SCIENCE@home

Designing with Gradients: Bio-Inspired Computation for Digital Fabrication

Daniel Richards,M. Amos

Published 2015 in Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA)

ABSTRACT

Digital fabrication technologies greatly enhance and extend manufacturing possibilities. However, we are still relatively limited in our ability to fully exploit these new methods and create complex architectural structures with performance-driven properties. We argue that entirely new computational approaches are needed, using scalable generative encodings and advanced bio-inspired form finding processes. This paper presents a novel generative model that can create functional and expressive geometries by evolving volumetric gradient patterns. Using three case studies, we demonstrate the key advantages of our approach. We demonstrate, using simulation followed by physical fabrication, that our approach is useful for exploring complex, yet buildable geometries in early stage design. Our new method is therefore suitable for performance-driven form finding tasks such as structural optimisation, and holds vast potential for designing exotic multi-material and functionally graded materials in future applications.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2015

  • Venue

    Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA)

  • Publication date

    2015-05-14

  • Fields of study

    Materials Science, Computer Science, Engineering

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.52842/conf.acadia.2014.101
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-29 of 29 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-11 of 11 citing papers · Page 1 of 1