Designed, fabricated and assembled by Zephyr Anthony, Andrew Davis, Kyle Fant; Xiaoshuang Hu; Allyson Justmann; Andrew McCready; Kelly Peoples; Xiaofei Ren; Bo Sheng; Jordan Smith; Benjamin Stephenson; Duo Yu; Thomas Watkins.
This research and design studio focused on parametric explorations or reticulation: division, marking, and assembly with the intention of forming programmatic and structural networks. They were seeking creative architectural solutions based on material properties, formal geometry and the spatial implications of a full scale installation. Students worked as a team when they approached the fabrication component of the studio.
Reticulated surfaces like the patterned skin of a giraffe or a python have non-repeating patterns comprised of lines and surfaces that generate networks that arise spontaneously but inevitably from the program of genetics. Using this process of form-making as inspiration, their work with reticulation aimed to systematically engage building, landscape and program as self-generating and multi-dimensionally connective systems.
The site for the studio was discovered over the course of the semester by integrating conceptual understanding of both the fabricated form and Givens Hall and environs. Students were asked to develop individual programs associated with fabrication based in part on their understanding of a very specific local context.
This studio was Rhino based. No previous experience with the software was necessary as they dedicated the first four weeks of the semester to intensive tutorials in Rhino, and its parametric plug-in, Grasshopper.
