The main goal of this project was to model and visualize a dynamic and responsive facade through the use of grasshopper and animation.The chosen facade system is inspired by the responsive facade of the Al-Bahar towers in Abu Dhabi.

Responsive Facade of Al-Bahar Towers

The following steps were taken in order to model the facade:

1. Step 1: The first step was to model the general form of the towers which was done by moving and scaling circular sections. This part would later become the core of the tower.

Creating the Tower Surface

2. Step 2: In this step, the surface of the lofted Brep was exploded and the resulted curves were used to achieve a set of points through moving which, the desired geometry could be achieved. Further on a curve was defined that could be the path for the attractor points, controlled by a slider, and the movement of the surface points were therefore controlled by the position of each of these surface points and the distance between them and the attractor point.

Creating the Triangular Panels

3. Step 3: Finally the surfaces were achieved through the resulted points from the previous step and a gradient was assigned to the facade based on the movement of the attractor points.

Final Panels and Gradient According to the Attractor Points

The Complete Script

Images of the Model

Responsive Facade is a project of IAAC, Institute of Advance Architecture of Catalonia, developed at the Computational Design course at the Master in Advanced Architecture program in 2017 by:

Student: Baran Mostafa Tehrani

Tutors: Rodrigo Aguirre, Aldo Sollazo