

// download tooling library: alltools.rvb

Modelling

2008-12-18T10:46:00.001-08:00

This week I finally got some time with the laser cutter, so I could try out an idea I have for a presentation model. It consists of a series of sections, each one intersecting all the different layers of landscape. By stacking these sections after each other, you get a pretty good image of both the exterior and interior of the pavilion. This model is half the size (1:200) of the final intended version, which will be made of 5 mm perspex. A thicker material will make the model will much less transparent, something this model suffers from a lot (the card is 1 mm). The final version will not be glued together either, so that each section can be viewed on its own and pieces taken away, enabling a closer look of the caves within.

A much earlier model from when the concept of the hill was born.

Topography

2008-12-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

Three images to show how the different spaces are made up of three layers of terrain, stacked on top each other. These layers divide the pavilion into three distinct qualities. The open hillside on the top layer, the vast interior landscape between the top and middle layers, and the intimate caves between the middle and bottom layers.

Here you can also see the vertical sides of the building. Formed by slicing the terrain at the edges of the given site of 60 x 50 meters they give the impression that the pavilion is cut out from the ground and placed at the site in Shanghai. Like a small piece of Swedish cake.

The Other Pavilion

2008-12-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently, the official Swedish pavilion for the world expo in Shanghai 2010 has now been presented. Interestingly, Sweco’s proposal also seems to concentrate on the forest.

// link to official website: www.expo2010.se/new_expo/?page_id=7

2008-12-10T11:21:00.001-08:00

Structural Elements

2008-12-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

There are two different constructive elements in the pavilion. The walls, roof and floor are all built up by the same structural element, two layers of plywood with a foam core. As one never sees both layers, the distance between them can vary according to need, forming thicker elements and beams when necessary. The second structural element is the tree, which functions as columns, helping to span the greater lengths in the forest.

Each sandwich element consists of the same parts, but the properties of their materials vary according to need. All elements are pre-constructed in specialised and highly automated factories in Sweden, and shipped to China in the empty containers left over from our vast import of Chinese products. These elements are then assembled on site, glued together and secured with connective joints.

The vertical structural element in the interior forest is of course the tree. They help in spanning the 50 meters width between the two outer walls. The tree comes in two different species, both triangular, but one enclosed, perimetric and one open, centric. The trees are derived from a parametrical script in which structural loads and position controls the type of tree and its attributes.

A New Foliage

2008-12-09T04:18:00.000-08:00

As I wasn’t satisfied with the simple square-based foliage I created a while ago I wrote a new script yesterday, based on my previous work with triangles. Instead of creating flat squares at the intersection points, it creates a set of two triangles, each one rotated along their shared axis, according to the distance to the nearest attractor point. This creates layers of varying transparency, allowing light to partly pass through the foliage and create a pattern on the ground. Each set of triangles is connected to the wires with a two-parted joint that also keeps the triangles at the right angle.

Pseudo code:

Create a point grid
Input attractors (trees)
Input end surface, and foliage surfaces
Project points to start surface/mesh
For each point
- project to end surface, create end point
- create wire in-between points
- scale according to distance to attractors
For each wire
- intersect with foliage surface
- create two triangles from four points, derived from grid size
rotate each triangle around same axis, rotation angle according to distance from attractors

// download script: create-foliage-triangles.rvb

Natural Abstraction #3

2008-12-03T01:53:00.000-08:00

Natural Abstraction #3

As the forest needs its foliage to create it’s layered and semi-transparent atmosphere, the caves need an element of it’s own to enhance the experience of being underground. The stalactite is a powerful symbol of the cave, a direct result of the conditions in limestone caves, slowly developing over time. These abstract stalactites are based on the triangular mesh, which is subdivided into smaller triangles and then extruded down to a point. The height of this pyramid depends on the distance to a set of specified attractor points.

