Building unimaginable shapes Michael Hansmeyer

as an architect i often ask myself what

is the origin of the forms that we

design

what kind of forms

could we design if we if we wouldn’t

work with references anymore if we had

no bias if we had no preconceptions

what kind of forms could we design if we

could free ourselves from from our

experience

if we could free ourselves from our our

education

what would these unseen forms look like

would they would they surprise us would

they intrigue us

would they delight us

if so then how can we go about creating

something that is truly new

i propose we look to nature

nature has been called the greatest

architect of forms

and i’m not saying that we should copy

nature i’m not saying we should mimic

biology

instead i propose that we can borrow

nature’s processes we can abstract them

and to create something that is new

nature’s main process of creation

morphogenesis is the splitting of one

cell into two cells and these cells can

either be identical or they can be

distinct from each other through

asymmetric cell division

if we abstract this process and simplify

it as much as possible then we could

start with a single sheet of paper one

surface and we could make a fold and

divide the surface into two surfaces

we’re free to choose where we make the

fold

and by doing so we can differentiate the

surfaces

through this very simple process we can

create an astounding variety of forms

now we can take this form and use the

same process to generate

three-dimensional structures

but rather than folding things by hand

we’ll bring the structure into the

computer and encode it as an algorithm

and in doing so we can suddenly fold

anything

we can fold a million times faster and

we can fold in hundreds and hundreds of

variations and as we’re seeking to make

something three-dimensional

we start not with a single surface but

with a volume a simple volume the cube

if we take its surfaces and fold them

again and again again and again then

after 16 iterations 16 steps we end up

with 400 000 surfaces and a shape that

looks for instance like this

and if we

change where we make the folds if we

change the folding ratio then this cube

turns into this one

we can change the folding ratio again to

produce this shape

or this shape

so we exert control over the form by

specifying the position of where we’re

making the fold but essentially you’re

looking at a folded cube

and we can play with this we can apply

different folding ratios to different

parts of the form to create local

conditions

we can begin to sculpt the form

and because we’re doing the folding in

the computer we are completely free of

any physical constraints so that means

that surfaces can intersect themselves

they can become impossibly small we can

make fools that we otherwise could not

make

surfaces can become porous

they can stretch they can tear

and all this expands the scope of forms

that we can produce

but in each case i didn’t design the

form i designed the process that

generated the form

in general if we make a small change to

the folding ratio which is what you’re

seeing here then the form

changes correspondingly

but that’s only half of the story

99.9 percent of the folding ratios

produce not this

but this

the geometric equivalent of noise

the forms that i showed before were made

actually through very long trial and

error a far more effective way to create

forms i’ve found is to use information

that is already contained in forms a

very simple form such as this one

actually contains a lot of information

that may not be visible to the human eye

so for instance we can plot the length

of the edges white surfaces have long

edges black ones have short ones we can

plot the planarity of the surfaces their

curvature

how radial they are all information that

may not be

instantly visible to you but that we can

bring out that we can articulate

and that we can use to control the

folding

so now i’m not specifying a single ratio

anymore to fold it but instead i’m

establishing a rule i’m establishing a

link between a property of a surface

and how that surface is folded

and because i’ve designed the process

and not the form i can run the process

again and again and again to produce a

whole family of forms

these forms look elaborate but the

process is a very minimal one there’s a

simple input it’s always a cube that i

start with and it’s a very simple

operation it’s making a fold

and doing this over and over again

so let’s bring this process to

architecture how and at what scale

i chose to design a column

columns are architectural archetypes

they’ve been used throughout history to

express ideals

about about beauty about technology

the challenge to me was how we could

express this new algorithmic order in a

column

i started using four cylinders through a

lot of experimentation these cylinders

eventually evolved

into this

and these columns they have information

at very many scales

we can begin to zoom into them

the closer one gets the more new

features one discovers

some formations are almost at the

threshold of human visibility

and unlike traditional architecture it’s

a single process that creates both the

overall form and the microscopic surface

detail

these forms are

undrawable

an architect who’s drawing them with a

pen and a paper would probably take

months or it would take even a year to

draw all the sections all of the

elevations you can only create something

like this through an algorithm

the more interesting question perhaps is

are these forms imaginable

usually an architect can somehow

envision the end state of what he is

designing

in this case the process is

deterministic there’s no randomness

involved at all

but it’s not entirely predictable

there’s too many surfaces

there’s too much detail one can’t see

the end state

so this leads to a new role for the

architect

one needs a new method to explore all of

the possibilities that are out there

for one thing

one can design many variants of the form

in parallel and one can cultivate them

and to go back to the analogy with

nature one can begin to think in terms

of populations one can talk about

permutations about generations

about crossing and breeding to come up

with a design

and the architect is really he moves

into the position of being an

orchestrator of all of these processes

but enough of the theory at one point i

i simply wanted to jump inside this

image so to say i bought these

red and blue 3d glasses kind of very

close to the screen but but still that

wasn’t the same as being able to to to

walk around and touch things so there

was only one possibility to to bring the

column out of the computer

there’s been a lot of talk now about

about 3d printing

for for me or for for my purpose at this

moment it’s

there’s still too much of an unfavorable

trade-off between scale

and um on the one hand and and

resolution and speed on the other

so instead we decided to take the column

and we decided to build as a layered

model made out of very many slices

thinly stacked over each other what

you’re looking at here is an x-ray of

the column that you just saw viewed from

the top

unbeknownst to me at the time

because we had only seen the outside the

surfaces were continuing to fold

themselves to grow on the inside of the

column

which was quite surprising discovery

from this shape we calculated a cutting

line

and then we gave this cutting line to a

laser cutter

to produce and you’re seeing a segment

of it here

very many thin slices individually cut

on top of each other

and this is a photo now it’s it’s not a

rendering and the column that we ended

up with after a lot of work ended up

looking remarkably like the one that we

had designed in the computer

almost all of the details almost all of

the surface intricacies were preserved

it was very labor-intensive

there’s a huge disconnect at the moment

still between the virtual

and the physical it took me several

months to design the column but

ultimately it takes the computer about

30 seconds to calculate all of the 16

million faces

the physical model on the other hand is

2 700 layers one millimeter thick it

weighs 700 kilos it’s made of sheet that

that can cover this entire auditorium

and the cutting path that the laser

followed goes from here

to the airport and back again

but it is increasingly possible machines

are getting faster it’s getting less

expensive and there’s some promising

technological developments just on the

horizon

these are images from the guangzhou

biennale and in this case i used abs

plastic to produce the columns we used a

bigger faster machine and they have a

steel core inside so they’re structural

they can bear loads for once

each column is effectively a hybrid of

two columns um you can see a different

column in the mirror if there’s a mirror

behind the column that creates a sort of

an optical illusion

so where does this leave us i think this

project gives us a glimpse of the unseen

objects that await us if we as

architects begin to think about

designing not the object but a process

to generate objects

i’ve shown one simple process that was

inspired by nature there there’s

countless other ones

in short we have no constraints

um instead we have processes in our

hands right now that allow us to create

structures at all scales that we

couldn’t even have dreamt up

and if i may add at one point we will

build them

thank you

you