by
Deborah Snoonian, P.E.
Digital gurus at work
Several speakers, many from outside of the U.S., presented
a compelling case that technological advances were integral
to achieving design goals for a wide variety of projects.
Mark Burry, who is professor of innovation at RMIT University
in Melbourne, Australia, has been involved in completing the
construction of Antonio Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia
Cathedral in Barcelona since the 1970s. Construction began
on the church in 1889, but it was unfinished when Gaudí
died in 1926. The design’s documentation was incomplete
because many of the 1:10 scale plaster models he left behind
were destroyed in the 1930s. Burry has taken photos, drawings,
and surviving shards of the models and analyzed them with
parametric design software to fill in the missing gaps. The
software was essential for resolving the complex geometries
Gaudí had conceived, Burry said.
Images courtesy Mark Goulthorpe/Decoi
Architects |
The steel curtain of the Aegis
Hypo-surface (left) is attached to a grid of sensor-activated
pistons (above). |
He estimates it will take another 40 years to finish the
cathedral. Mark Goulthorpe, principal of dECOi Architects
of Paris, presented a range of projects that used digital
manufacturing tools and other research. Blue Gallery, an exhibition
space in London, boasts sinuous curves reminiscent of seashells.
It was built entirely of nonstandard wood, fiberglass, and
aluminum components, many fabricated with computer numerically
controlled (CNC) machines. Construction tolerances for the
project were a mere two millimeters. (Sadly, the project was
intended as an experimental effort, and the artists had such
regard for the space that they wouldn’t hang their work
in it. The gallery was dismantled shortly after it was completed.)
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Another dECOi project, the Aegis Hyposurface, was commissioned
in a competition sponsored by the Hippodrome Theater in Birmingham,
England. It’s a curtain of steel mesh mounted on computer-controlled
pistons, which slide back and forth in response to external
“stimuli” such as movement, light, and sound. “The
project was designed to show on the outside the events that
are happening inside [the theater],” said Goulthorpe.
A collaborative effort between dECOi, RMIT’s Burry, and
leading researchers in solid geometry and electronics, the
project garnered top honors at the 2001 Far East International
Digital Architectural Design (FEIDAD) Awards.
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