alternative folding

Exercise A Midterm Board

draft-ish

This is a rough draft of where my final board is going.  I am looking to add text (abstract) and diagrams in a column on the left, as well as text (title/big idea) on the bottom.  the hidden lines reflect a perspective of an section.  I wanted to use the section to reveal the layering of cubes set within each other.  I”m not sure how well this reads.

A model

exercise a abstract

thoughts

A pretty thing made out of chipboard and butterboard, the model from exercise 05 sits pinned to the wall static and unresponsive. The ordering of the decorations within the hexagon is denoted by the repetition of patterns within patterns. The units repeated are circular and centralized in nature which when repeated in the hexagon suggests the potential for exploring rotational movement.

Project A will deal with the investigation of perceptive movement on a static surface. The static nature can be debatable. The elements of patterning from exercise 05 could be repeated after a certain order and thus create a skin. Because the ornamentation featured in exercise 05 is curvilinear and even flowery the model rends itself to be interpreted as an organic form. The skin that project A would propose is to be an organic entity composed from the stitching of a repeated unit borrowed from exercise 05. This skin itself then could begin to shape and fold according to a pattern or order to create space.

A possible investigation is to propose the skin itself as the space. Thinking about the entity of the skin as a living organism with a surface that is responsive to human touch and activity.

Sources:

(Un)folding Form by Kostas Terzidis from Expressive Form, A Conceptual Approach to Computational Design

The Function of Ornament edited by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo

Exploration of Surface

This project takes the abstraction of pattern and creates an interesting condition between two surfaces. When viewed straight on, the surfaces line up to give the idea of the original pattern. Since this view is rarely achieved in perspective, this project will explore the idea of experiencing a layered surface from different viewpoints. The two surfaces create a space between which can be inhabited on different scales. This space is created through the folding and bending of each surface, which creates texture and space in the surface. “While bending may suggest tension, stress, or restlessness, it also suggests continuity, direction, and smoothness” (“(Un)folding Form” by Kostas Terzidis from “Expressive Form, A Conceptual Approach to Computational Design”). Through this manipulation, a dialogue is created between the surfaces, as a result of the original abstraction of pattern. This project explores the idea of a façade, which can be occupied. The viewer will have one perception from the outside, a different perception from the interior, and the space between the two surfaces. The Louis Vuitton Roppongi Hills Store explores the idea of transforming their label into a façade treatment. The label is experienced as label from the interior, but on other outer wall, it is transformed into an abstraction of that pattern which then allows you to experience the label in varying ways. “The composite of the layers forms a deep screen that provides varying degrees of transparency or opacity when seen from different angles: more transparent the more frontal the viewpoint, more opaque when seen on the oblique” (The Function of Ornament, edited by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo). The technique used in this building creates an experience that varies dependent on the viewpoint.
This project takes the idea of transformation of a pattern, and allows the surfaces to be experienced from the exterior, the interior, as well as the space between the two layers of surface. This will add an element of human motion that will make the façade more dynamic.

Folding to Space

The passage from pattern to surface to space can be thought of in a very logical and step-oriented process or algorithm. In the reading Expressive Form by Kostas Terzidis, the author explains that simple pattern can be folded and unfolded upon itself to become a shape or space. In the example of the step-by-step oriented process of paper folding or origami the pattern folds upon a preset crease to create a 3-dimensional form or space. Also, nothing is added or subtracted to the continuous nature of the single pattern or piece of paper creating homogeneity in the structure.

However, this idea of folding based solely on one pattern can be identified with a sort of mimicry that Michael Ostwald says causes the space to lose its identity. In his article Seduction, Subversion, and Predation: Surface Characteristics he says the object will lose itself in the whole of its surroundings, or in this example the shape loses its individuality from its initial state because it followed only one set path.

But what happens if new sets of rules are introduced during the act of the fold or unfold? Terzidis argues that all the potential of a plane is in between the start and end points of the action. My journey into the translation of pattern to space will see what happens when a pattern is introduced to another or reintroduced to itself, before it has finished (un)folding. This will not only cause a new dynamic space than the one that was predetermined by the original pattern, but it will also help to cure the problem of the output losing its individuality to the pattern.

The actual process will build upon my initial experiments into depth from exercise 5. In that case I used a single, but multifaceted pattern, and broke it down to three distinct, but separate patterns. Now I can go back and reintroduce the patterns to each other in various ways to create a new space than the one originally predetermined.