Pseudo Code:

Input mesh
Set max generations, height and threshold
Input attractors
Subdivide:
- outline each mesh face
- get vertices for outline
- find mid vertices
- create 4 new triangles from vertices
- start recursion until max generations
For each subdivided triangle:
- find midpoint
- find distance to attractor and derive z-value
- derive end point
- create 3 surfaces from 2 corners and end point
- join surfaces

// download script: create-stalactite.rvb

Natural Abstraction #2

2008-11-28T06:09:00.001-08:00

The next instalment in the series of recreations of natural elements is an abstracted tree stump or a small stone. These kinds of elements add another layer of detail to the forest, creating a variation of the ground and offering natural places to sit down. The addition of a patch of high grass also helps to emulate the right atmosphere without being to articulate. The grass is made of a soft plastic straws, folding away easily while moving through them.

Pseudo code (stump):

Input start mesh and start points
For each point:
- outline mesh face
- copy outline and elevate
- tilt elevated line
- create vertices from lines
- create top vertice
- create stump from vertices with delaunay function

// download script: create-stump.rvb
(requires point set reconstruction tools)

Pseudo code (grass):

Input start mesh and start points
Input spread, height and density parameters
For each point:
- create points according to density
- move and rotate points according to spread
- project points to mesh
- find end points according to height
- create straws
- pipe straws

// download script: greate-grass.rvb

This image and the last one are very quick renders, hopefully I get back my own laptop on Monday so I’ll be able to create images that show the ambience I’m looking for.

Natural Abstraction

2008-11-27T03:53:00.001-08:00

This is a first effort of translating a natural environment into abstract geometry. I would like to recreate the atmosphere of a forest without resorting to the natural forms of leaves, branches and tree trunks. Instead, the script creates a set of planar surfaces attached to hanging wire, a simple representation of the foliage above our heads in a forest.

Pseudo code:

Create a point grid
Input attractors (trees)
Input end surface, and foliage surfaces
Project points to start surface/mesh
For each point
- project to end surface, create end point
- create wire in-between points
- scale according to distance to attractors
For each wire
- intersect with foliage surface
- if not too close to attractor: create surface according to grid size

// download script: create-foliage.rvb

Midterm Presentation

2008-11-21T00:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, many of the students planning to present their thesis in February had a small presentation for each other. Very interesting to see what the people around you actually are doing. For me it felt good to present what I have done so far, and I got good feedback on what to concentrate on the next half of the project. I’m going to see a professor in construction next week for some help with my panelling problems, but after that I won’t have the ambition to completely solve the structure into every detail but rather at a proof of concept level. Instead I will dig deeper into how natural environments and especially forests can be recreated abstractly. As the building and the exhibition is the same thing, it’s crucial for the project to create the right atmosphere inside and around the pavilion.

During the next weeks I will then analyse natural environments, hoping to find the essential elements needed to recreate their special ambiences. The next step is finding the proper way of abstracting these elements and to incorporate them into the pavilion. I’m also interested to investigate the field of code and nature, learning about the underlying algorithms which control biological growth. Hopefully this will get me some leads into how to program a representation of nature.

// Anyway here’s my midterm presentation: BFX-midway.pdf

Trees Again

2008-11-14T06:59:00.001-08:00

A problem left after faceting the pavilion was the situation with the trees. The smooth and round tree didn’t fit in among the crystalline surfaces. A new solution was needed.

The new tree comes in two different species, both triangular, but one enclosed, perimetric and one open, centric. The hollow trees can function as light shafts for the caves below or conceal installations, while the open ones are weight-bearing only. However, with their open corners they take up less space and provides a bit of shelter. Each species can also vary in proportions, such as waist triangle scale and location along the tree axis and base triangle scale.

The trees are derived from a simple script which needs some polishing, but feel free to look at the current version.

// download script: new-trees.rvb

Outline Mesh Face

2008-11-11T04:49:00.000-08:00

A quite useful script which outlines the mesh face closest to a point. I wrote this as a first step to create a script for generating new, more abstract, trees. That script and images will come soon.

