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