Digital Fabrications by Lisa Iwamoto

Author:Lisa Iwamoto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2012-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Diagram of Weaire-Phelan structure.

Courtesy: Nick Karklins

Chris Bosse/PTW Architects,

Watercube, 2008. Photo: Chris Bosse

Digital Origami and C_Wall both transform sheet material into structural building blocks. Both laser-cut and engrave and fold paper to make stackable modules. The designs differ significantly, however, in conception and result. As the designer, for PTW Architects, of the National Aquatics Center for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Bosse takes efficiencies employed in the structural envelope of the building to limit the number of cells while maximizing visual difference. Also known as the Watercube, the design employs a cellular organization based on foam, or the Weaire-Phelan structure, reputedly the most efficient cellular partitioning arrangement. It is composed of two types of irregular polyhedra—six tetrakaidecahedra (fourteen-sided) and two dodecahedra (twelve-sided)—that nest together to form a larger interlocking unit. Yet whereas the Watercube shears a large block of packed cells to arrive at the final interior and exterior surfaces, Digital Origami allows its thirty-five hundred recycled cardboard units to aggregate organically. The simplicity of the project’s construction method is belied by its visual complexity. The bottom-up structural logic fosters on-site design flexibility. Cells are left out at times for porosity, the outside fringes of the installation suggest possible future growth, and the design can be infinitely reconfigured to respond to different site conditions and constraints.

The cellular units of Andrew Kudless’s C_Wall, by contrast, are designed to fill a predetermined volume: one wythe thick. The Voronoi cells are generated using a computer script that uses points projected on the faceted surfaces of the form. Unlike the regularized eight modules of Digital Origami, each cell shape of C_Wall is unique, configured for one specific arrangement: the modular difference gives integrity to the whole. Though intricate and diverse, the units are subsumed into the larger figure of the piece. It is at once organic and constructed.

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