Pseudo code:

input mesh and start points
find index of faces closest to start points
find vertex points for each face of mesh, store in face index array
add line around points of same index as selected faces

// download script: oulinemeshface.rvb

// update:

I modified the script so that there’s a choice to either outline faces closest to a point or all faces. There’s also now a choice to add a polyline or a curve through the face points.

// download updated script: outlinemeshface2.rvb

Drawings

2008-11-06T06:40:00.000-08:00

Almost half-way there. This is where I am now.

Exit Strategy

2008-11-03T22:52:00.001-08:00

I have recently thought a bit about how visitors will exit the pavilion. The main exit from the large interior forest is located at the back of the pavilion so that the main direction of movement will be straight through the interior. Also there won’t be any doors, the passage between inside and outside is rather a combination of layers which filter out the exterior light and results in a smooth transition from the darkness within the forest to the brightness outside. These layers grow in size as you pass through them so that the exit becomes more labyrinthine the closer to the other end you get.

Dissection

2008-10-31T10:30:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know what I'm doing at the moment.

Surface Push

2008-10-31T03:57:00.000-07:00

This is a small script I used to create the bumps in the surfaces which were the first step in shaping the passages between the different layers. Here’s what it does:

pseudo code:

input surface
input start points and direction vector
input threshold level
for each grip on surface:
- check mean distance to start points
- scale vector according to distance in relation to threshold
- add vector to grip
update surface

// download script: surface-push.rvb

4 Seasons

2008-10-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

This is something I thought about while working with the different layers of the pavilion and the connections between them. I have previously only really thought about the interior forest in terms of appearance and detailing. A new outset is to think about the different layers in terms of seasons.

The forest is then autumn, dusky and foggy. The upper landscape is, as it’s outside, during summer, an undulating summer meadow, with spots of long grass to hide in. The inner caves below the forest will be frosty winter, gleaming of ice and snow, while the outer caves are the first days of spring, coming back to life as you exit the pavilion, into the bright summer again.

Forest Mythology

2008-10-22T05:09:00.000-07:00

Folklore and ritual connect man to his landscape, dancing through the liminal zone between the everyday and the spiritual. Kiedler is a forest wilderness devoid of the history of mythology coursing through the ancient boreal zones. It is a prosthetic landscape - a graft - where the connection to the mythological and ceremonial practices of native man has never been established. Mythology can be thought of as a way of expressing intangible truths, and forest mythology has its roots in a primal response to the immersive environment of the forest. This is not a wilderness of bracing physical exposure like the mountain, but instead a dark internal wilderness of quiet psychological exposure.

Kate Davies and Emmanuel Vercruysse, Prosthetic Mythologies, AD 2008/4

Faceting

2008-10-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

Turns out that the pavilion will take on a crystalline shape. After trying to solve the problem with the passages between the different layers, I decided to divide the surfaces into facets. This makes it a lot easier to manipulate the layers as they are made up of many flat surfaces which all can be manipulated individually, folding to make connections, adding and deleting surfaces as it’s needed. Openings are created automatically while folding and bending the layer instead of having to be cut out of a smooth surface. However, there are new problems that arise because of this new method. The trees, for instance, are a bit more complicated in their constitution and their connections with the ground and roof. But that will be solved in time. I hope.

To make the transformation from smooth to faceted surfaces a bit easier I wrote a small and simple script that creates points from a surface and then apply a delaunay method to the points. This script requires the point set reconstruction tool plugin that can be downloaded from mcNeels rhino labs.

//download delaunay script: delaunay.rvb

Work in progress

2008-10-18T02:34:00.000-07:00

A quick update on the hill. This is a rough 3d-model I made with the help of my landscaping scripts. Now I need to focus on the openings and passages between the different layers. I have an idea of what these might be like, more on that soon.

The Hill

2008-10-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

New ideas. After struggling to get the outer envelope of the pavilion right I came up with a new idea. Instead of letting the building be a “blob”, which you enter from the side, I decided to do it as terrain all the way. Now the entire pavilion is a sloped hilly landscape, on top of which the queue area is located and from which you descend into the interior forest. I think this is a better solution which integrates the pavilion into its surroundings in a much more interesting way, with the entire building rising up from the ground. This also means that I need to work out a couple of new scripts, especially one creating the folds which connect the upper landscape with the interior.

