Coding Form

an architectural exploration of...

Processes in contemporary design and fabrication within the context of digital design. The base object is comprised of two blended shapes transformed with a series of recursive subdivisions done in Grasshopper and Python. In this way, architectural form and material are altered simultaneously and in relation to one another through nonlinear design complexity.  This project sets up a productive ambiguity between form and ornament that emerges when we observe the various algorithms being developed in the current progress of computational design.  By using such algorithms, we are able to developed a certain kind of duality and mixed resolution present in the whole form.

Ornamentation has been heavily opposed by architects like Adolf Loos, technologically embraced by Greg Lynn and perceived as a taboo subject by everyone else.  It is only now that we may retake this subject because of the introduction of digital technology into the architecture field.  Technology, as an enabling device, allows us to have the process and the direct result of the expressive mechanical sensibilities in tandem.  Computational technologies may add an extra layer of complexity to the architectural realm, maturing architecture into a more intelligent and interactive infrastructure.  This approach to architecture has the ability to influence our space perception beyond the physical dimension.

We started this artifact as a blank slate, a smooth surface, where we could develop the notion of information embedded into the material itself.  Without this notion, we would have created another static object with over imposed materiality.  We were inspired to part from the process that manufactures most of our fiscal world, the one that yields a one-way exchange between our natural resources and our objects. As we come to terms with an emerging model of computation, we must also conceive of it as a new building material.