PARAMETRIC SKINS // BBC PAVILION CANNES

Introduction

Parametric Skins // BBC Pavilion Cannes is a 3D Printing project in which a group of students experiments and explore additive manufacturing techniques and testing its abilities and limitations through designing and 3D Printing a structural connection that holds circular disks on the facade together with the main structural columns.

1. BBC Studios Project Overview

BBC Studios, known as BBC Pavilion Cannes, was designed by Universal design studios and Giles Miller studio in 2019. The aim of the project was to give a bold statement of technological advancement and creative thinking and to make this project a turning point for public commercial space design.

Lizzie Crook | 22 October 2019 Leave a comment. “Universal Design Studio and Giles Miller Studio Design Reusable Pavilion for BBC Studios.” Dezeen, 22 Oct. 2019, www.dezeen.com/2019/10/22/universal-design-studio-giles-miller-studio-reusable-bbc-studios-pavilion/.

The circular disks on the facade are designed to provide natural shade and customized lighting based on the functions of the program.

Assembly simulation in 3D model

2. Reality and Transformation

In reality, the assembly of the disks was done using a single module of 4 CNC-cut metal plates that hold each disk, which helps speed up the manufacturing process, but on the other hand, it requires a lot of manual labor in order to adjust every disk in a specific rotation.

For this reason, our team designed a 3D printed connection that has a slit with a specified angle, which can be applied for each row. Circular disks vary in rotation angle along the z-axis, represented in 4 different orientations, and the angle of the opening that holds the disks controls the angle of rotation, which is a parametric variable that was used in this project to generate the connections.

3D printing simulation and process

Photo of the first 3D printed prototype for the project

3. Project Application

In the first prototype, the 3D printed connection proved to be very stable and robust, but with a lack of elegance in the way it looks. In the second and final prototype, our team worked on making the connection slimmer and with smarter openings, which saved a third of the materials that were used in the previous model and made it look more appealing. Also, the connection was printed upside down to use the minimal amount of support during the printing process.

The printing process took 4.2 hours in total and was printed in the ZORTRAX M-200 3D Printer through the slicing software, Z-Suite

Photo of the physical 3D printed model

Parametric Skins – BBC Pavilion Cannes is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at the Master in Advanced Architecture in 2020/2021 by Students: Ziyad Wassef Abdelkader Youssef Ahmed, Christos Trompoukis, Kajal Unahariya
Faculty: Ricardo Mayor Luque, Lana Awad, Shyam Zonca

Program