Some sketches:

Landscaping 2.0

2008-10-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

A few updates to the landscaping script: The script now inputs connection curves between hills, offsets the starting curves instead of scaling them to create contours to patch and continues to create contours for larger hills until a defined area is left on the top. Finally I added an option to levelize the patched surface so it can't drop below a defined value along the z-axis.

// download landscape script: landscape2.rvb

Trollet

2008-10-13T02:04:00.000-07:00

If the trolls looked anything like the widespread image of a grotesque creature with a tail and pointed ears, clad in fur and with big noses, as painted by John Bauer for instance, it would be easy to recognise them. However, it’s not always that simple. The trolls are very clever and were able to change shape as they please. Normally them looked quite like common people, only better dressed. If you would encounter a luxurious dressed couple in the woods, you better watch out.

Much like the älvor, the trolls could kidnap and capture people in their mountain dwellings. Captured people had to work hard for their new masters, but were normally treated well. The best way to break the enchantment is to speak the name of Jesus or if the local priest would let the church bells ring loudly, as the trolls can’t stand christianity. Another crime trolls might commit is to kidnap newly born babies or exchange if for one of their own.

// Source: Älvor, troll och talande träd by Ebbe Schön
// wikipedia on troll

Waffles

2008-10-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

These are pictures of two ribbed models I made last week. Though they were rather unsuccessful due too the low rib resolution it’s a promising technique to use at a larger scale in the future. To create the sections and notches I used a combination of found scripts, follow the links to download them.

// links to ribbing scripts: un didi, legil.org

Program

2008-10-07T08:00:00.001-07:00

Intention:
To create a pavilion that promotes tourism to Sweden, encouraging visitors to seek out the Swedish wilderness, emphasising the mysterious qualities of the untouched nature.

Exhibition:
My intention for the exhibition in the pavilion is not to display objects or products. It’s more to provide a sensation of being in a dense and dark Swedish forest, allowing visitors to experience the influence a rich and untouched nature can have on the senses. What tricks natural phenomena can play on the mind and how and why people have believed in the mysterious creatures of Swedish folklore to explain the unknown through the ages. The exhibition will be the pavilion itself, a dark forest with caves underneath, helped by projections, sound, light and fog to transmit a full experience.

Architecture:
The pavilion mainly consists of two parts. The interior forest and the caves/hills underneath. Hills, roof, walls and trees are all shaped from a single self-bearing surface. This surface is closed from the outside with the exception from the entrances and exits which will be formed like rips and tears in the material. The interior forest will be very dark, with only patches of light shining through from above, enhancing the darkness. The surface is irregular and rough, providing seating and a richer and more detailed environment. The caves in the hills of the interior landscape contain the rest of the exhibition as well as auditorium, shop and a bar. These spaces will be partly lit from above, through the hollow trees, which also act like supporting pillars. The queue area takes up around 20 % of the 50 x 60 meter site and is also a hilly landscape. There might also be trees here, so that arriving visitors gradually makes it deeper and deeper into the woods until finally ending up in the forest on the inside of the pavilion.

Required Spaces:
Exhibition - the forest and caves
Bar - in half-open cave/hill, seating on top
Auditorium - in larger hill, for lectures, screenings etc.
Shop - in cave, with separate entrance and exit as well
VIP - a cave close to auditorium and bar
Queue area - with small hills, several entrances to forest
Exits - through caves

Below are some photos of some diagrammatic models I built last week:

On trees and caves

2008-10-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

I came across the images above in my search of the essence of the Swedish forest. In order to create a forest of my own, I’ll need to know which elements that are important for capturing the special atmosphere of a dense and dark forest. One of the first things to notice are of course the trees. And how many they are. They are tightly packed standing in each others way, obscuring both the light and the view. The sheer number of trees is important to re-create the denseness and closeness I’m looking for.

