Here is one of the student’s works from this semester’s parametric modeling elective course.

We refer the first couple of hours in molding of concrete as its “alive” phase. During this phase, due to various reasons concrete sweats, respires and in a way contains an inner circulation of forces. This phase ends when concrete dries and hardens, creating a kind of its fossil. Air bubbles are frozen inside and some even are seeable from on surface. Just like human lung structure, concrete wall contains patterned random porous elements. We refer them as the “alveoli” of the wall. Other than porous surface, color of the cement is noticeably changed due to the exposure of cement to some various factors. For these reasons, every concrete wall has its own traces –habits -, its own microstructure just like a living organism

Here is the Grasshopper definition of the image processing phase [GHX:0.9.0061] Then, they designed a material system on the wall, resembling the wall as a living being. They developed a pulley system in order to actuate multiple screws without a need for one servo at every point. It is possible to move an entire wall with only one or two servos. This project could be developed way more. However, it is interesting to see this half-crippled, half-experimental design process.

Students: Özgüç Bertuğ Çapunaman, Ömer Kirazoğlu, Selim Göral, Ece Emanetoğlu, Ekin Arslan