Eastland Town Centre – ACME || render
Eastland Town Centre
Background
The facade of focus for this project is the Eastland Town Centre, which is located in the suburbs of Melbourne, as part of a larger town development. The architects designed the facade to be a surface wrapping the upper part of the town center, which houses the library. This veil of stone forms a sun-screening system, it controls light and view points out by manipulating the apertures to provide enough lighting into the building without damaging the book collection.
Eastland Town centre – photo by Michael Gazzola
The main variable parameter in the facade is the size of the apertures, and the code developed to define such facade revolves around setting up a base diamond grid on which the rhomboid openings are controlled via an attractor curve.
Code development
The code’s logic was developed through many iterations to make up for the problems encountered in the building process. Most notably is the corner problem, which was present in a continuous wrapping surface.
First iteration of the code development showed an issue with corners and edges.
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Second iteration
Second iteration of the code development. Fine tuning to remove the problem edges.
Design code in implementation
The established logic in use.
The grasshopper Definition
Variations
The advantage of parametric designs is the excellent flexibility and control over each parameter. In the original building, the size of the openings were the main variable. However, the same logic can be used to control and switch roles of the parameter. Therefore, by using the same code, the project developed different variations, intervening at different stages of the design sequence, and/or inverting certain characteristics of applied parameters.
Renders
Animation
The logic and construction of the code, and thereby of the facade, is explained through this animation. The animation explains how facade was used for the Introduction to Digital Fabrication Source, which can be read here. The animation was done in Grasshopper and Rhino3D using Centipede and Camera control.
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Animated Systems – Eastland Town Centre is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at the Master in Advanced Architecture in 2020/2021 by Students: Cecile Ngoc Suong Perdu
Faculty: Rodrigo Aguirre | Faculty Assistant: Ashkan Foroughi