faceted surface

(PROJECT WITH STUDENTS)

course: Advanced Digital Making

University of Oklahoma

Fall, 2017

 

Laser-cut acrylic sheet

Zip ties

Baltic birch plywood

Rhino3d

Grasshopper

 

(Scroll down for image gallery)

This object was produced by students during a digital fabrication course that I taught. Students studied the geometries of compound curved surfaces, and multiple methods of constructing them from flat sheet materials. As most construction materials cannot be stretched to form compound curved geometries, we need to create a series of flat patterns that can be assembled into a visual approximation. A surface that can be reduced to a flat pattern without being distorted is called developable. This student team chose to reduce the original curved surface into a triangulated mesh, as each face would automatically be a flat plane. The pieces are aggregated together with zip ties as a joinery system.