Then there’s the light. Tiny rays of light breaking through the overall darkness of the forest, illuminating small patches of ground, creating contrast which makes the dark parts seem darker. Another thing is irregularity of the ground. The green and soft floor is covered with small stones and rocks and branches, partly hidden under a blanket of moss. These irregularities are vital ingredients in the atmosphere of the forest. They break down the play of shadows and light into smaller fragments, introducing more detail and interest to the otherwise smooth surfaces and might also offer seating possibilities. To re-create these elements I’ll need to manipulate the interior surface of the pavilion by adding more noise in to the mix.

Another problem which needs some looking into are the openings between the forest and the rooms underneath the hills. As I’ve seen these rooms as something not very unlike caves, I think it best to turn to real cave openings in order to find good examples to model my solution on. Unfortunately, people seem to be very fond of taking pictures of these opening from the inside and out, and not the other way around.

I’ll need to find a way to represent this passage between inside and outside, maybe something like ripped fabric, or slits cut in a blanket. Hopefully I can create a script that replicates this kind of tear in a surface.

Surface Climb

2008-10-06T07:02:00.001-07:00

Another script for manipulating my landscape surfaces. This script lets the surface climb from one point to another one, to a specified height, creating a slope.

Pseudo code:

input surface
input start and end points, height and resolution of new surface
get points from surface at specified resolution
for points after start point
- derive climbing height in proportion to distance to end point
- add height to point
patch points to create new surface

// download climbing script: surface-climb.rvb

Älvan

2008-10-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

The Swedish älva is a creature quite similar to an English elf. However, there are many different opinions regarding their appearance. Sometimes they are small, with wings, but these creatures are in general referred to as féer. The most common view is that they are beautiful girls in white gowns, dancing in the meadows during dusk or dawn, appearing from and disappearing into the milky mist. Even though they often are invisible, it’s quite common to hear their chattering voices, and you can never be certain of you have met an älva, as they can change form into a small animal or insect.

In contrast to how they look, älvor can be quite nasty Anyone who get seduced into their dance gets sick or dies. Even someone resisting the dance might turn mad just by hearing their music. It’s really important not to offend älvor, or you might catch a skin disease called älvablåst or älvaeld. This especially can happen if you pee in the woods without first warning the älvor, who often live in the ground. To avoid their anger, you can always sacrifice small things to them such as needles or coins.

// Source: Älvor, troll och talande träd by Ebbe Schön
// Wikipedia on älvor

Surface Connection

2008-09-26T03:39:00.001-07:00

This is a script under development, intended to be used for creating the “fold” between the floor and roof landscapes. The script needs some further work, I especially would like to create fillets between the existing surfaces and the new connection.

This is what the script does:

input roof and floor surfaces
input curves to define start of connection
project curves to surfaces
create vertical curves along start curves
create surface from network of curves
trim (and fillet) surfaces

// download connection script: surface-connect.rvb

Triangulation

2008-09-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

This is something not directly connected to my ongoing thesis project, however, it’s a small project I did during summer to learn rhinoscript. The idea was to develop a parametric under roof, each one uniquely designed for a every space after the customers wishes. A surface, curved or flat, gets divided into two sets of intersecting triangles, which are then unfolded, annotated and laser cut in polypropen plastic. The triangles arrives in a package to the customer who puts it all together with cable ties. These images are from a cardboard concept model.

The scripts might be somewhat buggy, a little bit more work is needed. The biggest problem is to figure out a way to keep the right surfaces after intersecting them.

// download scripts: tria_create.rvb, tria-combine.rvb, tria_unroll.rvb

The Night of the Living Forest

2008-09-19T02:07:00.000-07:00

While discussing the project with my tutor this week we decided that I really need to decide on the nature of the exhibition in the pavilion. While I had already decided upon the more general theme for the pavilion, darkness, I hadn’t really taken any stance in what the actual exhibition would be like. Well, now I have. I was already thinking of the interior space as not a pitch black one, more like a mystical Swedish forest in twilight. I will now take on this road completely, the whole exhibition will be all about the mysterious side of the Swedish nature. The main interior space pretty much stays the same, but sound, light and projections will enhance the experience, materialising the mysterious creatures of the night among the visitors. Something that at first glance is a small hill could in fact be a stone troll in the next, and the mist around the trees suddenly looks like dancing elves. A manifestation of the rich nature of Sweden and its supernatural side that comes out after dark.

