DigiHYBIOS 1.0 & AnaHYBIOS 3.0 / New Approach: From Digital FormFinding to Analogue Methods

With the latest HYBIOS, we adopted a new approach. This time the experiment was based on a digital FormFinding algorithm using Daniel Piker's Kangaroo Plugin for Grasshopper. The new experiment also resolved some of the issues of the previous experiment. 

A cellular grid was used to generate a frame for pathways to have a more even floor to walk on. This time, the modeling was done to scale. Points were restricted at the pathway edges to create ramps on the raised platform. The mesh was relaxed within the grid cells to create blob-like forms by restricting the outlines of the grid. The roof membrane was stretched towards the center of the cells. The idea is to create a circulation path within the space, where depressions within the grid cells could be used for seating etc. Although more control was gained over the digital FormFinding process, there were a lot of restrictions with using the algorithm. Material behaviour and mesh qualities could not be embedded within the logic of the algorithm. Deforming the mesh was not done in real time either, which was a major restriction. We would like to create a script eventually that solves the problems of the current tools we are using and calculates the forces as output.

We deployed the same logic with the analogue prototype. The results were approximately similar, although we have more control over the shaping process, which enabled us to generate more interesting archi-tectonics. The idea of the developed formwork is that the floor grid could be reused to cast several other HYBIOS. The model was constructed to a scale of 1:50 for a 20m x 20m space. Essentially the point of this experiment is to control the reusable formwork to form the structures.