Credits: Alejandro Cartagena
Designed and constructed by Elegant Embellishments in 2013, the new facade of the Hospital Manuel Gea Gonzalez in Mexico City works actively to remove smog from around the building. The facade is comprised by Prosolve 370e tiles, a material that has a superfine coating of titanium dioxide, a photocatalytic substance that captures and neutralizes the smog particles. This process requires sunlight and, for this reason, the form of the tiles was optimized in order to receive the maximum possible amount of sunlight all along its’ surface. It utilizes a biomimetic pattern, derived from sponges and corals. This pattern was designed using Rhino.
Clusters of tiles were assembled on the ground and then mounted on a vertical grid with other clusters, directly on the facade.
Credits: Elegant Embellishments
Credits: Elegant Embellishments
Deconstructing the facade
The facade is based on a Voronoi pattern. This can be replicated by generating a series of points on a surface.
Form-finding process
Pseudo code
Grasshopper script
Form construction
Final
Render
Video
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Animated Systems // Hospital Manuel Gea González Facade is a project of IAAC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed in the Master of Advanced Architecture 2020/21 by Students: Christos Trompoukis and Faculty: Rodrigo Aguirre, Ashkan Foroughi Dehnav