Underneath the undulating floor of the forest, inside the caves in the hills, will an accompanying exhibition be located. Visitors can admire Swedish artists, such as August Malmström, his Älvalek pictured above, or John Bauer, and many more who have worked with painting the various creatures of Swedish folklore. Separate rooms, or hills, will house the work of various writers, directors and sculptors. Visitors can read and listen to amazing stories about encounters with trolls or watch films about the small gnomes living underneath us.

In addition to these two aspects of the pavilion, the interior forest and the exhibition underneath, there will also be some more general spaces. A bar, where you can buy a drink and something small to eat inside one of the “caves” and then sit down on top of it, looking out over the living landscape. A shop in which you can buy reproductions of the artwork displayed along with books and films and music. A larger auditorium for readings and lectures in which longer movie features also can be displayed. All together, an exhibition with a strong theme, encouraging visitors to travel to Sweden and seek out these phenomena themselves.

The Eyes of the Skin

2008-09-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

The eye is the organ of distance and separation, whereas touch is the sense of nearness, intimacy and affection. The eye surveys, controls and investigates, whereas touch approaches and caresses. During overpowering emotional experiences, we tend to close off the distancing sense of vision; we close our eyes when dreaming, listening to music, or caressing our beloved ones. Deep shadows and darkness are essential, because they dim the sharpness of vision, make depth and distance ambiguous, and invite unconscious peripheral vision and tactile fantasy.
- Juhani Pallasmaa, “The Eyes of the Skin, Architecture and the Senses”

In his book “The Eyes of the Skin...”, Juhani Pallasmaa writes about the bias towards vision in our culture as a whole and in the architectural practice in particular. Buildings are foremost conceived based on the way they look, not how the body interacts with them. By dimming the light and restriction vision, we are able to take in the full extent of our surroundings, the way it smells, sounds and feels. In this way, the experience of an architectural space can penetrate our consciousness, letting our body feel the full extent of a place and strengthening our existential experience.

Twilight is the time before sunrise, called dawn, and the time after sunset, called dusk. Sunlight scattered in the upper atmosphere illuminates the lower atmosphere, and the surface of the Earth is not completely lit or completely dark. The sun itself is not actually visible because it has not yet come over the horizon (sunrise) or it has passed below the horizon (sunset).
- Wikipedia

From early autumn, twilight grow longer and longer in Sweden. Then the nights come quicker, until they, at least in the north, dominate over the day. During these months, as daylight becomes scarce, not only do our bodies become more and more open to our other senses, but our imagination is also stimulated. Pallasmaa continues:

Homogenous bright light paralyses the imagination in the same way that homogenisation of space weakens the experience of being, and wipes away the sense of place. The human eye is most perfectly tuned for twilight rather than bright daylight.

This full involvement with a space is what I am hoping to achieve with the design of the dark inside of the pavilion. A space not necessarily completely dark but with little enough light to be able to feel the space to completely. By being in a “forest” is the peripheral vision as important as the direct gaze and the structure of the trunks, echo from the walls and the sense of the body climbing up and down the hilly landscape all form equal parts in the spatial experience.

// "The Eyes of the Skin" on Amazon
// Wikipedia on twilight

A Forest

2008-09-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

The next step in the development of my tools is a script that creates the “trees” that pierce through the dark inner space. Something that will work with very different sets of variables as I haven’t yet decided on their appearance. However, I have decided on which variables the script will take as input: trunk start and end radius, number of segments between floor and roof and the displacement of these, branching probability and number of recursive generations, twig length, width and angles. These inputs can create very differentiated trees.

