Another term, another studio. I wasn’t originally planning on attending college this term; with the ongoing pandemic and uncertainty I’ve felt with my academic trajectory I felt overwhelmed. I still do. But I realized that even though doing my classes online isn’t perfect, it’s likely all I have to work with for the foreseeable future. So instead of working for a few months to wait while it all blows over, which it clearly won’t, I am going to make the best of it. 

I am going to balancing two separate, fulltime studios this term. An architecture course on integrative design, which I may write on later, and a landscape studio on digital land works, specifically memorials. This course is the one I will be writing about the most, and I will be discussing the first project on Figurative Landscapes here. 

To begin to understand what it means to design a memorial space, we were tasked with creating a memorial site dedicated to a famous composer, which we would base on a small bus. With this bust, we were to create a 3D scan of the object for examination and then later abstraction into a landscape. 

I was a bit late joining in with the rest of the studio, and so had to wait a bit longer than the rest of the class to receive my bust of Mendelssohn. As such, I improvised with a bust I already owned of Michelangelo’s David. 

To teach myself how the AutoDesk ReCap functioned, I placed David onto a table lined with newspaper. The newspaper was used to create a messier background for the ReCap algorithms, which use clutter in photos to better triangulate an approximate the object’s shape. I took a hundred photos, the application’s limit, and then compiled it all into ReCap. I then generated a model, which looked like this:

Surprisingly accurate scan. The model had a rather odd lump on the top of the head, which was either due to the lighting of the room I took the photos in (glare confuses the algorithm) or because I took too many photos of the top of his head and it tried to fit them all in. The model was converted into an .obj file and could be imported to Rhino as a mesh. 

After I received the model of Felix Mendelssohn, I repeated the process. This time I took less photographs, due to it being smaller and less detailed, and tried to adjust for the head issues with David by avoiding as many top of head shots. 

This scan wasn’t nearly the quality I had hoped for, to be honest, but looking at my classmates’ own scans of their models, this seemed to be the best one could do with these particular busts. The fact that they weren’t very detailed, were an ivory white, and reflected light all made for a poor scan. I decided model, though crude, would work to my advantage with the next portion of the project: abstraction to landscape. In fact, that low-poly face would be the main feature. 

To better pursue my interests in Rhino, I have decided it would be interesting to examine what sort of tools are available to me to generate less traditional shapes as a generalized tool for landscape and architectural design. I was made aware of scutoids, a new platonic solid that was discovered in an attempt to better understand how cells cluster in eggs. Named after a scutellum of a beetle, the scutoid is an odd shape that can best be described as a mix between a frustum and a prismatoid, each surface boundary being a polygon, with the two end polygons being joined by a y-shaped or curved connection. I have read through the original paper, Scutoids are a geometrical solution to three dimensional packing of epithelia, and while I cannot say I am entirely familiar with all the mathematics involved, I am certain I can recreate it in Grasshopper, due to projects created by Rhino user veronikam and Rene Medel. This shape seems to be abundant in the microscopic world, and I believe that it can be used for bio-mimetic uses, particularly in the construction of structures in the built environment. The shapes can be generated via algorithms to make a series of very closely connected solids. If possible, I would like to create a primitive tool that can sit alongside the others to quickly and effectively make the scutoid more available for use in designs. I will need to better my understanding of the math involved, but it seems to be an appropriate challenge. For further reading, check out my current bibliography down below. 

Current Bibliography:

Pairs of Packable Scutoids

https://mathgrrl.com/hacktastic/2018/07/pairs-of-packable-scutoids/

Scutoid (Parametric House)

https://parametrichouse.com/scutoid/

Let’s Model some Scutoids and figure out this mechanism of Biology!

https://youtu.be/V0t2XgVUK9U

Scutoids - a new shape in your body

https://occupymath.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/scutoids-a-new-shape-in-your-body/

Scutoids are a geometrical solution to three-dimensional packing of epithelia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05376-1

Creating Scutoid cells in Grasshopper- based on voronoi cell diagram

https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/creating-scutoid-cells-in-grasshopper-based-on-voronoi-cell-diagram/76109

This project was a bit delayed due to the current situation with the Covid-19 virus, but I am fairly happy with the results. This project took two of my previous primitive templates I generated for class, and my model of the south end of Reiman Gardens, and rendered them in Lumion in order to produce a handful of panoramic shots that can be used in an Occulus headset for viewing. 

I exported the relevant Rhino files as 3DS files, keeping them small for data size, and then imported them directly into Lumion, where I then decorated them with relevant entities and plants that made sense for their location. This is the final product.