B.1. Design FocusMaterial Performance

In this section we look into material perfor-mance (minimal surfacing) to explain why it is appropriate for the Wyndham City Gate-way project. “Seeds of Change”, the previous public art established by Wyndham city has been criticized by the community for its high cost, and slow progress. According to Cameron (2011), the “Seeds of Change” project has been on Wyndham Council’s agenda for five years and cost ratepayers more than $25,000 and did not create enough visual impact. As a result, I think it is sensible for my design team to opt for a materially and structurally efficient and minimized solution to make our design outstanding and avoid over-budget. The Textile Hybrid M1 is my first precedent. The M1 explores lightweight tensile and bending-active structures. The structure of M1 exert a minimal of forces to the sur-rounding context by adopting deep surface prototype and intense testing with structural elasticity. Which is applicable to the ideas of our team’s design because it is structurally efficient and the shape of the structure also has a fluidity to it.

Top: “Seeds of Change” 2003 Middle and Bottom: Textile Hybrid M1 2012 by Inst. for Computational Design (Prof. A. Menges) Inst. of Building Structures & Structural Design (Prof. Knippers)

The second precedent is the Voussior Cloud. It consists groups of petal like struc-tures that create a beautiful daytime view-ing experience when users are inside the structure. I think we can learn from the sen-sorial effects that Voussior Cloud creates, the luminous wood pieces are decent to look at both from the inside and outside, and the pattern of the gaps between wood pieces also create interesting shading pattern. Moreover, the structural system of the Vous-sior Cloud is also applicable to the future design of our team. Firstly, the material is bending thin laminated wood, which enale a flexible, and lightweight surface. Sec-ondly, the sturcture adopt Antonio Gaudi’s hanging chain models, which act in pure compression and the placement of strings and weight can alter the building structure, which i think is very interesting and can add to the consideration of the design of my team to add structural efficiency and fluid-ity.

Top and Middle: Voussior Cloud

Entry Paradise Pavilion by LAVA is a great example of minimal surface and material ef-ficiency. LAVA adopt microscopic cell struc-ture ideas into the design of the pavilion, which create great visual impact like the shape of foam and latex in tension. My team really like the visual effect it creates and wanted to add similar effect into our design. Structurally, the shape of the pavilion is de-rived from nature, which is the most efficient subdivision of 3-D space. I think our design team will adapts design concepts of this Entry Paradise Pavilion, we also take notes of the lighting effects it creates because it changes to feel of the structure dramati-cally. In conclusion, my team will focus more on minimal surface as it incorporates asthetic captivation through the use of complex geometry on the future for the development for our final model as well as the Case Study for next week.

Entry Paradise Pavilion 2006 by LAVA

B.2. Case Study 1.01st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

In Case Study 1.0 me and my group explored material performance. We explored the reverse engineering of the Voussoir Cloud by LAVA. This proj-ect matches our team’s design focus. The project focuses on the material efficiency and lightweight petal structural component. The matrix creates a platform for my team to speculate the design direc-tions. The 1st and 2nd row explores the forces of X and Y direction exerts on the structure, that creates some twisting effects and the structure shapes like those hanging chain models our team explored during design focus stage. It is useful when consider placing the structure on a slanted ground that loads will be distributed unevenly. Third row relates to the depth of the vaults. Our team thinks the longer ones look more attractive as the supporting components are narrow, while the components on top are huge which creates strong visual impacts. Forth row explores the relation of sizes of the openings and the shape of the structure, all models show signs of distortion except the third one(with default value). Fifth row explores the possibility of adapting different curve and openings of the model, the model adapts to it well and with the fluid curve input it also exhibits an organic fluid feel to it. Unlike Voussoir Cloud project, our group wishes to create a structure with a hybrid system of wire mesh and wood. To create a visually interesting ob-ject, as well as create zones and portals within the structure (shaded area, open area, openings, etc.)

B.3. Case Study 2.0

Kangaroo plugin and Mesh box method

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

B.4. Technique: Development

Minimal Surface plugin and Mirrored method

The mesh box method is not very effective. When we used more boxes for the design, it took a long time to relax the outcomes. Also, the form of the mesh box design is boring which is just adding more boxes for the struc-ture. Therefore, we decided to have another method. This method can produce many interesting outcomes by changing the values of the sliders at the top left corner.

The mesh box method is not very effective. When we used more boxes for the design, it took a long time to relax the outcomes. Also, the form of the mesh box design is boring which is just adding more boxes for the struc-ture. Therefore, we decided to have another method. This method can produce many interesting outcomes by changing the values of the sliders at the top left corner.

Case Study 2.0 and technique development my team developed our own script. Which focuses extensively on minal surfacing. Minimal surface technique is the most appropriate technique as it explores a sense of complexity and volumetric occupancy with an efficient use of material. For the matrix our team explores the distance of points between the “Eval Curves”. By manupulating the eval curves in various places in the model, we spaculate for a minmal surface that has the most minmalized surface that can retain aesthetic purpose and do not look too chaotic when it is being mutiplied and put together. Our group feel particular interested in the 4th and 5th row of the design matrix for its smooth and contiuous surface, we see the possibilities to extend the design of the 4th and 5th row matrix by replicating the same surface to form a mass structure. Then, removing superfluous parts of the structure, tilt the structure towards users(or towards other areas of interest, tbc), and finally, apply the hybrid material system that we developed dur-ing the design focus.

