[MATERIAL COMPUTATION WORKSHOP]
Designing material systems is blurring the limits between computation and physical form. A set of input parameters is needed in order for complex geometries and conditions to be elaborated. Parametric thinking causes a shift in the way a designed object is conceived through down-scaling the system into elementary units. Thinking parametrically makes objects be generated by an internal mathematical logic based upon numbers and algorithms, instead, or on top, of the traditional conceptual procedures.
In this workshop the use of parametrically designed catenary geometries made up from repetitive components will generate inverted topographies evocative of Gaudi’s models. Further parametric correlations will be based on synesthetic translations between images and form.
” The catenary model is an example of material computation, essentially self-calculating, resolving through feedback multidimensional forces acting on the linked field of strands and weights… As any scientist dealing with dynamics of material systems will tell you, the material field will always generate richer and more singular expressions than the programs derived from them will produce. Thus, there will always be a place for the analog in structural experimentation.”
Reiser + Umemoto, 2005, Atlas of Novel Tectonics
