RADIOLARIA LAMP
What advantages would asymmetric forms provide that go beyond aesthetics?
Ford Foundation
Graduation Thesis Project
The curvature of the plane in a material also provides structural rigidity - just like curved creasing. Here I have generated complex structurally stable joinery that mimics the radiolarian structure. The lamp is particularly made with thin felted sheets that hold together which would otherwise collapse like a fabric.
Thinking about curves
The initial idea was simple - how can I connect two curved cutout pieces together? The material has to go to the third dimensions for all the points to meet and thus naturally forms a curved surface.
I experimented with paper to get an intuitive feel for the various properties that the curves would provide. What would happen if it is curved less or curved more? Can there be an S curve? Can some joints bend inward and some outward?
The key is to look beyond the tools and look at how one tool inputs and outputs into another tool.
Developing Curved Surfaces
One of the challenges in creating minimal surfaces is that they are usually not developable. There are curves going in both directions and so they are difficult to be made with sheet materials. One of the strategies is to divide the surface into strips such that each individual strip is developable while the overall form represents a discrete approximation of the desired surface.
Computing Curvatures
The computational algorithms starts by taking a mesh that is used as a boundary condition. The mesh is divided into strips and the form is computed using form finding techniques. These final strips are then unrolled and the tabular joineries are computed to produce the final shapes that are then laser cut.
