Week 11–12 (Part2): Lamella

Dom and I began right away designing different iterations of a pavilion that was simple yet effective in form.

Iteration 1

The first iteration was a very simple array of lofted gills that were positioned to have a gradient in distance of separation so that the entrance would seem more natural.

I began by extracting half of a circular curve and dividing that into even distances. Using a cull by pattern node I used the patter true, false, true, false, false, true, false, false false, true …etc until I reached enough falses and trues to take up the entire curve.

Although this way is quite manual, it was the only solution I could think of at this time that would replace the graph mapper.

I repeated this step with an internal circle and then created arcs between each point using arch SED

This was repeated with a smaller external curve and a larger internal curve. This would create the lowest point of the gills.

They were then lofted to create the gills. Since this was only half the curve, all the geometry was then mirrored to complete the pavilion form.

Iteration 2

Iteration 2 was very similar to iteration one, however some of the panels were removed to allow more light to enter the space. This would also make it easier for the fabrication team to create and would be beneficial in terms of cost and fabrication time.

Iteration 3 (Finger joints)

Dom was able to take what I had done and create more organic looking gills.

This is something the group preferred as it seemed more organic and and resembled a fungi more so than the original more simple gill design. I took these gills and started to look at how it could be constructed. Something that I knew how to script as I had previously scripted it for another project, was finger joints. I took one of the gills and played with how finger joints could be scripted with this form.

In this script I have exploded the gill brep, found the edge of a face and laid it flat. I then exploded the four curves of this edge curve and found a point along both of the longer curves to dictate where the finger joints would be positioned.

I took the curve created using the two points, exploded and shattered it and then used dispatch to extract every second shattered curve. I then offset the remaining shattered curves to create what you see above. I then used weave and connect curves to create the final finger joints.

Iteration 4

Dom and I then put a bit of both our scripts together to come up with the final form. Using Dom’s organic gills with my separation panel scripts we were able to come up with a good balance of simplicity and a unique form. Dom also added in a bench in the centre which everyone agreed felt fitting for the pavilion and its theme.

I then took this model in to 3DS Max and did a simple render using Vray and Photoshop to create a hero image. It was realised that none of the previous pavilions had had any renders or visualisations that showed what it could actually look like and I felt by taking this extra step it would “sell” the pavilion better.