Ornamental Discretisation of Free-form Surfaces

Abstract

The adoption of digital planning methods has given rise to an unprecedented formal freedom in architectural design. Free-form shapes enjoy considerable popularity in architectural production today. However, these shapes prove to be notoriously hard to fabricate. In the course of a funded research project we investigated the approximation of continuous double-curved surfaces by discrete meshes consisting solely of planar facets, which can be fabricated efficiently using standardised, mass-produced building materials. We introduce our geometrical approach, which is based on the intersection of tangent planes to the surface, and present the digital tools we conceived to integrate the processes of design rationalisation and form-finding.