Parametric Concrete Wall Process

Concrete – Iterations

In development is a hexagon brick module, tiled into a wall system. A single cast unit can contain multiple sub-units, such as our cast panel which is composed of 7 hexagons. We are also exploring the scale of patterns and variation we can create, from patterns within a brick, to the entire wall, and from one face of the wall to the other.

Making this wall stable has been our greatest challenge. The wall must be tall (of architectural scale) but can’t be too wide, for economy of casting time, material cost, ease of installation (panel weight), and making use of a pattern which registers on both sides of the wall. The main connection types we tried included a double wall system, to widen the wall without adding too much material, or a system of locking the bricks together at their edges.

Concrete – precedents and initial update

 

CONCRETE FIELDS THREE AND FOUR

 

With these double sided fields, we created 2 sets of routed panels for each cast.

paper folding 2 _ Blair / Mitchell

tobeupdated

paper folding 1 _ Blair / Mitchell

With our first folding tests, we mostly worked with printers and physical cuts, in lieu of constructing the grasshopper definition side by side, and limited experience with laser cutting. The pattern was based around a strip module which we replicated and offset to form a larger pattern.  At first the sheet was quite resistant to folding, but then we realized we were pushing the wrong modules- by shifting our technique we realized the points marked in the image can converge to an almost touching position.

Laser cutting our grasshopper definition will tell us more than our physical models have been able to reveal, because we aren’t sure if some observed bending on the ridge folds is due to overworking the material, or is a problem which can by solved with additional folds