core.form-ula

There is some beautiful work coming from Michael Harris + David Jaubert over @ systemicprocess. They are working w/ a series of existing tools as well as their own custom user interfaces to allow for a higher degree of flexibility and a much more precise work flow. Take a look at some of the videos. They do an amazing job of allowing one into the process and the spaces that these lattices occupy.

Taken from the systemicprocess site:

systemicprocess is the collaboration of David Jaubert and Michael Harris. The working methodology of systemicprocess utilizes a wide coterie of tools from digital modeling and scripting to digital fabrication as a means of removing the barrier between the conceptualization of ideas and the palpability of realization.

Michael Harris is currently pursuing a Masters in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to the GSD, he worked in New York City for G.P. Schafer Architect, and in Parma, Italy, for Pier Carlo Bontempi Architect and Urban Designer. Michael received his Bachelors of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, which included a year at the University of Notre Dame Rome Studies Center. In December of 2007, he was awarded the Rieger-Graham Prize by the ICACA and a 3 month fellowship at the American Academy in Rome for the Fall of 2008.

David Jaubert is currently pursuing a Masters in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. David recently worked in The Netherlands during the summer for the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. Before coming to the GSD, David worked in New York at the multi-disciplinary firm dbox, shifting roles between 3d modelling and rendering, graphic design, interactive design and photography. David received his Bachelors of Architecture from The University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

the premise

responsive skin is an experiment in the conception of generative processes as a viable means towards producing responsive and adaptive physical systems. it is concerned with performative variability and its relevance to architectural form. responsive skin questions the repetitive isostatic nature of the architectural facade and explores a system that can vary based on a given set of architectural criteria.

the system

the responsive skin proposes a system of unit-based aggregation in which the part-to-whole relationship is given by the unit’s ability to possess unique variation while remaining cohesive within the larger collection. it questions the flatness of the architectural facade through the use of layered systems in which the threshold of the membrane is increased to a condition of interstitial depth rather than graphic two-dimensionality. the layered system introduces the possibility of the facade to engender compound effects enabling a more complex response to the given architectural criteria.

the method

the responsive skin was conceived as a flexible system that could quickly and easily be modified for experimentation. written in Maya Embedded Language, all major properties of the system are modifiable through a graphical user interface which allows for a robust workflow in which each experiment can be refined through iterative versioning. the system is created exclusively through MEL with a process that can be divided primarily in two parts: the initial creation of geometry and the transformation of that geometry.