B.5. Technique: Prototypes For this prototype section our team look into the German Pavilion for the 11th Prague Quadrennial. This model commenced from the definition of a material system based on ruled sur-faces, whereby the surfaces were reduced to the materialisation of the rulings as elastic strings that can be employed to modulate levels of transparency, exposure and enclo-sure as well as manipulating visual and physi-cal connectivity. After studying this model my team fabricat-ed a prototype to study the transparency of the structure and the enclosure. The bottm right photo demonstrates the strong functional and practical connection joints required to assemble such an intriq-uite architectural form. Although bulky and rigid, the joints are well concealed in hard-to-reach places within the pavillion - includ-ing the upper exterior of the surface, which seems to resemble an apple core.

German Pavilion for the Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Theatre Architecture 2007 by Achim Menges

source:http://www.evolo.us/architecture/archipelago-parametrically-designed-pavilion/

This prototype display a part of our model made by wire mesh. Our team soon find a problem that the minimal surface we create has some parts that seem to be superfluous, thus does not match the idea of minimal sur-face. The model also looks a bit repetitious and ordinary, lacks visual impact. As a result, our team sought for an alter-nate treatment for our structure. We want to tilt our structure to make it bending, to cre-ate a stronger visual impact, as well as cre-ate more openings and further remove su-perfluous parts from the structure to achieve a better minimized structure. The 2nd prototype display a better fluid shape that create stronger visual impact by tilting the structure, and the joints of the prototype was not flavourable and needs further research on the joints between com-ponents.

1st ,2nd Prototype 2013 by Yusakuji

B.6. Technique: Proposal

Minimal surfaces are generated through complex algo-rithmic geometry. Our project and approach explores minimal surface on a basis of repeating the minimal sur-faces to generate and composing them in a way that they can be applied to a variety of parameters and still retain the same principle.

The structure holds a particular value as it is self support-ing and therefore the true design intensions are able to be fully expressed without the use of external supports.

This approach allows for an holistic intension to be re-alised within the final outcome as the gateway express-es the volumetric occupancy in such an aesthetically captivating way, and with the use of such complex geometry, that it can be expressed in an experience for the users to stop and take a look.

it came to the groups attention that the geometry could be considered highly simplified in comparison to other minimal surface projects. However, as we considered the scale of the gateway we took into consideration the amount of time that the user would be allowed to experience the architecture and so as a pragmatic approach the outcome seemed to undergo a “complexity diet“ if you will and so explain the final outcome.

There were issues with the panel connections and materiality of the project as the conventional joints inhibited many ex-plorative and creative geometries. The group iteratively pro-gressed toward a combination of mesh panels with firm and rigid edges to allow for fixing to occur on a practical sense.

B.7. Algorithmic Sketches

Central Front

Top Right

Top Back

Top LeftCentral Right

Central Left

Draw a tectrohedro in RhinoGive name for each lineOpen grasshopper and create six curve componentEach component refers to each single line

In this section I will explain how our team’s model being made in GrassHoppper in a step-by-step and point form fashion

Create mid-points Create end points

Use line component to connect the mid points and all the points created by “Eval Curve” component

• Create end points on the top left curve and top right curve

• Use Evaluate curve component to put a point atspecificpartofthecurve.“t“valueisacurvedomain parameter. Right click on Evaluate curve component and choose “reparametarize” and then change the domain of the curve to “0 to 1”.

• Use Evaluate curve component to set a movable point on every line InterCurve creates curves connected by three

points

InterCurve creates curves connected by three points

A loft surface is created by Minimal surface component

Use Plane 3 Point component to create a plane for each side and these planes are used for mirrorring the the object

Use Plane 3 Point component to create a plane for each side and these planes are used for mirrorring the the object

Use mirror compo-nent to create mir-rorred objects

• Use “RoT3D” component to deplicate the two top pieces to the bottom along the centre of rotation point

• Right click on “C“ value of “Rot3D” and enter “PI”

• The centre rotation point is the end point of Central Right curve

Top left piece (according to the diagram below)

Top right piece (according to the diagram below)

Centre of rotation point

• Create two plans along x and y aixs

• Use z unit component for x value for both planes

• Use x unit component for y value for plane

• Mirror the object twice ac-cording to the orientatio of the planes

PLane 1

PLane 2

• Use Bounding Box tool to union all the pieces

• Put the union object into the twister box using Morph tool

• Use cross reference component to replicate the pieces

• Use Bounding Box tool to union all the pieces

• Put the union object into the twister box using Morph tool

• Use cross reference component to replicate the pieces

• We tried to use three planes to create a tilt

• Run the script again and then obtained the most suc-cessful portion from the tilt structure

B.8. Learning Objectives and Outcomes

In conclusion, our team will keep making prototype as we are approaching our final outcome. During the process, we will keep simplifying our model to achieve a better and more mini-mized structure, we plan on doing some extensive research and experimenting the shades of our structure and the lighting effects on it and hope that it can achive a minimal structure with both material and structural effcient as well as strong vi-sual impact.