Here’s the script in pseudo code:

input variables
pick tree starting points
for each point
- find corresponding point on roof
- find points in between
- draw a line between points
- draw circles along line based on input radius
- loft these circles
- start branching recursion
- - start point along tree line
- - random against branching probability
- - if under - find branch end point
- - draw branch and loft
- - boolean trunk and branches
- - continue recursion until generation limit
boolean trees with roof and floor

The script is still quite far away from being finished but it’s at least a good starting point. The major issues are concerning stability, it still crashes a lot, and the final boolean of the trees with the roof and floor.

//download tree script: create-tree.rvb

More Landscapes

2008-09-08T09:30:00.001-07:00

This is a concept image for the pavilion based on last week’s landscaping script. The volume appears to be solid from the outside, created between two undulating surfaces. As the site reserved for the building is a 50 by 60 meters wide rectangle, I’ve been thinking about letting the pavilion expand to at least two of these corners, and end the volume with a straight cut on those sides. But I will need to investigate the required spaces more in plan before making any certain statements about their whereabouts. Below is a laser cut physical model of the same volume:

Finally two other concept models, investigating different possibilities to articulate terrain:

Landscaping

2008-09-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

This past week have I been working with the dark inner landscape inside the pavilion. I would like it to be a exciting terrain, experienced both from underneath as an undulating roof and from above as a landscape to explore. For now this landscape is pretty straightforward, a surface created from a set of defined areas which then forms the “hills” in the terrain under which the programmatic spaces will be located. Though I’ll need to experiment with different ways to manipulate this surface, such as adding noise, I have included a delaunay triangulation of the result.

// download landscaping script: landscaping.rvb

// update: I added some surface noise to the mix. It’s a simple script that modifies the surface grips by a specified noise factor.

// download surface noise script: addnoisetosurface.rvb

First sketches

2008-08-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

Since the first meeting with my tutor I have been working with a concept for the pavilion based around the the main theme: darkness. One of my intentions has been to contain two sets of volumes, a big and dark theme space and several smaller bright spaces with various function, within the same wrapper. A surface with the dark volume on the inside and bright rooms in the spaces in-between the surface and the ground. The bright rooms will be lit from above through light shafts that cut through the interior dark space, connecting the two sides of the surface without interrupting it. These shafts will be more ore less shaped like tree trunks, creating an atmosphere of being deep inside a dark Swedish forest at night. I will need to investigate different possibilities of how to articulate this interior landscape, but my latest ideas circulates around the idea of a folded origami-like world with a set of larger trunks. This would of course also be reflected on the outside as they share the same surface. See below for an evolution of ideas:

Introduction

2008-08-07T05:53:00.001-07:00

My first intentions with this thesis project was to investigate and evaluate scripting methods within an architectural process while creating a pavilion for the world expo in Shanghai as a secondary goal. After discussing this idea with my tutor, we came to the conclusion that I will instead put my main focus on the pavilion, and to use scripting along the way as a tool to get there rather than as a mean in itself. By doing this I think that not only will the pavilion get the attention a project like this deserves but also that each scripting experiment will be more interesting as they will have more focus and an outspoken goal.

The theme for the pavilion will be something very Swedish: darkness. More to come about this soon as well as some first sketches.

// the Swedish expo 2010 page: www.expo2010.se/index.php/den-svenska-paviljongen-och-utstallningen/
// the official chinese page: en.expo2010china.com/

Learning Rhinoscript

2008-08-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

While I wasn’t sure yet what the subject of my thesis project would be, I knew by the end of this spring that I would like it to include an element of scripting. With scripting I mean the incorporation of writing code which generate form and structure into the architectural process. So, the first thing to do in preparation for the thesis work was to learn a scripting language. Though I had a brief excursion into MEL-script I decided that I would stick with rhinoscript, mostly because it seemed a little bit easier to understand but also because of the amount of online rhinoscript resources.

These are a couple of images of my early rhinoscript experiments:

// a great summery of rhinoscript resources: rhinoscriptingresources.blogspot.com