Growing Matter

Growing matter along Pujades st. in 3 different ways:

  •  Organic voxel  
  •  Generative design from an optimized structure
  •  Attaching particles over the structure

State of the art

As a first trial project the group experimented with the possibilities of a grasshopper model in Fologram. A structure was made with the use of the following movable points that each have different uses:

  • The box shaped anchor points as a foundation.
  • The sphere shaped points as a tool to create an arc.
  • The purple cone as the top point of the structure.
  • The red cones as a parameter for the thickness of the frame.
  • The blue cones as a parameter for the count of the cells.

In the GIF is shown how multiple users are configuring the structure.

As a second part, a wasp function is used to add blocks on top of the prebuilt structure. The user can add these blocks by shooting them and they will stick on the surface.

In this fi

rst project the user could only move objects where the objects in space would change and add structures. For the next project more of the Fologram functions would be used to explore the app.

Overall Matter

Pseudocode

GROWING VOXELS

With the creation of the growing Voxels, Spheres are added on eachother. A grasshopper plugin is used called Anemone where these new additions are in a loop, just like the loops of coding, and stops when the end point is reached. It creates a growing effect which looks like some sort of organism or plant growing.

GENERATIVE DESIGN FROM STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION

<p>

</p>

Tools, Actors and Interactions

oxel activation and direction

– Click and drag

Base nodes

-Dragging boxes

Bounding box

-Dragging spheres

Structure material

-Steel

Growing Wasp particles

-Button

DESIRED VOXEL GROWTH USER INTERACTION

Once we were able to successfully create ‘growths’, we wanted to explore the possibilities from an interaction perspective. The goal for this improvement was two-fold: 

  1. Develop a gesture that a Hololens user would find more intuitive to create voxel growths
  2. Have voxel growths grow from building facades

In this exploration, we ended up with a gesture that would first secure the point of growth on a building, and second, establish its direction and magnitude. Respectively, this was done by a pinch, followed by a drag towards the body.

ANNOTATION: Press to decide Anchor Point; Drag to decide Attractor Point – reflected from plane normal; Voxel starts growing towards Attraction Point on Release

Simulation

<p>

</p>

HoloLens Simulation

<p>

</p>

<p>

</p>

GROWING MATTER is a project of IAAC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Masters in Robotics and Advanced Construction, in 2021/2022

Students:Huanyu Li, Alberto Martínez, Vincent Verster, Jordi Vilanova

Faculty: Keith Kaseman, Will Reynolds, Daniil Koshelyuk