Digital Fabrication » additive fabrication

Cobogó: From Brazilian Modern Architecture to 3D Printing

iaac — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:11:17 +0000

Marcio Kogan's contemporary approach.

Cobogó is the name of the hollow elements, originally made of concrete or ceramic, created in the 20th Century. Its name derives from the initials of the surnames of three engineers that worked in Recife, Brazil: Amadeu Oliveira Coimbra, Ernest August Boeckmann and Antônio de Góes. These elements follow the same principle of the old wooden elements of Moorish architecture: solution to the closure of structures. While looking for references to fabricate a 3D printed brick, it was natural to end up looking for elements that were already used in architecture. The hollow sections found in cobogós were perfect to spare material without compromising the stability of the structure. Re fabricate old elements paying an homage to our own backgrounds while having the chance to give it a twist. A trip in space and time.

To create the brick, we chose 5 different decoration patterns of cobogós. We constructed five solids with dimensions 21.67×21.67x2mm. For all of them we did an offset of 2mm to keep the boundaries required for the material not to break. Then we drew polylines to create the designs or rectangles. After a polyline was done, we did Extrude Closed Planar Curve with the same thickness of the original solid. With that we could erase the internal curves to avoid having unneeded geometry on the surface. Then we did Boolean Difference between the bigger solid and the ones created with the Extrusion of the Curves to make them hollow as a cobogó.

Traditional ceramic cobogós used in Brazil's Modern Architecture

Finally we categorized each cobogó as different layers and copied and alternated them to construct the mosaic pattern. After the first wall containing 6 bricks on the x-axis and 3 on the z-axis, we used Boolean Union to create a single solid. Then we deselected all Snaps, leaving only End and then starting constructing the remaining surfaces. Copy the first wall and then rotate it on the same edge. At the end with the 4 walls created, we joined them by using Boolean Union. The same process was done to create the top surface. Once it was positioned, we did a cylinder at the center of the connections with a radius of 19.5mm and thickness of 2mm. By doing a Boolean Split between the cylinder and the top surface, we were able to split them and delete the internal parts that weren’t necessary.

After that we extruded the cylinder to its entire height required, mirrored it for the other side of the brick and Boolean Union these elements to create the top surface. Afterwards we copied by the end point to create the base and finish all sides of the brick. The caps of the cylinders of the top, as well as the cylinder of the bottom, were left open in order to use less material and try to make the brick cheaper. Finally to close the brick we used Boolean Union for all the elements to join.

After the brick was a solid, we verified the edges using the Edges tool to make sure there were no naked edges.

After that, we made a Box with the dimensions of the Cage, and choose Analyze> Mass Properties> Volume Centroid to be able to find the midpoint of the area. Choose CageEdit>Select the Bench>BoundingBox> x=4, y=10, z=4 and grabbed the 4 centered points of the brick to Scale them with the Origin point based on the Volume Centroid drawn before towards the Center of the volume.

With that, what was a straight wall became a curved structure, that could only be constructed with new technologies, such as 3D printing. The old and the new – as always – walking together.

If Additive Fabrication becomes cheap…

Amay Gurkar — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:43:18 +0000

RAPID PROTOTYPING

Additive Fabrication refers to a class of manufacturing process, in a which a part is built by adding layers of materialupon another. The most important constraint for this type of manufacturing would be the cost. When Rapid Prototyping becomes cheaper and more open to the visions of the masses, everyone would be able to develope and design thier own crazy objects. The Result should turn out to be very interesting…

The first image shows Jewelery constructed using 3d printing technology, and titled with names such as lamina, dendrite and radiolaria — take inspiration from organic structures. Many of their pieces are generated from algorithmic processes and even allow you to customize your own pieces of jewelry through their website. Created by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenburg — both former students at MIT, who studied in the fields of Architecture, Biology and Mathematics.

The other images show Jewelery created by Joshua Demonte at Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art — which is presumably when he had free, unlimited access to a rapid prototyping machine. He describes them as jewlery mimic the Architectural Elements, activating the space around the body and alterating the viewers perception of the wearer. In his own words ” my work has replaced the traditional embellishments of jewelery objects with the details of traditional architectural forms “.

SERIE ARCHITECTS

V-OFFICE
COMPLETION – September 2007
AREA – 5000 sq.mts
DESIGN – Chris Lee and Kapil Gupta.
LINK – www.serie.co.uk/HTML Files/Project/V Office07.html

At present in Mumbai, the proliferation of curtain walls in fast paced, speculative office buildings have reduced the role of the architect to elevation dressers. This phenomenon is blanketing the city with endless uninspired permutations of aluminium frames and glazing; the domain of an architect is confined to a mere 200mm depth. Resisting this tendency, the proposal aims to reinterpret the various components that can possibly make up an elevation whilst maintaining the maximum floor area that can be generated by building to the extent of the site boundary. The proposal imagines a modulated skin; made up of 9 modules, that performs as a series of balconies, storage spaces, sun-shades and window-cabins all moulded into one.

The size of openings of the skin is modulated by the amount of dilation of each of the modules which responds to the position of the façade in relation to the sun and also the program within. The depth of the skin thus is thickened to 2 metres to enable balconies, break-out spaces, private cabins and tiered-seating for an auditorium. On the base of the block, the same primary modules are differentiated to create skylights to basement, outdoor furniture, grass-basins and pavement modules.

If Additive Fabrication becomes cheaper these module could be fabricated on site and assembled for a much faster process for constructing architecture and hence meet the increasing demand for sheltered spaces within the developing cities such as Mumbai, India.

A beehive as a case study for additive digital fabrication?

iaac — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:29:38 +0000

Bees
One can see bees as perfect, small machines fabricating with high precision wax honeycombs to protect their larvae and store honey and pollen.
They are ‘programmed’ to reproduce in an endless series a very optimised structure of hexagonal cells with very thin walls. This construction is fabricated by bees producing their own construction material and applying it in a geometrically perfect structure which optimises material consumption.
The closed end of the honeycomb is also perfect in terms of material and space use (section of a rhombic dodecahedra) and gives rigidity to the whole structure.

A honeycomb in the 'fabrication' process. wikipedia / Makro Freak / 2007-06-04

Closed bottom of honeycomb cells. wikipedia / Waugsberg / 2007-08-31

Living wicker walls
The fabrication of baskets is based in a technique that waves natural fibres in a very robust hull where the skin is the structure: a very old additive fabrication method used by humans that implies a small amount of operations laid down in tradition.
Forming walls of woven living wicker is a ‘construction’ technique resulting in very stable structures which grow for themselves. Can this be considered additive fabrication? The plant grows by accumulating cells. The ‘architect’ just waves the branches when they are flexible and waits until they grow. This results, by all means, in a very slow fabrication process!

Wicker basket walls, detail. (cc)by-sa / R.Portell / 2010-10-18

Living wicker construction. (cc)by-sa / R.Portell / 2010-10-18